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This was on the 27th of May, and on the same day the Session, of the Prussian Chambers was closed by a Speech from the Throne, read to the members in the White Hall of the Palace, by M. Bismark. It was to the following effect :

By its Address to the King upon the 29th of January the Chamber of Deputies had placed itself in direct opposition to the Government, and, notwithstanding the answer of the King, had remained in a position adverse to an understanding. By its debates upon foreign politics the Chamber had endeavoured to paralyze the influence of the Government, and had thereby increased the excitement prevalent in the provinces bordering upon Poland. It had accepted misrepresentations of the opponents of Prussia, and aroused apprehensions of external dangers and entanglement in war, for which the existing relations to Foreign Powers give no well-founded cause. In the recent Address the Chamber, moreover, had altogether refused its co-operation with the Government. This rendered the close of its deliberations unavoidably necessary. The Government reserved to itself the power of determining the manner in which the unsettled financial measures should be brought to a conclusion, and hoped to come to a future understanding with the representatives of the country.

The next step which the Bismark Ministry took, was to issue on the 1st of June a royal decree authorizing the suppression of newspapers "which persistently exhibited tendencies dangerous to the welfare of the State," and the exclusion altogether of foreign journals for the same cause.

An important letter from the Crown Prince, the husband of our Princess Royal, to the King his father, was published in the German papers, and we have no reason to believe that it is otherwise than genuine. It was dated the 31st of May, and shows how keenly sensible the heir apparent of the Crown is of the unconstitutional course which his royal father was pursuing. In it he said :

"Expressions you lately made use of in my presence regarding the possibility of forcing your measures upon the country oblige me to speak out on the subject. On dismissing the Auerswald Cabinet you told me that, being more liberal than yourself, I had now got an opportunity for enacting the usual part of a Crown Prince, and throwing difficulties in the way of your Government. At that time I promised you to keep back and maintain silence, and offer no opposition. Intending to keep my promise, as I do, I yet feel it my duty to speak to you in private. I beseech you, my dearest father, not to invade the law in the way you hinted. Nobody is more fully aware than myself that to you an oath is a sacred thing, and not to be trifled with. But the position of a Sovereign in regard to his Ministers is sometimes very difficult. Skilled as they are in the lawyer's art, and expert at interpretation, they know how to represent a measure as fair and necessary, and by degrees to force a Sovereign into a path very different to that he intended to tread."

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The King replied :—

"You say you do not intend to offer any opposition. You must not have been cautious, then. Opposition speeches of yours have got abroad and found their way to me. You have now an occasion for making amends by expressing yourself in a different way, by slighting the Progressists and courting the Conservatives. The decree of June 1, besides being in consonance with the Charter, and more particularly with Clause 63, will be laid before the Landtag. The decree, so far from being the enormity you say, ought to have been introduced in the shape of a Bill, even under the late Liberal Cabinet; for it was on this condition only I sanctioned the law protecting printing-offices against the supervision and interference of the police."

On the 3rd of June the Crown Prince lodged a formal protest against the decree on the press. It was addressed to Herr von Bismark, accompanied by a request to communicate it to the Cabinet. In this protest the Prince expressed himself in the following style :

"I deem the proceedings of the Cabinet to be both illegal and injurious to the State and the dynasty. I declare the measure to have been taken without my wishing and knowing it; and I protest against any inferences and ascriptions to be possibly based upon my relation to the Council of State."

On the 4th of June the Prince wrote again to the King, stating in vigorous language that the Charter had been evaded and set aside in the case of the decree on the press. Next day at Dantzic, where he had arrived on a tour of military inspection, he returned an answer to an Address from the municipality, the tone of which greatly offended the King, who wrote to him, and demanded a disavowal of sentiments which he assumed must have been falsely reported. If not, and they were repeated, he threatened to recall him to Berlin and deprive him of his military command.

The Prince replied:

"The address I delivered at Dantzic is the result of calm reflection. I long owed it to my conscience and my position to profess, in the face of the world, an opinion the truth of which has forced itself upon me more fully from day to day. The hope only of being able after all to avoid placing myself in opposition to you stifled the monitions of my internal voice. But now, ignoring my different views, the Ministry have taken a step imperilling my future and that of my children. I shall make as courageous a stand for my future as you, my dear father, are making for your own. I cannot retract any thing I have said. All I can do is to keep quiet. Should you wish me to do so, I hereby lay at your feet my commission in the army and my seat in the Council of State. I beg you to appoint me a place of residence, or to permit me to select one myself, either in Prussia or abroad. If I am not allowed to speak my mind, I must naturally wish to dissever myself entirely from the sphere of politics."

On the 4th of September a Royal decree appeared for the dissolution of the Prussian Chambers. The Ministry advised this step, as they saw it was hopeless to expect any thing but firm unyielding opposition from it to their arbitrary and unconstitutional measures. In their report to the King, which preceded the decree, they said:

"There is no prospect that further negotiations with the present Chamber of Deputies would lead to any understanding. His Majesty the King, before his departure, was pleased to express his concurrence with these views of the Ministry, but a definitive resolution was reserved until His Majesty's return. The state of things in Prussia since that time has not offered any ground for a change in the propositions of the Ministry, which His Majesty had approved. On the other hand, tendencies have manifested themselves within the limits of the German Federal Constitution, the evident aim of which is to reduce Prussia from that position as a great Power in Germany and Europe which is her well-earned inheritance from our forefathers, and which the Prussian people has at all times been determined not to relinquish. Under these circumstances, it will be incumbent on the Prussian people to give expression upon the occasion of the approaching new elections to the fact that no difference of political opinion is so deeply rooted in Prussia as to endanger the unity of the people, and the immovable fidelity with which they are attached to the Royal House when placed in face of efforts tending to diminish the independence and dignity of Prussia."

When the new Chambers met in December, the Liberal party was as strong as ever, but circumstances occurred which seemed to open the prospect of a reconciliation between it and the Government. The death of the King of Denmark gave rise to the question of the right of succession to the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, as will be found fully narrated under the head of Denmark. And the Prussian Liberals enthusiastically espoused the title of the Prince of Augustenburg, in opposition to that of Christian IX., the present King of Denmark.

An Address to the King was drawn up in the Chamber of Deputies, the object of which was to set aside the Treaty of London entered into in May, 1852, with respect to the succession to the Danish Crown, and to which Prussia, together with Russia, England, Austria, France, and Sweden, was a party, and to force the Prussian Government to recognize the Prince of Augustenburg as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein. The following was the language of the Address:

"May it please Your Majesty,-Your Majesty has deigned to lay before us a Bill respecting the extraordinary outlay required in consequence of the pending questions in dispute between Germany and Denmark. Already upon the 2nd of December the Chamber of Deputies examined the Schleswig-Holstein question in detailed debate, and pointed out in a definite resolution the

direction of the policy requisite to be followed for the honour and interest of Germany. The Danish law of succession, as laid down by the London protocol, has never been submitted to discussion by those most nearly concerned-the popular representation of the Duchies and the agnates of the House of Oldenburg, and the German Federal Diet. Thus, already void in its foundation, the London protocol has further entirely ceased to be binding upon the participating Powers after the Danish Government upon its part has broken all the engagements at that time made. Prussia and Germany are accordingly in duty bound to recognize the hereditary right of Frederick VIII., to restore the union and independence of the Duchies, and to free German Federal territory from the presence of Danish troops. No other German State is more nearly concerned than Prussia in executing this duty rapidly and effectually. Our brave army gained its first victories since the War of Liberation upon the soil of the Duchies, and thereby pledged its honour for the eventual triumph of the cause it defended with fame but without result. The oppression of the Duchies since 1850 was the first and necessary consequence of the ill-omened Convention of Olmütz, the disastrous bearing of which upon the internal relations of Prussia and the position of the power of Germany – bitterly felt by every patriotic heart-will not be extinguished except with the liberation of the Duchies. The Chamber of Deputies, therefore, sees with deep regret the Royal Government operating in a direction which threatens, as a consequence, not the removal, but the restoration and strengthening of the settlements of 1851 to 1852. Those settlements, however, stipulate for the Duchies the tearing asunder of the ancient legal community, and therewith the defencelessness of the German element in both countries. From their very commencement they have possessed no other European importance than seriously to imperil especially Prussian State interests, so that all Prussian activity in their favour must be called an act of self-destruction. While definite defence of the rights of Schleswig-Holstein would rally all Germany under the leadership of your Majesty, maintenance of the settlements of 1851 to 1852 has placed our State in open contradiction to the majority of the German Governments, and to the unanimous opinion of the German nation. The Government of your Majesty has employed the entire influence of Prussia, in conjunction with Austria, to carry a resolution, contradictory in itself and unclear in its whole bearing, through the Federal Diet, which exposes the independence of the Duchies, and with it the highest interests of Germany, without avoiding the danger of foreign complications. The Chamber of Deputies addresses itself to your Majesty in order to avert from itself the heavy responsibility of not having made every effort to change a policy which threatens to injure the country for a long period. Almost alone among all the German representations of the people, it finds itself placed in the painful position of not being able to give that energetic expression

to the most ardent wishes of the people which unanimity of feeling between Government and the representatives of the country alone can bestow. The Chamber of Deputies, equally with the Prussian nation, is paralyzed by the consciousness that the present system of Government is altogether unable to create a secured position of right, and that the means of the State would not be applied in the hands of the present Ministers either for the benefit of the country and the Crown, or in the interest of Germany and the Duchies.

"Most Gracious King and Sire, -Your Royal Majesty has formerly solemnly declared that not a foot of German ground should be lost. The right of the Duchies to indivisibility and independence coincides with the hereditary right of the Augustenburg family. We, therefore, pray your Majesty respectfully and urgently to withdraw from the London Treaty, to recognize the Hereditary Prince of Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg as Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, and to endeavour to induce the German Diet to render him effectual assistance in taking possession of and liberating his hereditary lands. The Chamber of Deputies has not a more heartfelt wish than to place all its means joyfully at the disposal of such a policy, openly expressed and harmonizing with the will of the whole nation."

The Government had applied for a loan in order to be prepared for the possible necessity of war arising out of the complication of the Schleswig-Holstein question, but they refused to adopt the violent course of withdrawing from a treaty which the King of Prussia had solemnly signed in 1852, and the Chamber was unwilling to grant the loan except upon that condition. The Committee on the loan agreed to the Address by a majority of 16 to 5 votes. The dissentients wished simply to refuse the Ministerial demand altogether. M. Bismark hinted that a refusal of the loan by the Chamber would facilitate the course of the Government on other questions besides that of Schleswig-Holstein, which was intended as a threat to intimidate the members into submission by holding over their heads the probability of a prorogation or dissolution of the Chamber.

M. Bismark said-" Were our policy that which is imputed to us, we might from the first have stood upon the ground of the London Treaty, and have said, 'A treaty is a treaty, and we stand firmly by this one;' we should not have kept open the gap by which we may detach ourselves from it. Were such our policy, we must rejoice at the rejection of the Loan Bill, since we then could tell the Diet that, for want of means, Prussia was unable to fulfil her Federal obligations. Our policy is different; it is that of His Majesty, that no foot's breadth of German land, that no fraction of German right, shall be sacrificed. The way we follow to this end seems to you wrong; as far as human insight goes, the Government alone is able to select the right way, since it alone is fully acquainted with the position of the affair.

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