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5g m<?£tf#^ [J^. 21, I860.
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METROPOLITAN BOARD OF WORKS. I7ROM the r...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Prussia, I^He Part Which Prussia Plays I...
by adopting a timid , time-serving policy . The . Hohensol-1 ERNS and their subjects are , however , too confident and too ambitious to give up one jot of their pretensions to the rani , of a oreat power ! The old . aggrandising spirit still animates them , and they try to keep up their importance by much the same fidgety behaviour as is displayed by a parvenu , who is eager to show that he is quite as well born and well bred as the gentlemen of family into whose society he has managed to obtain admittance . Prussia is always standing upon tiptoes , to make herself as tall as her . rivals , until the row commences , and then she would fain get into an out-of-the-way corner .
It is just the same in her purely German polioy . The present king actually demanded the empire of Germany in 1848 , but when it Avas offered him dare not accept it arid stand the consequences . Prussia seeks now the exclusive direction of German affairs , or , as the Germans love to call it , the hegemony of the fatherland ; but she is afraid be fulfilled
to openly avow an intention which could only by the expulsion of Austria from the Confederation , and the consent of the petty sovereigns to be her vassals ; so she pursues the poor undignified policy of encouraging the subjects of the smaller states to agitate in her favour . Of course she l ls n'o-ht enough to abstain from drawing the sword for results which—to say nothing about the moral side of the question- —are so exceedingly problematical . We do not condemn her discretion , which lain that shiftin
we merely point out the circumstances exp g , stultifying conduct she so often pursues . To this irresolute ambition , Prussia has sacrificed internal progress , and for it she has been party to many a deed of shame . If an act of injustice was to he perpetrated , and Austria was ready to do it , Prussia , although convinced of its iniquity , would rather take a share in it than allow Austria to act by herself , as if she had pre-eminence in Germany . It was lipon this principle that Prussia sacrificed Electoral Hesse in 1850 , and stipulated for the privilege of
Schleswig question , we merely have the same cant in which all the German Governments indulge upon this question . The cause of the inhabitants of the Duchies against Denmark may be just enough we do not now dispute it ; but it is monstrous for Governments which themselves exercise a practical despotism , and have only conceded to their subjects very limited privileges , to preach a crusade in the name of liberty . The Schleswig Holstein enthusiasm of the Germans has been-well worked by their masters , who have thus turned an aspiration which , would have been dangerous at home , abroad , where it can do them at least no harm . , / , ,,. If we turn to domestic topics , what is the great legislative measure whicli the Prince announces ? A reorganisation of the army . Now this step may be necessary ; the existing system is certainly uneconomical and obstructive to industrial progress ; but it is very doubtful whether it would be well for Prussia , with its but nascent liberties , to abandon a system by which every soldier is a Prussian citizen and every Prussian citizen a soldier , for another , which may give a better disciplined and m ore easily collected army , where the soldier is everything and the citizen nothing . The present military organisation , although it makes Prussia comparatively p owerless for aggression , open to incursion , and timid in her dealings with great Powers , yet ensures her at a small cost against serious invasion . And whilst the ariny is to be altered , nothing is said about the alterations which Prussia most urgently asks ^—the abolition of the present press restrictions and the abominable Government police . Is it that the Prince is afraid to trust , the people , arid would at least have the army more at his command before lie allows his subjects to publish what they think and go where they will ? We should be sprry to say so , but certainly we can see no evidence of genuine confidence in them in this speech . , . . The picture we have drawn of the position of Prussia and the policy of its rulers may , not be flattering , but it is truthful , and just now very much needed . We admire greatly the Prussian nation , and desire its political and material progress as a safeguard of liberty and peace ; but we cannot allow our . . . countrymen to be misled by " public teachers , " who , after grossly abusing Prussia and its king for a ser ies of years , now , just because the royal families of the two . countries are allied * . turn completely round , and represent M'liat is really no very great advance fromclespotism as a delightful illustration of constitutional liberty .
giving the victim a sacrificial stab . _ . .- . . ' If the foreign policy of Prussia can be thus accounted for , it is not more difficult to discover the . causes which , impede her internal development . The Prince Regent is not , indeed , actuated at present by the scruples arid fears which formerly restrained him , as all chance of the King ' s restoration is gone ; but he is swayed by contending motives , which impart a kind of doubleness to his ' conduct . On , the one hand , the royal family of Prussia is not yet used to constitutional government , and the Prince himself , despite whatever may be said by his flatterers in
Prussia and this country to the contrary , is by no means disposed , if he can help it , to surrender any of the kingly prerogatives , and make the liberties which Prussia enjoys in name a reality ; on the other hand , he sees plainly enough that the day is gone for rigid conservatism , much more for reaction ; and anxious besides to promote the one dominant idea of his family—the increase of their territory—the chance for which now lies in the German unity movement , he desires to carry the people with him by keeping up their good will by a show of liberality and confidence . Conflicting objects , which are well illustrated in his present Ministry , which consists of what we may call Conservatives and Liberals in equal proportion .
This double embarrassment is singularly manifest in the speech with which the Prince Regent has just opened the session of the Chambers . Prussia was preparing for war because the contest approached the German frontier . But why ? Not from any sympathy with Austria , but because the attitude of the secondary German states niade it necessary for her to put herself at their head or submit to a complete isolation . The Prince refers to the movement for Federal Reform ; but his words may mean anything or nothing . They can serve , by a little the Eisenach
ministerial gloss , for a ' further encouragement to agitators , and yet are open to little exception even from Austria . " Prussia will always consider herself as the natural representative of the tendencies which have for object to restore and unite the national forces . " Very well ; but will she dare the deed , nsk the Federal Diet to abdicate its functions , and Kings and Grand Dukes to make ovor to her the best part of their sovereign rights P She would do it if she wero quite sure of being successful j but not being sure , she holds back , and yet shows her crasping deaire . We are glad to find that Prussia at
last wishes to diminish the intervention of the Germanic Diet in its relations with the constitutions of different states , as we believe that intervention to be the greatest ourso under which Germany labours but suoh a narrowing of the functions of the central power is really quite inconsistent with the hegorrioriy to winch Prussia aspires . A strong central power which docs not mteiforo in everything is , all experience teaches , an impossibility . However , the result will be satisfactory if Hesse gets back its Constitution of 1831 j Prussia owes the Hessians that poor amends for her past treachery . In the allusion of the Princoto theHolstcin
5g M<?£Tf#^ [J^. 21, I860.
5 g m £ tf # ^ [ J ^ . 21 , I 860 .
Metropolitan Board Of Works. I7rom The R...
METROPOLITAN BOARD OF WORKS . I 7 ROM the recent proceedings of our Metropolitan Council , we learn that a bill will be introduced early in the coming session , having for its object the material increase of tliu powers and revenues of the Board . What is true , probably , of all political bodies , is especially true of those which may , in their organisation , be called oligarchical;—much would have more ? . The Metropolitan Board of Works already possesses as large pecuniary resources , and as great an amount of influence and patronage as the legislature of ' many minor states ; but not content with what it has , it grasps at , further prerogatives -and a
larger exchequer . Though nominally chosen by the ratepayers of London at large , the really oligarchic nature of its constitution betrays itself in a great variety of ways , and in none more characteristically than in its impending demand for additional powers . Instead of being elected by the taxpayers themselves , this strangely constructed corporation is nominated , as every oneknows , by the vestries of the different parishes over which its jurisdiction extends . The tendency of this system of indirect . election was not . long in displaying itself . It is , in fact , an old device of bureaucracy for numbing in the representative the sense of , accountability ' to public opinion , and' for paralyzing in those
who arc said to be represented the power of exacting any pecount . Wo see this in the working of , the system every day . The Board meets weekly , and reports of its proceedings appear in the daily papers . But nothing can be more superciliously contemptuous of public opinion than those proceedings generally are . Were the score , or score and a half of gentlemen , who aippear to understand oho another so well , under the necessity of trying to understand pubh ' c feeling even a little ,, they would not have pursued the course during the last twelve months that lms
brought them into such ill-repute among their fellow-citizens . But , in point of fact , it seems in their estimation to signify nought what opinion the great body of ratopayorsmay entertain rogurrtiug them , $ ach member has been elected for three years by a mujqrity of his vestry ; nudif lie can only . » ' moktf it all-right" by the ond of his term with these , his only legal constituents , ho may bhiwUir and job as ho will in his plnce in the Board of Works . Wo hardly know whether the jobs or the blunders have hitherto predominated ; but wo rather suspeot that when all is known , tho jobs will be found to bo in the ascendant . In tho first great contract ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 21, 1860, page 6, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_21011860/page/6/
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