The Pope has taken occasion of the Emperor of Germany's
illness to write him a letter of condolence, which it became the duty of the Crown Prince to answer. In a previous letter, the Pope had intimated the impossibility of recommending the sons of the Church to obey the laws of Prussia, when those laws are incompatible with the principles of the Church ; and to this Frederick William replies by expressing his regret that it should be so, and declaring, on his own side, the impossibility of relax- ing the laws of the land to meet the requisitions of the Church : —" No Prussian Sovereign will be able to comply with the demand put forward in your letter of April 17th, that the Charter and laws of Prussia be modified in accordance with the exigencies of the statutes of your Church. The independence of the kingdom would be impaired by making its legislation dependent upon the consent of a foreign Power. To preserve this independence is a duty I owe to my ancestors and my country ; but though I can- not hope to reconcile opposite principles, whose antagonism has been .more severely felt in Germany than anywhere else for a period exceeding a thousand years, I am willing to treat the diffi- culties resulting to both parties from this hereditary conflict, in a pacific and conciliatory spirit, in harmony with my Christian con- victions." So the kingly " non-possumus " is to counterbalance the Papal " non-possumus," and each is to try and bear the other's profession of inability to give way, in as Christian a spirit as he can. Although the collision is for the present final, a little sweet- oil of Christian charity is to be used, to make the jarring of the collision lees.
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