THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONDITION OF EUROPE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5537, 25 December 1878, Page 3

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONDITION OF EUROPE.

(From the European Mail.)

The present political and social condition of Continental Europe, shows that the allusion made to the period of 1818 by Herr Sonnemann in hia reply to Prince Bismarck in the German Reichstag was far from irrelevant or inopportune. We are divided from that memorable date by thirty years, a period which is usually considered equivalent to a generation in the history of men and communities. Yet will anyone have the courage to assert that the opinions, aspirations, and projects, which for a time emptied Europe of half its thrones, and seemed likely to revolutionise the organisation of society, have been abandoned, or that the horizon is free from the threatening theories which then gathered to a head and burst upon Governments unprepared to withstand them ? No doubt the ruling Powers are better armed than they were then to resist insurrection against their authority. They remember what occurred at that date, and they are not likely to trust themselves a second time to the chapter of accidents. But opinions that do not change, and ambitions that are not abandoned, never fail to find at length opportunities for their assertion, and we hold it to be morally certain that, if what are genetically known as revolutionary opinions are not extirpated by conviction, all the precautions in life will not prevent them from being translated into action, even if only as a passing experiment, Europe, it is idle to deny, is more completely permeated with the doctrines of discontent than at any former period, and one of the worst and most alarming of the' phenomena it produces is to be seen in the fact that statesmen of so much experience, penetration, and resource as Prince Bismarck can discover no better expedient for remedying it than repression and defiance. Prince Biamack says that more victims may yet fall before the barrel of the assassin, but that they will fall martyrs for God and Fatherland. Herr Sonnemann retorts upon him, with perfect propriety, that he is personally averse from appeals to violence; but that if it needs must come to fighting, he and his will know how to fight, and that he will esteem it an honor to perish on the battlefield. Prince Bismarck will in vain labor to. revivify the old Junker spirit, and to make believe that the nobility of Germany alone know ‘ how to die in arms. In these days no class can claim a monopoly of heroism or martyrdom. Statesmanship does not consist in challenges or bravado. The question is, what is to bo done with the profound dissatisfaction entertained for things as they are by the sixty thousand Socialists of Berlin of whose existence the Prince complains? Sixty thousand in the capital, they are six hundred thousand throughout Germany. But what are their numbers in Russia ? Trustworthy statistics do not reach us from its semi-barbarous territories ; but the evidence is abundant that its population is becoming sufficiently conscious of its barbarism, and sufficiently ashamed of it, to bo heartily weary of a despotic monarchy and a servile and corrupt Bureaucracy. The same spirit of radical discontent which causes men to call themselves social Democrats in Germany makes them dub themselves Nihilistsin Russia. Russia is ruled by its police, yet they appear unable not only to prevent the circulation of ■ revolutionary opinions, hut even to discover their authors. Newspapers that would not bo allowed to live a day if their source could be discovered continue to be circulated through Russia, and even to find their way into the palace of the Czar himself,' A circumstance so astounding can bo accounted for only on the supposition that this revolutionary propaganda counts innumerable adherents. The ancient reverence for the occupant of the throne, which was the one conspicuous feature of Russian society, is en the wane. “It is to the Czardom,” the people of Russia are told by one of these secretly circulated prints, “ that we owe all our misfortunes. It has made us slaves, depriving us of all moral dignity, and degrading ns to the condition of an enervated people, without individuality or liberal aspiration. If we wish to recover our rights we must expel the Romanoffs, and exterminate, root and branch, the system they have introduced.” No doubt these are the phrases of exceedingly raw Revolutionists ; but they indicate that precise condition pf mind which leads to desperate action. In educated Germany tho methods pursued are more moderate. Prince Bismarck tries to flatter himself that, though his countrymen road more than Englishmen or Frenchmen, they understand less e£ what they read. The theory is a curious one; hut wo lose pur surprise at tho paradox when we reflect that it is tile only possible way-of accounting for the fact that though Gormans road so much they still are not of tho opinion of Princo Bismarck. His remedy is to prevent them from reading anything that does represent their opinions. Need wo wonder if it has been seriously proposed that the Social Democrats of Germany shall emigrate en masse to the United States or to Asia Minor—anywhere, in fact, where opinion is not persecuted ? The scheme scorns a wild one ; but even if carried out it would not bo tho first time that unwise measures of repression have led to a vast exodus of the papulation." Prince Bismarck does not propose to make, their' own land particularly attractive to - thorn. To have to obey the law of universal military conscription, and to be forbidden to. express in public their own political opinion, can scarcely fall to render life in tho Fatherland somewhat' irksome to those who have to bow to those necessities. To servo a country which is really ono’a own ought to be tho chief pride of every man, But

to bo obliged to fight for a State that, when you have fought for it, treats you as an alien, cannot be satisfactory. Xu addition to Devmany and Russia, however, there are other communities, more happily circumstanced, which, nevertheless, are not free from the disease of political and social discontent of which we have spoken. In spite of the boast of its Minister of the Interior, Franco is not without its Social Democrats. Italy, too, is no’more free from the danger than France itself. Underneath the mock agitation that has for its ostensible cry Italia Irredenta lurk the purposes of Social Democracy. What, our contemporary the Standard asks, is be the remedy? The only possible resource is to be found in justice and liberty. If these fail, nothing will succeed. Prince Bismarck is doing Europe, as well as Germany, an ill turn by fostering and fomenting a just discontent. It spreads and ramifies into other countries ; for it is in the nature of men sympathise warmly with the members of their own class. When, therefore, English writers invent excuses or urge argumentative palliatives for Prince Bismarck’s wrong-headedness, they forget that they are apologising for a mischief whose results cannot be localised.