Year: 1870

| Constitutional Progress and Reform In Aus
tria-Oys special Correspondents from
Vienna.


We informed our readers yesterday, by
cable telegram dated the day previous In
Vienna, that the questions Of territorial con-
solidation and the healthy extension OF liberal


measures of franchise reform to the people


engaged the earnest attention OF the members


Of the Austrian Cabinet The subjects gave


rise, evidently, to warm ministerial debates, a
few reactionary representatives of the effete
system Of the past vainly endeavoring 10


oppose the tide Of progress which has been
evolved under the leadership of Count Beust,


and on the flow Of which he guides, with a


steady hand and clear eye, the ship Of state


towards calm and secure haven, freighted as
1t Is with the cosmopolitan interests Of his
adopted country-interests noble in the pre-
sent and ennobling for the future.


In this instance, as In many others recent and
remarkable, the electricity of the telegraphs,


over land and in deep sea, comes in brilliant,
vivid confirmation Of special written corre-
spondence Of the HERALD. In onr issue of
Monday, the 10th instant, we published special
letters from Vienna, under date of the Goth
and 2lst of December, in which we not only


announced Count Beust's patriotic intentions
in advance, but submitted to the American
people, and for the early use of our readers in
foreign countries, his broad and comprehen-
sive platform of modern governmental recon-


struction in the empire, as well as the means by
which he proposes to elaborate it for the pur
poses of popular fruition and citizen enjoy
ment. During lengthy conversation with
our representative Premier Beust made due
note Of the opposing agencies which stood


in the way and were likely to impede his


path He also promulgated his creed and be-


lief in the indestructibility Of his idea, besides


proclaiming his faith in the excellent effect of
the powerful moral support which he would
receive in the maturing of his work from the
publication of his plan on this side of the
ocean, by the placing it before the enlight-
ened millions of the American Continent in
the columns of an Independent press; un-
trammelled in its expression, unsectarian in its
feeling, logical in its argument and philo-
sophical in its inferences as he is himself. The
Premier, in truth, avOwed himself an humble
disciple of the doctrine Of the coming equaliza


ton and extension of the economies Of human
ity to all mankind by means Of an unrestricted
international communion, educated democracy
without violence, and respect for vested rights,
with order and freedom.


Count Beust does not halt in his mission.
The cable telegram to which we refer in the
outset intimates that the Austrian Cabinet will
be remodelled. No doubt it will. Dead mat
ter cannot remain in union with the living and
sentient for any considerable length of time
without danger of gangrene; and as in the
physical SO in the social corporate body. Aus
tria cannot luctuate on the confines of very
gloomy and fading horizon and the glowing
streaks of the advancing sunshine of new and
other day. We do not believe that she would
recede from her destiny even if she conld, or if
its educated and firm exponent permitted her.


This Won Beust will not do. Our telegram
yesterday. attests the fact. But why did the
telegram reach us yesterday? 1t is not too


much to assume that the news which it brought
of the coming Cabinet reform in Vienna was
the sequence Of official Austrian cable
dispatches from the United States informing
Count Beust of the publication Of our special
letters from the imperial capital last Monday,
and that he acted under the inspiration
afforded by the intelligence that his executive
course had been completely endorsed by this
free nation, and thus being assured he was


Fright made sure ''to go ahead" in the spirit
of that good old-fashioned American maxim
which calls both on individuals and commu-
mites to do likewise under similar circum-
stances, but not otherwise.


Austria thus remains hopeful under Premier
Won Beusp, and Beust has faith in Austria
as she will be with America as her moral ally,
sustaining while we instruct and encourage


her. Premier Won Beust is the man for the