The Sun. — 1865-08-15 (London, England)

HERALD.—The telegraph announces that the Sovereigns of Austria and Prussia will meet at Ischil to-day. The negotiations between the two Courts have resulted, therefore, in an agreement, and the war for the liberation of the " northern brethren" is not to be followed by a war between the whole band of brothers to determine what shall be done with the rescued ones. Germany has been spared this scandal, this suicide, of which, however, she never was in any great danger. As we have frequently said since the question entered upon this last phase, the big words were meant only on one side. Prussia was determined to secure the advantages she claimed, and had made up her mind to fight for them, if need were. Austria and the minor states were very anxious to baulk Prussia, and they were ready to do anything to defeat her except fight. There they stopped ; they could accompany Prussia along the whole gamut up to that point ; and as they could go no further, Prussia, as we observed, was sure to win. So it has been. The Austrian Government has held out very bravely, has vindicated the rights of Austria as joint possessor of the Duchies, and insisted upon the rights of the German Confederation, until the Prussian Government has said in the plainest possible language :—" We will be content with nothing less than the conditions we set forth last February ; and until you will agree to them the condonzinium shall continue ; but it shall not continue after the fashion of the last few months. We will not tolerate the Prince of Augustenburg in the Duchies ; we will not allow the Schleswig-Holstein bureaucracy, composed of his partisans, to refuse obedience to the orders of the condomini, and act as if they represented some other, and thattei to the legitimate authority ; we will not permit them use their position to intrigue for the Augustenburg and stir up hatredill-will first place, Prussia. We insist,of therefore, in d the place upon the expulsion t expulsion of such of his ministers and ofagainsttlie Schleswig-Holstein officials as s the state of things which the Treaty of Vienna has legally established. We will not permit the newspapers to write what we, deeming ourselves the legitimate Sovereigns, regard as sedition, nor public meetings to be held for the promotion of what we regard as rebellion." This ultimatum—agreed upon by a strange mockery of fortune at a city of Bavaria, the state most zealous for the Augustenburg pretender and most bitterly opposed to the Prussian pretensions and, dispatched by the King of Prussia from Gastein, a little bathing place in the territory of the Emperor of Austria—compelled the Austrian Government to come to a decision. At first it met the ultimatum with a refusal, but a refusal accompanied with an offer of concessions which Prussia deemed perfectly inadequate, and now at WA, con scions that to go to war with Prussia would be to rush on her own destruction—convinced that she would not have the slightest effectual aid from the minor states whose battle she would be fighting— Austria has given way, and perhaps made a handsome profit from her pliancy. There is no tinge of that hatred of Austria which pervades the Prussian people in the Prussian Court, and King William and his Ministers, if they can only get what they want, would have no objection to help Austria to get something for herself. It is very possible that no definite arrangement has been come to between the two Governments as to the disposition of the Duchies, but as a sufficiently good understanding has been arrived at to enable the two monarchs, who have been for the greater part of the last three weeks within forty or fifty miles of each other to meet as friends, it may safely be assumed that Austria has conceded the main points insisted upon by Prussia. A definite agreement has, no doubt, been come to as to the government of the D uchies by the two Powers, and an arrangement made to prevent such scandalous conflicts between the two commissioners as this which has arisen from the recent highhanded proceedings of Herr Von Zedlitz against two Prussian subjects. Further, if Austria has not consented to the ignominious expulsion of the Prince of Augustenburg, she will have assented to measures which will make it impossible for him to remain in the Duchies, and she will have agreed to the Prussian proposal for putting in force the existing laws of the Duchies with reference to the press and public meetings. As a matter of course, all the Duchies enacted during the Danish rule remain in force until they are amended or repealed by some competent authority. At present there is no authority competent for the work of legislation, unless we assume that the condontini have a right to legislate without reference to the wishes of the people of the Duchies—an assumption which would answer the purpose of Prussia very well, but against which the Augustenburg partisans would protest very vehemently. And all thelaws of the Duchies have been kept in force except just those which Prussia wishes to apply. The laws relative to the press, political assemblies and societies, have been completely disregarded during the last 18 months. In Holstein these laws, at least so far as the press is concerned, are mild enough. The Holstein newspapers used to write treason enough every day under the Danish rule to have insured their immcdiate suppression in every state of that dear fatherland to which they were constantly appealing to rescue them from slavery. Public meetings and political societies were more hardly dealt with. In Schleswig the laws were in both respects much severer than in the neighbouring duchy. If these laws are put in force—and Prussia insists that she and her partner Austria stand in precisely the same position as the King of Denmark, of whose rights they are cessionaires, did —that incitement to hostility against them, or one of them, and advocacy of the cause of any pretender, amount to just the same thing as the attacks upon the sovereignty of the King of Denmark provided for in these laws—a stop will very soon be put to the Augustenburg agitation. If there is anything real in the loyalty to the Prince it will of course survive although denied expression ; if it is factitious, the product of clever intrigues, it will soon die out—not, however, that it really matters much whether the Holsteiners wish to have their Frederic