Glasgow Courier. — 1850-11-02 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

WEST INDIAN.  STATE OF GERMANY. (Frei' the Mmes.)  Our columns are literally filled by the marches and countermarches of German armies; and while the rest of Europe is endeavouring to turn to some advantage the interval of repose which the last few months have bestowed upon the world, the Germans are all on foot, every position is occupied in fall military force, and the Continent is startled by the incessant tramp of war. Prussia has silently but rapidly assumed a military position of vast extent, but of considerable strength; her outlying corps, connected with her main body by her command of the Rhine, occupy Baden and the Hohenzollern principalities to the south; whilst her chief army, under Gen. Groeben, holds the line of the Laban, with the vast fortress of Coblenz to cover its extreme right, and extends to the north-east by Wetzlar to Paderborn and the immediate vicinity of Cassel. At any moment a resolution of the Cabinet of Berlin may cause, and has perhaps already caused, a portion of this force to enter the Electoral territory of Hesse. To the south the military preparations which have immediately followed the late conference at Bregenz are not less remarkable. The whole Bavarian army, on the war-footing, has marched to the line of the Maine, leaving scarce sufficient forces for the ordinary duties of the capital. Bamberg has been victualled for three months. The Ring of Wurtemberg supports the Bavarian army on its left and rear, while the large body of Austrian troops connected with this movement are already collected on the frontiers of -Bohemia, and are ready to pass them. Thus Germany is in fact arrayed in two hostile camps. The military positions which they are bound, by every consideration of policy and by the most formal engagements, to defend against the common enemies of Germany, are now disputed with the utmost jealousy between the rival commanders; and even if this demonstration be not intended to lead to a civil contest, it cannot be denied that a very slight accident may suffice to cause a general conflagration. When we thus see Germany bristling with arms, and the whole country distracted by this turmoil, we must be pardoned i for inquiring where s the enemy whom these Teutonic hosts are prepared to quell, and against what power are these prodigious armies directed? The Germans are, in fact, striking at their own shadowt like one of those apparitions which are sometimes seen to loom among the mists of the Brocken; and this array of foot and horse, this vast expenditure of the resources of the nation, this excitement without an object, this rumour of war without a cause, has originated in nothing more than the conceit and ambition of a few hair-brained enthusiasts and declaimers, who have driven the nation to the verge of suicide. The catastrophe, which was foreseen and predicted by the rest of Europe when the whole German people was raving for unity and fraternity, is now impending so closely over them that it is uncertain whether it can be prevented, and, like madmen in the dark, they are rushing headlong on mutual destruction. With reference to the affairs of the Electorate of Hesse, which have brought this dispute to the issue on which it seems likely to burst, the rival parties are alike indifferent to the constitutional rights of the people of Hesse, and the quarrel has assumed a territorial character. We presume that those persons who in this country and in our own Government clung most steadily to the phantom of a Prussian headship of Germany on purely liberal principles, there are few who are not convinced by this time that Prussia had never any object in view but her own aggrandizement. She dallied with the revolution, when it suited her purpose, and the King himself was not ashamed to salute its bleeding victims and to assume its colours; but she abandoned the cause of freedom with equal or greater readiness; she crushed the constitutions of her neighbours whenever they excited her alarm or served as a pretext for military occupation; and she has pressed forward in her course of domination with an utter contempt of her engagetneufa both to the people of Germany and the other States of Europe. Prussia and Prussia alone is the cause of this frightful perturbation in Germany, which has again arrested the course of trade and let loose all the terror of uncertain or imaginary danger; and our hope for the pacific adjustment of these questions lies mainly in the fact that the Prussian Government has placed itself so utterly in the wrong, and has reached so untenable a position, that it must fall under the general resentment of Germany and the rest of Europe. Arrogant and infatuated as we believe M. de Radowits to be, he can scarcely have the power to drag his country down this precipice. He has already ruled long enough to see every one of his favourite schemes dissipated and defeated; he has already suffered all the dishonour that failure can impose upon a statesman; and the experience of the last few months may have convinced him that in politics no path is practicable which deviates from the great landmarks and the public engagements of the civilised world. It is necessary to have observed at a very early stage of these transactions, that Prussia should recede from her attempted aggression on the rights of her German confederates, and from her actual aggression on the rights of her Danish neighbour. We ask of her no hemiliating surrender—the world demands no shameful conditions. All that is required of her is to fulfil her own federal engagements of 1815 to Germany, and the terms of her own recent treaty of peace with Denmark. But her position is 80 singular, and her pretensions have been so extravagant, that she fancies herself to be humbled and outraged by the demand that she should fulfil her engagements, and holds true greatness to consist in defying them. The time is now rapidly approaching when she must either abandon this eccentric system of policy, or stand alone and exposed to all its consequences; and unless the welfare of a nation and the peace of Europe are to be sacrificed to the wayward spirit of one man or the irregular impulses of another, the alternative cannot be doubtful. No one will hail more cordially than we shall do the return of the Prussian Government to the rules of prudence and good faith, and we apprehend that the rulers of that country cannot be altogether Insensible to the universal censure and