The Norwegians have taken another step forward to entire independence
of Sweden. The popular party has just drawn up its programme, and its essential point is "independence," to be brought about by means of a separate Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and a separate Norwegian Consular system. This leaves the King the only bond of union between the two States, and will be strenuously resisted by him, on the reasonable ground that it may compel him to sanction two directly opposed lines of policy. If England and Russia, for example, were at war, the King as a Swede might be an ally of Great Britain, and as a Norwegian her enemy. The probability, therefore, is that he will continuously veto the Bill ordering the separation, and will at last be confronted with the declaration that Norway is a Republic. It is then, and, we think, not till then, that the Swedes will have seriously to consider whether they will fight, or whether they will acquiesce in a separation which will be more galling to their pride than hurtful to their interests. The struggle should afford all Englishmen who are in favour of Irish Home-rule a valuable lesson, but they will learn nothing from it, or from the attitude of so many Irish Members and Municipal Councillors in this struggle with the Boers. They will say the Irish are a sensible people, as if the Norwegians were not sensible too, and much more like the Swedes than the Irish are like the English. Their origin is the same and their faith the same, and they have no dividing Channel, yet as they have two governments they can never agree even upon Consular affairs.
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