THE PRUSSIAN ROYAL LETTERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 621, 24 October 1863, Page 8

THE PRUSSIAN ROYAL LETTERS.

(From the Spectator, 18th July.)

A Hohenzollern haa had the courage to do an " undignified" thing, and has thereby, in all probabi/tiy, saved the Prussian throne. The Grown Prince, whose wife is English, who does not live among martinets, and who therefore occasionally hears the truth, has obviously been profoundly impressed with the altered tone of the people. He sees that although resolved if possible to avoid revolution, they are nlso resolved, if re\olution must be, to make a clean sweep of the Hohenzolleras, A Republic, or a dynasty with Parliamentary instead of Divine rights, are the two alternatives towards which Prussian opinion drifts, and the Grown Prince has wisely resolved to prove that there is still a third. The speech at Dantzic wag not sufficient, for it only disclaimed all share in one particular act, and the Prince has, therefore, published, or permitted his friends to publish, the secret correspondence between himself and the King. Stranger letters were never printed even among a family which produced letter- writers like Frederick the Great and the Margravine of Baireuth, but they leave no doubt whatever as to tha attitude of the Prince. He dislikes and repudiates his father's high-handed policy.. He disliked it from the first, and though when informed by the King, with a curious mianco of jealousy, and he had now an opportunity of " playing the usual part of a Crown Priaee, and throwing difficulties iv the way of the Government, 1 ' he promised to keep silence, he on the 31st May addressed to hisfather a strong private remonstrance. "I beseech you, my dear father," he wrote, "not to invade the law in the way you hint at," observes that Ministers are " skilled in the lawyer's art," and they lead the Sovereign in a path very different from the one he intends, and, in short, expresses very respectfully, but very unniistakeably, that his father and King is in a fair way of being bamboozled into dangerous despotism. The King replied kindly enough, but with that wonderful irreverence for other peoples oonvictions which is the specialty of Icings who keep consciences. " You have," he says, been incautious but have now an opportunity of lnakiug attends by expressing yourself in a different way, by slighting the Progressionists and courting thet Conservatives." Only tell a few lies, that h insult your friends and and knuckle down to your enemies, and all will go excellently well. The prince refused to accept such advice, and instantly commenced a vigorous though constitutional course of resistance. On 3rd June he recorded in the Cabinet a formal protest aga'nst the decree on the press, on 4th June wrote to his father declaring the edict a violation of the Charter, *nd on the sth June uttered at Dantzic the speech which, publicly separated Mm from the Ministry, and sent such, a flutter of terror through the bosom of Herr yon Bismark. The highly irritated King consulted the Council on the propriety of arresting the Prince — as a Field-Marshal — but the Cabinet for once displayed some regard for de-

cency, and the King contented himself with a letter which extorted the following decisive, not to say haughty reply : — "The address I delivered at .Dantzic is the rf suit 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 myaelf 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 anything I have said. All I cau 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 io permit me to select one myself, either in Prussia or abroad. If lam not allowed to speak my mind, I must naturally wish to dissever myself entirely from the sphere of politics." There is no mibt iking the meaning of words like these ; hue Englishmen and Prussians will probably (lifter in their estimate of the motives which have dictated them. To men lorg accu-tomed to constitutional forms the Prince will appear to write too much in the style of a dynast — of a man impelled chiefly by selfish though reasonable anxiety for the safety of his inheritance. The Prince says nothing of the breach of light involved in the Ministerial course, nothing of the outrage committed on the first principles of constitutional freedom. He seems care!cs3 alike of the merits of the question and ot the feelings of tl.e people, and writes as an heir intail might do who heard that his father was granting long leases at pepperrorn rents. The old Hohenzollern idea that Prussia is their property is as strong in the Prince as in the King, though he is, It maybe inclined to manage the estate without euch violent collision with the tenantry as his father's temper iuvolves. He fights for his future, not the future of Pru'sia, and thinks of his children, not of his people^ and remonstrates against injustice, not becnuse, it is evil, but because lie doubts whether, in the long run 1 it can be rancte to pay. "You aretelfish," he says, in effect to the King, and '» therefore I must be selfish also ; and you will find that I can bs as obstinate in my Jina as you are in yours." There is, no doubt, something of truth in this view ; and we do not wonder that the King was "deeply impressed" by the note. It was just the note to m press him. He undoubtedly does regard his sove, reign power as property, and the distinct reminder that he holds it for life, and not in fee, aud that the heir-in-tail has a Tight to protect hi 3 reversionary interests, was precisely the one calculated to secure his attention and his respect. Such language in a subject would have been impious but the heir had a j right to be a little wrongheaded when he deemed his future prosperity imperilled. He might be wholly wrong, but still the property must be his ; and, if he would have lii 9 wliiaas, why the "conscientious" responsibility of his father was, after all, conQned to remonstrance.

The view of the Prussian Liberal will, we conceive, be a different, and, perhaps, a broader one. He does not expect a Prince to talk too much about patrio* tism, or to subordinate his own interests to those of the people he r ul es. What he asks is, that his ruler shall before all things respect the law, and shall haveinteliigence enough to perceive that it is his interest to go with the aae. Both these desires the Prince's letter very amply fulfils. He remonstrates openly and clearlj against an invasion of the law. He alleges in the strongest manner that such imperils the existence of the dynasty. He gives these views to the world, first through a speech at Dantzie, and next, in the way to which constitutional countries are used, through an "officious" publication of his protests in the Sud Deutsche Zeitmuj. Consequently, whenever he comes to the throne, it ia as certain as words can make it that he will restrict his prerogative within legal limits, and that he will endeavor to act in some accord with the will of his people, instead of obeying only his own dreams. That is ail which Prussia has, as yet, ventured to demand, or, perhaps, ve ry eagerly desired. The quarrel, it will be remembered, has not been produced by any advance of the Chamber towards any revolutionary end. That body has only claimed its legal right of dealing with the military budget, only resisted the illegal pretension of the Ministry to absent themselves from debate. If, therefore, the Prince is resolved to keep within the law, the quarrel is at an end, and revolution for any purpose at present declared becomes wholly needless. The motive for such a resolve is to Prussians a matter of very minor importance. They would rather, of course, that their King shou'd be grinuinely liberal, should repress tha junkers, reform the bureaus, and carry out their aspirations for au united Germany ; but, if that is hopeless, they caa endure, if he will be but legal, for in a legal war viotory always remains in the end with those who carry the purse. All they ask, therefore, is that the resolve should be clear, and the publication of these letters will be held equivalent to a pledge. There is litile probability, we conceive, of any immediate action followin<j this correspondence. The Crown Prince is not likely to place himself at the head of the national party, for Europe has long ceased to to'erate even political pavricides, and he will be r,uled by the opinion of his caste. The Prussians, ou the other hanu, have every motivs to retain their attitude of expectation. They could only unseat tha King by revolt, and revolt in Prussia means firing at one's brother out of a window, with a strong chance tnat the answering roll of musketry may brine enemies swarming over every point of an exposed and straggling frontier. The letters, which the Government, after a week of consideration, have not ventured to deny, will remind the people that the oppression is only for a time, and they will, we believe, ia spite of some menacing reports, prefer to endure a de'ay in the inevitable return to a Constitutional path, to the abrupt breach both with the past nnd with constitutional forms which aa appeal to arms would iuvolve.