exposed to. The Archduchess died in giving birth to a dead child, and the Emperor was at once afflicted with the loss of a daughter and a Crown: the daughter indeed could not be restored to life, but other means remained for securing the Crown.

Shortly after the death of the Princess, a Royal Ordinance appeared, which became the signal of discontent for one portion of the possessions of the King of Denmark, and falsely directed the theories and ambition of the other. From that hour Denmark and the Duchies were established as having hostile interests in which were woven up on the one side the succession of the Crown with Local Rights, and on the other, the integrity of the Monarchy with Popular Privileges I refer to the Letters Patent of 1846, which declared the succession according to the Lex Regia to be extended to the Duchies, but at the same time acknowledging that respecting" Holstein "there are circumstances which oppose our asserting with equal certitude the title of all our lines to this Duchy." Supposing this step to have been perfectly legal its effect was destroyed by this admission; but it doubly unsettled the matter: first, by the manner in which it dealt with the Duchies; secondly, by letting in the pretensions of a third Power-Russia, while exciting the opposition of a neighbouring state, the German Confederation. The results of the measure were so unmistakeable that they must be assigned as its object, namely, the encouragement of the Duchies to resist, and the excitement of Denmark by their insolence and extravagance. To render this matter clear I must revert to

the antecedent circumstances.

The House of Gottorp, so long as it had been in possession, had done its best to assimilate Schleswig to Holstein, and to introduce German ideas together with the use of the German language. The University of Kiel had been established with that view, and education followed that impulse long after the

"Poor Emperor! he has lost by one blow a daughter and a kingdom."-General Skrznechi.

family had been swept away. The same policy had been recently revived by the Duke of Augustenburg, through a mere personal agency, partially making use of the Press. The Danish Government at both periods regarded this movement with indifference, and in fact, so late as the year 1842, no proposition of a specific kind had been uttered on either side. In that year the States of Holstein were the first to raise the question of succession by the simple declaration that it was uncertain, and the Royal Commissioner undertook to transmit to the Government the wishes of the Assembly that it should be settled in such a manner as to prevent any possible separation. On this the Diet of the Insular portion of Denmark declared itself for the application of the Succession according to the Lex Regia to the Duchies. Now the States of Holstein were violently disturbed; they protested against the pretension of the Government to decide by itself the question of the Succession; and declared that Schleswig and Holstein were independent states hereditarily following the Agnatic Line.

Such were the short and trifling antecedents, but they suffice to remove any possible delusion as to the peaceable submission of the Duchies* to an act of authority so injudiciously exerted.

It is further to be observed that at the very moment it was transmitted, the Lieutenant Governor was the Prince of Schleswig Holstein, and the Duke of Augustenburg, who has acquired the character of the first intriguer in Europe, held supreme influence in those Dependencies, So totally was neglected every precaution, that the Grand Duke of Oldenburg instantly transmitted his protest against the act to the

"Is it supposed that the Duke of Augustenburg will sell his birthright for a mess of pottage? or is it expected that the people of the Duchies will yield? They will not be coaxed, nor will they be menaced into unworthy submission. They do not want any com promise, but they want that separate and equal station,' to which in such an event they are entitled by the laws of their 'common country.""-Germanicus Vindex, in the Times, January, 1846.

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Germanic Confederation. That body declared that the King of Denmark never could have intended what he had said, and that monarch politely acknowledged the correctness of their interpretation. Had the measure been a bona fide one, must not the sentiments of the Diet have been previously ascertained-must not the adhesion of at least the Gottorp Line been secured-and would not a Lieutenant Governor have been despatched to the Duchies qualified to cope with the influence of the Augustenburgs, and to carry out the ordinance?

But if the Duchies were intemperate, they were not revolutionary, if they were irritated by the letter of the King, they were attached to the succession of the Crown. But we have nothing to do with the Duchies, the power was in the hands of Denmark; she therefore was responsible for the errors and acts of the Duchies no less than for her own; everything was in her hands. That very agitation for the Indivisibility" of the Duchies for which the war was made,* if unfounded in right, presented to the Danish Crown the most important securities, for it protected Denmark, or properly handled would have protected her, from the invasion of Germanism, as formerly the Governing Union of these Duchies had protected her against Germany.

The suggestion of the Letters Patent did not of course come from St. Petersburg, but from Paris; it was offered as a means of escaping from Russia.t At the time I was

Mr. Wegener, after showing that Schleswig and Holstein were separate Duchies originally belonging to different countries, and conjoined and disjoined through many centuries in various degrees by acts of violence or motives of expediency, exclaims, " And it is for this doctrine of Indivisibility that our country is deluged in blood, and Europe threatened with war.”

† At that moment the Spanish marriages were in preparation, and Louis Philippe was accused of seeking to gain Russia to secure himself against the effects of his rupture with England. The Times said he was ready, in return for some show of countenance from a Russian ambassador, "to sacrifice everything from Cracow to

made aware of the scheme by a letter, of which I obtained knowledge, from Christian VIII to the Duc de Cazes, who had been sent for this purpose by Louis Philippe to Copenhagen. The Memoir of Mr. Bunsen has, however, since established the fact, as also that of an engagement on the part of France to support by arms the Danish Government if necessary.*

The object of Christian VIII was to preserve the "Integrity of the Succession," a maxim soon converted into "Integrity of the Monarchy." Thus was let in "Union of Administration," then came "Unity of Representation." On the one side the sense of right was strained, on the other, the chord of ambition struck,-the passage was short to martial glory, and that involved diplomatic composition. If you wish to lead an individual into a false course instil a fallacious maxim: how much easier with millions and with fallacious terms.

The "Integrity of the Succession" might have been secured. in two ways: the establishment of the Cognatic Line in the Duchies, or of the Agnatic in the Kingdom. There was no difficulty in either.

Before 1660 the Duchies and the Kingdom had been ruled by the same line of monarchs for two hundred years, that line being hereditary in the Duchies, and maintained in Denmark in succession, although there only elective. In consequence of the Revolution of that year, the Crown there was also rendered hereditary, but with the admission of females, and hence arose the difference between the succession of the two portions of the United State: but the Lex Regia of 1665,

Constantinople;" and the Morning Chronicle, the official organ, pointed to the scaffold as the consequence of his betrayal of the interests of France and Europe.

* "It was only too much to be feared that the plan now proposed was nothing but the execution of the project which the late French Government had recommended, and as it appears with a decided promise of French support against any claims of the Germanic. Diet and the German Nation."-Bunsen, p. 31.

was not a fundamental law, beyond the establishment of despotic power, and any successor of Frederick III could "alter, repeal, or dispense with" every existing law. Christian VIII succeeded to this unlimited power and by a stroke of the pen could have brought back the old "Unity of Succession with the Duchies."

Were it not so, the Law itself has been virtually repealed by being broken in two points, and these its principal provisions. It settles conjointly the succession of Denmark and Norway, expressly stating, in section 19, that both kingdoms "shall remain undivided in the possession of one absolute and hereditary King of Denmark and Norway." In section 26 it is enacted that the Kings of Denmark and Norway enjoy "uncircumscribed and unlimited power and authority in the strongest sense that any other Christian hereditary and despotic King can be said to enjoy the same, **** and for the further strengthening of the same, we wILL and COMMAND that whosoever presumes to speak or act anything which may be prejudicial to our absolute power and authority, be proceeded against as a traitor to our Crown and dignity, and be severely punished, as usual in cases of High Treason."

Thus then the Lex Regia has been extinguished by the Congress of Vienna, and there no longer exists the Potentate from whom it emanated, viz. a King of Denmark and Norway. If it did remain in force Christian VIII would have been, and Frederick VII would be, together with the ministers of both, liable to the pains and penalties of high treason; having plotted to subvert "that absolute sovereignty," by the introduction of a Constitutional form of government.

It is to be remarked, that the hereditary and absolute character and quality of the Monarchy were esentially combined; that the hereditary was auxiliary to the absolute; that the absolute was the aim and purpose of the State reasons of that time whence it is to be inferred that the absolute character cannot be attacked without destroying the hereditary, either in regard to the legal or the political view of the case.