6 FEBRUARY 1864, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

THE DUTY OF ENGLAND TO DEN3IARK. THE cannon shot for which Europe has for weeks been listening has at length been fired. The Germans have crossed the Eider, have attacked the first Danish line at two points, and on both have been repulsed with heavy slaughter. The strange theory which was current in most European capitals that King Christian would prove traitor to his adopted country has been dispelled, and Prince Charles of Prussia, who believed that theory, telegraphs in amazement to Berlin that the Danish resistance is in earnest. Both parties are settling down to their work. The Prussians are preparing to cross the Schlei, the Austrians are urging up reinforcements for renewed attacks on the western side, and the Danes, with their teeth set, are preparing as good soldiers and brave men to perish as slowly as may be in a hopeless contest ; for, if the quarrel be left to them, their cause is ultimately hopeless. God is not on the side of the big battalions, or England would not to day be arbitress of the world, but war, like all other calamities, is subject to natural laws ; neither despair, nor patriotism, nor enthusiasm, nor the consciousness of right, nor the holiest impulse of self-sacrifice, will stop a rifle bullet, and where the bullets are many they must ulti- mately kill. The Danes brave as they are, and excellent as is their position, are hopelessly outmatched. Their fleet cannot aid them two miles from the sea, and by land their whole male population is scarcely more than half the drilled soldiers at the disposal of their foes. They may fight like heroes, as they are fighting, or like the Vikings from whom they and we descend, but the Germans can sacrifice ten men to their one ; a Croat, though inferior to a Zealander in every other quality of manhood, can carry a musket as well as he, and if they are aban- doned, the superior race must be smothered beneath the weight of its small but innumerable foes. Are they to be abandoned? That is the question now placed fully before the conscience and intellect of Great Britain, and to which the nation must reply within the next ten days ; and when once the facts are known—when the national mind is once awake to the utter brutality of the oppression now being perpetrated, the naked appeal to the sabre's edge now made by the military tyrannies, we can scarcely doubt what the reply will be. The party in which we usually believe will, we fear, in its conscientious horror of war, its dread of France, and its hatred of Continental com- plications, still argue stoutly for peace, but there are questions before which party lines must disappear, and when the honour of England is in danger even friendship must stand aside. So far as it is given to us to see the real drift of a most compli- cated question, it has become the duty, as it always has been the interest of England to defend Denmark from dismember- ment. On the broad ground of permanent policy the argu- ment for action is, we believe, unanswerable, and there has arisen during the negotiations another reason which appeals directly to the heart and the instinctive honour of every Englishman who comprehends the subject.

The general arguments can be very easily stated. It is never for the interest or the honour of Great Britain that a free constitutional monarchy, large or small, should be crushed to the ground by superior military power, and Denmark, which is such a monarchy, is now being so crushed. There is not a freer race than the Danes in the world. Even under their ancient constitution, which began with the words " The King of the Goths and Vandals is absolute throughout his dominions," they were always really free, and now King Christian has been compelled to accept invasion rather than venture to violate the forms of a Parliamentary Govern- ment. That is one reason for the wrath of the governing party in Berlin, which, having destroyed the freedom of Prussia, is humiliated by the calm refusal of the Danish Cabinet to follow their shameful example. That the monarchy is being crushed in spite of all professions is clear, from the simple fact that the invasion has commenced, in spite of a solemn guarantee from Great Britain that the demands of the two great Powers should all be granted. The idea, moreover, both of Vienna and Berlin is, we believe, apart from all idle rumours, fatal to the independence of Denmark. This idea, openly stated in both the Chamber and the Reichsrath, is that King Christian shall be Duke of Schleswig-Holstein as a united Duchy, that this Duchy shall be German—a clear act of conquest—and that the Duchy shall have "an equal voice" in all proceedings of the monarchy. In other words, the princes of Germany shall for all time to come legally dictate the policy, external and internal, of the Danish monarchy, Denmark sinking into just such a dependency of Germany as Schleswig now is of herself, and constitution and freedom being alike dependent on the vote of a Diet in which the people are wholly unrepresented. Then it is not the policy of Great Britain to permit any violation of the great principle of non-intervention between Sovereigns and their subjects. Admit that the Schleswigers are hostile to Denmark, that they are even ready to rise in insurrection, and still Germany, which does not even pretend that Schles- wig is German, has no right to intervene. If we give up that principle we give up also the right to resist if Russia marches into Prussia to put down freedom, or to complain if France invades Ireland to realize the dreams of Smith O'Brien. And lastly, it is never for our interest that the advice of Great Britain when given in the interest of peace, and justice, and right should be regarded as idle words, or that she should by abstaining from Continental politics lower the tone of her people down to the parochial standard. A. Mary- lebone of thirty millions might be very comfortable, but it would be no abode for men with hearts, or brains, or consci- ences, or the sense that man, despite that misunderstood poli- tician Cain, is responsible for his brother. Englishmen are not prepared to stand by and see murder done, and call. that cowardly crime a policy ; and not being so, they must, if they would avoid endless war, make their voice when clearly uttered as effective as cannon shot. If they do not, if they allow the idea to spread that Eng- land will never fight except for pence, they will one day be compelled to dispel the error they themselves have fostered by a war to which the defence of Denmark would be a military promenade, to defend Italy against Germany, or to sustain German nationality against France and Russia united. The policy of abstention is intelligible but degrading, the policy of interference without meaning is degrading with- out being intelligible.

These are general considerations, but there is in this matter of Denmark one which will come closer to the conscience, and heart, and pride of every Englishman. England has in this matter interfered, and interfered by a steady, long continued course of action which, like a long continued habit of dealing without written bonds, amounts to an honourable pledge. She has stood forward for twelve years as the protectress of the integrity of Denmark. She framed the treaty of 1852, morally coercing the Danes, who detested the arrangement and twice refused to sanction it, into a final vote of acceptance: When the present quarrel broke out she advised Denmark to evacuate Holstein, which was under the treaty King Christian's own territory, and Holstein was evacuated. That was a step in foreign politics ; but that failing, the Cabinet went further, and advised an internal change—the revocation of the common Constitution for all Denmark within the Eider. That advice also was accepted, subject to a Parliamentary vote, and that concession also failed. The Austrian and Prussian Ministers pleaded with a cynical contempt for right hardly to be paralleled in history, that they could not keep their armies inactive lest volunteers should be raised in Germany, and then at last Great Britain took the final step. She agreed that with her allies she would make the revocation of the Constitution matter of treaty right, and thus, if Denmark refused to yield, give her up to compulsion as a clear and manifest breaker of the public law of Europe. Every German demand was thus satis- fied, and then Denmark having on the advice of her august friend conceded everything, and given up even her own right of free internal legislation, the Germans, in contempt alike of her and her ally, crossed her frontier by force of cannon. If that persistent protection does not involve an honourable pledge, what line of conduct would ? The big boy declares the child in the right if only he will surrender the. toy ; the child surrenders it, the other boy thrashes him for yielding, and the adviser is to put his hands in his pockets and look on the brutality whistling. There never was policy more utterly base and selfish, more clearly dictated by the dread of the national consequences of doing right. All over Europe the nations are sneering at the value of England's friendship, the worthlessness of England's menace, and sneering with a reason which may make honourable men gnash their teeth with shame and vexation. It was bad enough to surrender Poland to the executioner, but at least Earl Russell told Poland that he had no aid to give beyond some irritating words. He has not told Denmark that, for though he gave no promise, and as a constitutional Minister guaranteed no aid, ho did, never- theless, guarantee that Denmark should surrender without battle all her enemies had demanded. Is Denmark, having sanctioned that promise, to lose yet more ? Are the dishonest statesmen of Prussia and the despotic ministers of Austria to be permitted with impunity to kill thousands of men in order that they may, at the best, carry out the provisions of a treaty expressly designed and signed by them in order to avert that slaughter? They say that even when victorious they will keep that agreement and are, therefore, slaughtering Danes without a pretext or an object, except, indeed, the preservation of their own rotten thrones. It may be well to wait, though we doubt it, till the Rigsraad has formally executed all the promises of King Frederick, but to have advised so much, and to have been obeyed so readily, and then at last to skulk,—we call on the country homesteads to com- mand that this disgrace shall not be.