The issue of the conflict in Prussia is still uncertain.
The King, it is said, is so irritated by the demeanour of Austria that he is half disposed to compromise with his Parliament, and has invited Herr Grabow to Court. Herr Grabow went, and was courteously re- ceived, but accepted a few days after a civic crown offered him by the city of Cologne for his firm resistance to the King's Govern- ment. On the other hand, according to the latest telegrams, the King has resolved to adhere to his military programme, and the Chamber is equally resolved not to accept it, and reconciliation is therefore regarded as "impossible." All this while Herr von Bismark is promising to ask for nine millions sterling wherewith to build a fleet, a sum which he certainly cannot get without the Chamber. He probably trusts to the desire of all Northern Ger- many for a navy to coerce the Chamber,—but that desire may operate in another way. The Chamber may refuse the grant, and the discredit of delaying the navy attach to the Government instead of to the Chambers. When the Peers in 1789 proposed to cheapen bread, the Tiers Etat simply replied that the dearness lay with the Peers, who would not cheapen it by yielding to the will of the Commons.
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