It is all the less necessary to consider particularly the character of the measures proposed and opposed, and the personal motives of the prominent actors in the present strife, inasmuch as the parties themselves are fighting no longer respecting special, subordinate questions, but respecting the fundamental principle of the Government, the mutual relation which, under the constitution, king and people are to sustain to each other. From this point of view it is not difficult to pass judgment on the general merits of the case. If we inquire where, if at all, the constitution has been formally violated, there can be no doubt that the breach has been on the side of the Government. That the consent of the diet is necessary to the validity act fixing the use of the public moneys, is expressly stated in the constitution. That the Government, for a series of years, has appropriated the funds according to its own will, without obtaining that consent, is an undeniable matter of fact. It is true that the king and his ministers do not acknowledge that this is a violation of the constitution, claiming that the duty of the king to provide in cases of exigency for the maintenance of the public weal, authorizes him, in the exigency which the obstinacy of the delegates has brought about, to act on his own responsibility. The Government must exist, they say, and to this end money must be had; if the House will not grant it, we must take it. That this is a mere quibble, especially as the exigency can be as easily ascribed to the obstinacy of the king as to that of the delegates, may be affirmed by Liberals with perfect confidence, when, as is actually the case, all candid Conservatives, even those of the strictest kind, confess that _formally_, at least, the king has acted unconstitutionally. And, though in respect to the financial question, they may justify this course while confessing its illegality, it is not so easy to do so in reference to the press law made by the king four days after closing the session of the diet. This law established a censorship of the press, which was aimed especially against all attacks in the newspapers on the policy of the Government, the plea being that the Liberal papers were disturbing the public peace and exciting a democratic spirit. The unconstitutionality of this act was as palpable as its folly. Only in case of war or insurrection is any such restriction allowed at all; the wildest imagination could hardly have declared either war or insurrection to be then existing. Moreover, even in case of such an exigency, the king has a right to limit the freedom of the press only when the diet is not in session and the urgency is too great to make it safe to wait for it to assemble. But in this call it is manifest not only that the king was not anxious to have the cooeperation of the Houses, but that he positively wished _not_ to have it. No one imagines that he conceived the whole idea of enacting the law _after_ he had