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260 tends to maintain the old relation of the languages.

In the next place, the difference in regard to the ownership of land, and the land customs, have much to do in preserving the Norwegian independence. There is no class of wealthy landowners, as in Sweden. The whole land belongs to peasant proprietors, who gain a hard subsistence from an ungrateful soil, but who are strongly attached to the old laws and usages of Norway, and would not willingly see them subjected to Swedish influences. The towns of Norway are few in number, and do not occupy so important a position as in Sweden, and thus, while the commercial classes are more open to foreign influence of every kind, their power is limited, and the peasants look with suspicion on novelties which have gained the support of the towns. The great mass of the peasant proprietors live quiet and uneventful lives, with little intercourse with the outer world, and feel but slight interest in the questions which agitate more densely populated and wealthier countries. They are not easily induced to change the customs under which they have lived, and with the advantages of which they are satisfied. A union with Sweden would launch them on a sea of unknown changes, and the benefits from a closer union are not of a kind to appeal to their imagination, while the dangers to which their cherished customs would be exposed are very real and apparent to their eyes.

All these causes co-operate to maintain the separation and internal independence of Norway. Some of them will, undoubtedly, grow weaker in time, but only very slowly, while in the mean time they have fostered the growth of a strong national sentiment, which shows itself in nothing more than in the attachment of the people to the constitution. This attachment is, in part, the outcome of the national peculiarities, but it is founded principally on the prominence which the constitution holds in the most eventful epoch of the modern history of Norway. It is warmly regarded not merely as giving a well-considered and practically efficient form of government, under which the interests of the country have been fairly attended to, but also, altogether apart from its merits, as the work of the patriots who guided Norway safely through the perils of a foreign conquest and an enforced change of allegiance, and who, while unable to vindicate for her people the choice of a sovereign, secured the independence and freedom of Norway by substantial guarantees. The failure to form Norway into a separate State is not now regretted, as the union of the crowns is felt to add to the military strength of both countries, and to be a safeguard against foreign invasion; but, at the same time, the Norwegians would be slow to abandon a constitution which is surrounded by such great historic memories. Under it the internal affairs of the country have not been neglected, and the separation of the countries has not, as yet, exposed either Sweden or Norway to any danger from abroad. It is not, then, surprising that the attachment of the Norwegians to their constitution has only deepened with time, and that in this attachment should be found one of the most formidable obstacles to any amalgamation of Norway and Sweden.

The acquisition of Norway was long an object of ambition to the warlike kings of Sweden. Repeated invasions were repelled by the valor of the Norwegians, who preferred the rule of the kings of Denmark, under which, they thought, they had more security for the enjoyment of their ancient customs. Charles XII. met his death while prosecuting the siege of the border fortress of Frederickshall; and though the invasion of Norway was then abandoned by Sweden, it was rather because the Swedish statesmen were anxious to secure for their country a period of repose, than because they had relinquished the hope of conquest. Gustavus IV., smarting under the loss of Finland, meditated the conquest of Norway, but his ambitious dreams were cut short by his own enforced abdication. The dangers to which Norway was exposed were, however, only postponed. In 1812, when the Grand Alliance was being formed, Sweden, which had unwillingly entered into the Continental system of Napoleon, and had evaded as much as possible its obligations to exclude British manufactures from