Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/428

 difficulties which might occur of an international character had been anticipated by the treaty of 1852, still in respect to the King of Denmark's capacity as Duke of Holstein and a sovereign German prince, a controversy arose between him and the Diet of Germany in consequence of these engagements, expressed in hitherto private and secret diplomatic correspondence carried on between him and certain German Courts. The House will understand that this was not an international question; it did not affect the public law of Europe; but it was a municipal, local, or, as we now call it, a federal question. Notwithstanding that in reality it related only to the King of Denmark and the Diet of Germany, in time it attracted the attention of the Government of England and of the ministers of the Great Powers, signatories of the treaty of 1852. For some period after the treaty of 1852, very little was heard of the federal question and the controversy between the Diet and the King of Denmark. After the exertions and exhaustions of the revolutionary years, the question slept, but it did not die. Occasionally it gave signs of vitality; and as time proceeded, shortly—at least, not very long—after the accession of the present Government to office, the controversy between the Diet and the King of Denmark assumed an appearance of very great life and acrimony.

Now, Her Majesty's Ministers thought it their duty to interfere in that controversy between the German Diet and the King of Denmark—a controversy strictly federal and not international. Whether they were wise in taking that course