THE KING AND PARLIAMENT OF PRUSSIA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1092, 29 April 1863, Page 2

THE KING AND PARLIAMENT OF PRUSSIA.

In enforced compliance with the necessities of his position, the King of Prussia has again met the Parliament from which he parted so abruptly and so angrily in October last. We have no very specific account of the manner in which the disbanded Legislators have spent their time. They had, in fact, little to do: their position was made for them, and they had only to maintain it. They were perfectly well assured of the sympathy and support of the public, and had no occasion to agitate or bestir themselves for what they already fully possessed. The King was in a very different position. He found ranged in opposition to him nearly the whole of his people and nearly the whole of his Parliament. The issue between them was no matter of technicality or form, no question of undue susceptibility on either side, no subject exaggerated by the heat of debate or the irritation of party spirit. The simple question was whether the King was authorised under the Prussian Constitution, to take and spend the money of the people without the consent and directly against the will of their representatives— whether the King or the people were invested with the power of the purse—whether the property of the nation was its own to give or to withhold at its pleasure, or whether it was the property of the King to give or to take back according to his good will. The King has occupied the three months which have intervened since the dispute arose in a manner equally undignified and unwise. He has caused to be got up in holes and corners addresses to himself, approving his arbitrary policy, and to the deputa--ions bringing these addresses he has made some dozen of speeches, which may not only rank as far as style goes among the very worst of Royal orations' at this time extant, but which tended to widen the breach with his Parliament, to alienate the hearts of his people, and to convince them that they ha d a King who could neither be constitutional with consistency nor arbitrary with dignity.

The Speech which the Prussian Ministry have pronounced in the name of their Sovereign is quite worthy of the events we have described. We are told that it was received with visible marks of disapprobation by the audience, and we know not well how it could have been otherwise, for the Prussian Parliament must have felt that it was not only insulting to them as free citizens of a constitutional country, but calculated to disgrace that country in the eyes of foreign nations. There is no trace anywhere of an intention to concede to the Chamber the smallest portion of the rights which last year were invaded. The King hopes for a durable understanding as to the question which last year remained unsolved. There is no such question. The question was whether the King or the representatives of the people should appropriate the people's money, and this question received a complete, if not a satisfactory, solution when the King, substituting his will for the law, took the money and spent it, as he has, several times since admitted, in direct violation of the Constitution. "This object will be obtained," continues the King, '' if the Constitution be firmly adhered to as the basis for the correct appreciation of the position of the representatives of the country." Exactly so, but also exactly the contrary of what the King has done. The King has violated the plain rights of the Assembly, and he proceeds to lecture that body as if they, who have been quite passive in the whole matter, and have merely suffered such injuries as he chose to inflict, had been themselves the aggressors, and made a causeless attack upon the Royal prerogative. It is irritating enough to be deprived of one's rights, but more than ordinarily provoking when the very person who has done the wrong assumes an attitude of injured innocence, and recommends more conciliatory conduct for the future. The King next informs the Chamber that he has spent their money in a manner very much to his own satisfaction, and that the Grvernment will

move for a retrospective sanction of the expenditure —in other words, for a Bill of Indemnity. This is a stroke of art of which his Majesty may fairly claim to bo the inventor. There have been arbitrary Kings and unscrupulous Ministers before no"', who have broken the laws of their country and

trampled on the liberty of their subjects ; but they hive always taken one of two courscs —they havo Mtlier assumed that they had aright to set aside the or they have found, as Charles I. did, men to a'rgic that'they had observed the law at the very time they were breaking it. The King of Prussia tikes neither ground, or rather, perhaps, it would be more just to say that he takes both. Ilis ease is that- lie took his people's money, because ho had a r joht to take it: he asks for a retrospective sanction, because he had not. lie does not even set up the tyrant's plea of necessity, with which America lias liiade us lately so familiar, lie did not take the monev because lie had no alternative, but because he preferred his own opinion to that of his Parliament, and had the power by a flagrant wrong to give effect to such preference. The course, however, of iskins for a Bill of Indemnity has in it this advantage, that it raises in the most distinct form the highest Constitutional question which can be raised in a free state. A flagrant illegality lias been committed. The laws have been wilfully and advisedlv violated, and when the Crown asks for a retrospective sanction it is admitted that the command of the Crown is no protection to the Minister for any illegal act done in pursuance of it. Will the Prussian assembly, under such circumstances, by an ex pod facto law exempt from the consequences of their own deliberate acts the Ministers who have thus set it at defiance, and who havo since that act was perpetrated instituted and maintained a bitter persecution of the press for advocating with temper and ability the most obvious doctrines of constitutional freedom ? We shall watch the result with much interest, but we do not think so meanly of the Prussian Parliament as to suppose that they will pass the measure demanded of them. The liberties of England were founded by men who would have died a thousand deaths rather than submit to any such degrading compliance. Further on we are told that the Government indulge the hope that the reorganization of the army, to the maintenance of which it unanimously holds itself hound in the interests of Prussia, will now be finally settled by the grant of the sum necessary to carry it through. This also grates harshly on constitutional cars. The Government is unanimously bound to do a thing, and hopes the Chamber will grant the money. Is not this the language of a superior to an inferior? The Government is bound to do nothing involving money to which the Chamber does not assent, and, as for its unanimity, that may be a satisfactory ground of action for itself, but not for the Assembly which is its legal superior.

Such is the Speech of the King of Prussia. He is fortunate in his subjects, for we believe a more patient and long-suffering race does not exist. But his subjects are eminently unfortunate in their King. In his evasion of their rights we look in vain for the talent which gilds great offences, and the consistent conviction which sometimes makes even error respectable. The Assembly believes, and not without plausible reason, that it is against his own subjects that he wishes to reorganise his army, that his relations with Austria and with Denmark are purposely embroiled and embittered in order to furnish an excuse for the raising of a force destined to be fatal to their liberties, and yet they can hardly think that such a blow can come from a hand so feeble. Certainly, in the Speech just delivered there is nothing to reassure the people, nothing to restore the influence of the Sovereign.—Times, 16th Jan.