The King of Prussia has extended his arbitrary proceedings even
to England, as if to convince us that he is not the intelligent man we took him for when he visited this country : the restrictions on the press are to apply to foreign papers, and especially to the Times, which has attacked the internal administration of Prussia. The promulgation of that intention has had an odd effect among the journals of the different parties here. Lord PALMERSTON'S ally, the Whig-Radical Chronicle, rather makes a pet of the Prus- sian Monarch, and wants to persuade the world, that inasmuch as a variety of local bodies have certain "rights"—petition among the number—Prussia is not such a very despotic government, but upon the whole rather free, though you would not suppose it. The Morning Post, to which the Prussian Embassy might be supposed to make suggestions, zealously defends the exclusion of the Times, because it would be very bad for the Times of 1843 to inflame the public mind of Prussia as the Times of 1831 inflamed the public mind of England. It may be doubted, by the by, whether it was the Times that inflamed the public mind in 1831, or the public mind the Times. However, the Conservative Times of 1843 is now the strong asserter of the liberty of the press ; the infraction of which is gilded over by the Chronicle and vindicated by the Post. And truly, it is difficult to see what FREDERICK WILLIAM can gain by arraying English journalism against him : a few of the ablest "lead- ing articles" in the world would do him less harm than the bare fact that he dares not admit within his territory an English Minis- terial newspaper. What a confession is that to inflame the public mind of Prussia, if it is so inflammable ! What would be said of the stability of the English Government that feared to allow the Paris Presse to cross the Channel, or of the French dynasty that ex- cluded the Chronicle ? Perhaps the Monarch may gain a title an- tithetical to that of his great predecessor, and be called FREDR- MCI( the Little.
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