*

followed in Norway, and if that Union by absence of interference and disloyalty has subsisted down to our times only then to be broken by foreign violence, the cause of the difference must be looked for not in the dispositions of the kings of Copenhagen, but in the character of the Norwegians and Swedes. Faction will invite Despotism: without it Despotism may remain an abstract virtue, but never become a fountain of events for history. The Swedes were factious, the Norwegians were not.

The Norwegians are a people to whom the word primitive may in its most emphatic and valuable sense be applied-— simple and upright; at a distance from the wars of the great European States, without losing their bravery or their spirit;

at a distance from the contaminating commotions of internal discord, without losing public zeal and patriotic affections; strong in their mountains, and rich in their splendid harbours, they pursued their various mountaineer and maritime enterprises with industry, patience, and frugality; visiting the remotest regions of the earth, they returned home, bringing with them the profits only of their intercourse with the world-innocent gold, not corrupting thoughts.

:

It was a union thus consecrated by time, by benefits, by affections, that the Cabinets of Europe undertook to dissolve, in a Conference undertaken to restore the nations to their rights it was an allegiance so rooted in time, a loyalty so approved by affection, that the kings of Europe resolved to shatter; commencing with the fiction of a usurpation, they said, We shall do this with Norway, our possession: we shall take her from one king, and we shall give her to another" and they did so; and they told their own people that the one king had offended them, and that the other had pleased them, and the people were content! But indeed, in this case, the Congress of Vienna was only required to ratify

* A civil code had been compiled under Christian IV, but it was from the local usages and ordinances of former kings. In ecclesiastical matters there was a Canon copied from that of Denmark.

a measure in the previous year enacted and accomplished. England alone undertook to perform this service, which she accomplished at Kiel on the 14th January, 1814, and to which, as the prototype of the Treaty of May, I shall have to treat of particularly when I come to the external relations of the Scandinavian kingdoms.

The people of Norway were not, however, like the people of Europe, they would not be disposed of like animals. They armed to resist. The Crown Prince of Denmark, then their viceroy, put himself at their head, and, reverting to their ancient rights, they elected him their king. The odds, however, against them were terrific; in fact, they were a protocolised people,-one which wakes some morning and finds all the world its foes, and not a friend on earth. They, therefore, provided against the possible execution of the Ukase of Kiel, by establishing a general order for the government of the kingdom, which I am reduced to designate by a hateful word. But this Constitution did not subvert the internal liberties of the people; and so good a countenance did they show, that the prudent King of Sweden thought it best to accept it together with them: not having been copied from the democrats of Paris, nor guaranteed by the Congress of Vienna, it exists to this day; in fact, it was a wise, and not a foolish one.

The Storting of Norway was a body resembling what the Parliaments anciently were in England, that is to say, of the Peers and a delegation of the Communes, to whom every matter was referred. There was now but a sole chamber with the controlling veto of the king; this power was reduced in practice to a nullity, as it could be exercised in respect to any measure but twice. The Storting thus possessed whatever legislative power was to be exerted in the country, and held also the administrative functions: the army, navy, and exchequer, were under its control. After the Union with Sweden was settled, a modification took place by the introduction of a Stadtholder, or Viceroy, who might be a Swede. Having been before ruled by the Lex Regia of

Denmark, Norway thus suddenly passed from the purest
Absolutism to the purest Democracy.
In this soil both

trees have borne fruit equally good.

On these conditions, Norway was no great boon: the apparent sacrifice of their independence as a nation had only the effect of engendering the sense of independence as a people. They were armed too to maintain it. The Swedish map, indeed, exhibits a large accession of territory: statistical returns a large increase of maritime and military force; the budget an augmentation of resources, but of this increment the Swedish king could not dispose. In attempting to form a party in Norway, and to open it to regal and ministerial corruption, results have followed the very reverse of the experience of all other modern countries, and the Norwegian, not the Swedish, element has prevailed. The common flag has undergone a change expressive of the increased consideration of the former; the Swedish kings have relinquished in practice their faculty of appointing to the Stadtholdership one of their Swedish subjects; and nobility as an order of the state, and as a class, has been abrogated, notwithstanding the exercise of the veto of the King in two successive Stortings. The Bill was first passed in 1817, again in 1821: the Storting by a wise provision is only assembled every third year; in 1824 it became law by the course of the Constitution. Bernadotte, when he accepted the Convention of Moss, had complacently remarked, Nous changerons tout cela !

By the transfer Denmark lost strength, but Sweden acquired none: the power which in the former case was positive, becomes negative in the latter. But Norway was given to Sweden as a compensation; thus at the same time strength was withdrawn, and weakness conferred. Denmark and Sweden can now no longer cooperate for their defence; and Norway, instead of rallying in the common cause, will rejoice in the peril of the Crown, by which it has been betrayed, and of that by which it has been annexed. Let it, however, be remembered that this has been effected by a stipulation of that Treaty considered the public law of

Europe, violated indeed with impunity, wherever further "Progress" is practicable in the wolfish ways of our times, but firm and binding in so far as it crushes worth and perpetuates disorder.

SWEDEN.

The Diet is composed of four estates, sitting each by itself, the Nobility, the Clergy, the Burghers, and the Peasantry, each being represented by individuals belonging to itself. The head of every noble family has the faculty of admission to the Assembly of nobles: here, as formerly in Denmark, nobility descends to all the issue.

In the early Gothic States whilst the primitive order still remained unbroken, no inconvenience arose from multiplicity, of Councils whether general or local, but with administrative concentration and indirect taxes, the case is widely different, and instead of opposing obstacles to bad measures, encumbers the march of necessary business, interposes delays, affords endless occasions to successful intrigue and disappointed ambitions and maintains a permanent struggle of organised and co-ordinate interests. Political life in Sweden was a school of corruption, and the soil was adapted for the growth of that rankest of intellectual weeds-the idea of change, although by law capital punishment was the penalty of innovation: thus since the accession of the line of Oldenburg, Sweden has presented a scene of continual struggles, in which the king looked abroad for support against domestic faction, and which opened to foreign influence the mass of politicians. Stockholm was divided between the Hats and the Bonnets: the first representing the Aristocracy, the second the Democracy; but which have acquired historic importance from the connection of the one with France, and of the other with Russia.

Sweden, like Norway and Denmark, has had its Revolution; but, unlike these, it had reference solely to foreign matters. Gustavus III, on his succession, having beforehand planned

the emancipation of his country, avoided taking the ordinary oath to observe the existing laws and their interpretation by the Senate, and managed to effect a Revolution, at the time consirlered the annihilation of Faction, and which both of these, sick of themselves, combined to celebrate. It amounted, however, to no more than vesting in the hands of the king the prerogative of peace and war. The result, however, was not fortunate, the Russian Cabinet (which had bound itself by the Treaty of Neustadt to take no concern touching the form of the Swedish Government) found means to upset an order of things, which the endeavours of Prussia and Austria were exerted to support, and which, if maintained, would have prevented the partition of Poland. *

"His (Gustavus III) new Constitution, in fifty-seven articles, was received as the perfection of Legislation. They conferred considerable power on the Sovereign; enabled him to make peace, or declare war, without the consent of the Diet; but he could make no new law, or alter any already made, without its concurrence; and he was bound to ask, though not always to follow, the advice of his Senate, in matters of graver import. The form of the Constitution was not much altered; and the four orders of deputies still remained. On the whole it was a liberal Constitution. If this Revolution was agreeable to the Swedes themselves, it was odious to Catherine II, who saw Russian influence annihilated by it, and who expressed her resolution to restore the system of Government which it had subverted: but the representations of Prussia and Austria induced her to rest satisfied with a barren menace."-Dunham's History of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, iii, p. 293.