GERMANY AND ENGLAND.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 235, 4 October 1871, Page 2

GERMANY AND ENGLAND.

The Allaemeine Zeilung of June 3, contains the following remarkable letter : — Open Address from the German-English Politician of the 1?otore, John Michel Thtjtz-baumwoll, io His Majest? the GERMAN EMPEROK. London, May 15. Your Majesty— May a former subject of your Imperial Majesty, who wishes nothing [more ardently than to return to live under your sceptre, hope for forgiveness, if he has the boldness to submit to the consideration of your Majesty a few short remarks ? As a German I take the greatest interest in the honor of your Majesty's arms, in the aggrandisement of the Empire, and in the lasting glory of our race- As an inhabitant of many years, standing, and even a citizen of England, I am anxious to forward the real and essential interests of my adopted fatherland. Long reflection, as well as the enlightenment of late events, impart to me the conviction that both aspirations can be attained by the same means. [Having described the social changes, that, he asserts, have come over the English nation, he goes on to say] : — Heretofore, too, the Government, like the Parliament, was really aristocratic. Like all aristocracies, it knew how to concentrate the spirit and force of the nation for warlike attack and warlike defence. It knew how to keep the energy and courage of the English nation at the highest point during the great war of 15 years. It commanded the fleet, and vanquished the enemies of England on every sea, destroying the powerful naval armaments of France and Spain for a whole generation. Need I recall to your Majesty the efforts, battles, and victories of the united forces of Blucher and Wellington ? All that is passed. Far be it from me to say that the daring spirit of the English sailor is gone since Nelson's days, or that the British army has not such brave soldiers as those who fought at Waterloo. But Ido say — and every patriotic Englishman says so too — that the genius which organised that fleet and those annies — the spirit which sustained them, undaunted and unshaken, in the face of conquering enemies, home rebelFor remainder of news see fourth page.

ions and exhausted finances — that genius and that spirit have departed. Neither the Government nor the Parliament are the same. The House of Commons is totally changed. Amongst some of the country members one may still find something of the old style, but two successive Eeform Bills have produced new electors and new deputies. The working claes electors consist of workers in wool, cotton and iron. They are men of hard bands -and hard heads, of very little education, and that little of the very narrowest kind. Whatever they may have learned, : it is certain that a knowledge of the history of the.) fatherland and an admiration for patriotic organisation they have not acquired; It is impossible for a German to imagine how a people, can be so totally ignorant of its own history as the English working man generally is. Even the more advanced or the rather better instructed amongst them do; not know more than they have learnt from some.miserable pamphlet, perhaps specially prepared to show that all the historical personages of England only existed to drag down the working roan morally and materially. Let your Majesty compare this state of culture with that of your Prussian subjects. Into the hands of such men — ignorant, prejudiced, malignant, bemuddled and stimulated with beer — the wisdom of English Ministers has thrust the power of electing the representatives of the English towns. In all large boroughs they form the majority of the electors, and, if united, can return whom they please. In any case, nobody can be elected in direct opposition to their wishes. As the electors, so the elected ; a little above them by birth, a little by'education, and greatly by wealth, the chosen ones add to all the prejudices and defects of their electors the dread of losing their newly-acquainted honors. They generally know as little as the working man of the history of England, are not less liable to be 'influenced by one-sided religious views and narrowminded traditions, and are far more nervously susceptible in their purse than the working man. Not a few of them enter public life with all the soured antipathies of the cantankerous piety of a provincial dissenter. People of this kind constitute fully one-half the House of Commons; people of this stamp form nearly the entire Government of England. As the elected stand towards the electors, so the Ministers stand towards the deputies. Ido not mean to say that Messrs. Gladstone, Hardy, Lowe, Cardwell, Disraeli, Lord John Manners, Sir Stafford Northcote, or Mr. A. Herbert stand in regard to intelligence, geist, education, and knowledge on the same relative level with reference to Messrs Bright, Mundella, and others, as these latter stand with respect to the working men who chose them. I only mean to say that they are forced to adopt the tone of mind, position, and view of these gentlemen in their governmental and parliamentary duties. It is interesting to observe how this influx of the industrial power in the Legislature has remodelled the conduct and behavior of the English Ministers. Most of them have come from a mercantile position, and — if their enemies are to be believed — bear the unmistakable brand of the Philistine upon their foreheads. Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cardwell, and others have all the look of highly respectable commercial clerks accustomed to take their recreation in the evening, after their hard day's work in the society of " Christian young men." When old members listen to self-denying sermons of Mr. Gladstone, which unite in so masterly a manner the humility of the earthworm with the consequence of the counter-jumper, their thoughts involuntarily revert to the tone in which Pitt defied some vexed minorities in the House, or some threatening noisy masses in front of its gates. How can they avoids thinking of the pride and contempt of a Castlereagb, or the aristocratic irony of a Canning, while they listen to the studied humility of their successor? And thinking thus of the past, have they not a right' to sigh ? As the men so their policy; one word expresses it sufficiently— -^'compromise." Advisers of the Crown bargain like old clothes men i (haridelsiuderi) and the cant of the conventicles is heard in the councils of Parliament. A little piece of this policy : ,to, gain one faction;, ( a little patch of that policy to satisfy ' another; a little concession here, and a still smaller one there, to flatter this or that interest— these are the noble arts, these the noble duties of an English Premier of ; to : day ! Your Majesty cannot help seeing the inevitable conclusions to such premises. Tj^ey, are. What they unavoidably must be under the circumstances. Constituents moved solely by, the .mosti ™lg»r selfißh ' ness— a refined legotism ••; would be pardonable—constituents whose ignorance stifles every patriotic feeling, and makes ever patriotic remembrance impossible— whoße reigning passion is profit, if it is

not unlimited beer ; and representatives just as little-minded and unpatriotic as the constituents which return them, but, perhaps, a little less ignorant, though certainly not less money-seeking. These cannot produce any other offspring than the Radical-Liberal party of the House of Commons. As yet" that party does cot entirely and openly rule the House, thank God ! but its influence is great, increasing, and defiant. It is visible, in every step which the Government takes forward or backward, in every bill which it brings in. and then withdraws, in every new vacillation between conflicting principles ; in the sudden proposal and abandonment of ill-considered measures ; in the reckless advocacy of one military system, and the just as inconsiderate abolition of another ; in the introduction of one bill and its abandonment for a second ; in the nervous boldness with which a tax is imposed, and the nervous anxiety with which it is shelved ; ia the quarrels and disputes of the great departments j in the nightly exhibition of the influence of the intrigue of some Government employe ; in the insubordination of employes to their chiefs; in the quarrels and discussion of the chiefs themselves with one another ; and in the mutiny, confusioD, and disorder which everywhere prevail. Nor is this all. The feverish restlessness which has given the highest authority of the realm into the hands of sweeps, bricklayers, carpenters, shoemakers, and waiters, has contaminated our whole policy ; it has revolutionised the law of property in Ireland on the basis of official and systematic robbery, aud will, in the next session, do the same for Eugland. It has closed one eye to (perhaps even encouraged in secret) tumultuous meetings, setting at defiance the laws of public order ; and as in lawmaking the chief result is cowardly yielding, so in the matter of government ths result is anarchy. This is bad enough, but there is worse behind. The diplomatic diselosares of the last few months have shown England's incapacity in all international relations. Once she played a first-class part in successful wars, and in still more successful treaties of peace. She could not have spoken one word that would have been lightly listened to when the results of the great war were settled in 1815 — a settlement which stopped the outbreak of another war in 1830. She spoke, and kings and commanders listened with respectful attention. , The conditions she proposed were accepted, those she objected to rejected. It is so no longer. When England speaks now foreign nations listen with polite but half-contemptible mien. When she proposes anything — if she really succeeds in screwing up her courage to that pomt — it is totally disregarded. When she goes security for anything, her signature is more likely to do harm than good. When she threatens, the threatened one may laugh mockingly — unless he be a half-savage Abyssinian. In a word, England's position and prestige have been replaced by comparative insignificance. It is hardly necessary to assure your Majesty that this state of things is gall and bitterness to every thinking and patriotic Englishman. Naturally there are many Englishmen — perhaps the plurality — blind or indifferent as regards the glory and might of their fatherland. They are satisfied if the Lancashire spinning -jenny keeps in motiou, if Derbyshire and Durham still produce coal, if every year sees an increase in the commercial bottoms floating in the Mersy or Thames. Yet every Englishman is not absorbed in cotton, iron, and coal, and not all of those who have an interest in these commodities are thoughtless of the fatherland and its glory. There is a considerable and constantly growing number of English people — naturally only a small minority of the nation — who acutely feel the humiliation of the country, and as they look with shame upon the present, so they look with despair upon the future. But sometimes they fancy that they can discover through the mist and darkness which surrounds them the glimmering of a .better and clearer day. The conversation of such men encourages me to address these respectful remarks to your Majesty. I hear from those people — or at least they hint their conviction — that their fatherland is again in want of the remedy of foreign conquest and of a foreign dynasty to regain its old health and strength. England, they say, was obce revivified and strengthened by William 1., and a second time by William 111., when another period of glory began with the Hanoverian dynasty. " Why," they argue, " should not another William of a foreign family continue to develop and renew the blessings which are due to the two former Williams ? Why should England not become a part and»a member of the country which, rejoices in the possession of such a ruler as the great and humane victor of .France ?, .* , ! To be concluded in our next.