be found in an economically calculated expenditure, as in the fact that the Treasury has year after year taken from the taxpayers larger sums of money than were required. The Danish Government has sinned against the fundamental principle of a sound financial policy— viz., that the State ought not to raise more taxes than are necessary. But why not diminish the taxes?

The greater part of the revenue is obtained from the Customs duties, which are fixed by the tariff passed July 4, 1863. All agree that this tariff, made twenty-three years ago, is quite out of date, and imperatively demands reform. Many of the most important and most necessary articles of consumption are heavily taxed, and are thus made too dear for the purse of the poor population. Moreover, the tariff greatly depresses manufactures and trade (although it is intended to protect industry) by taxing such articles as coal, timber, metals, and many other raw materials. It is generally agreed that on these points the tariff needs reformation. By the same law of July 4, 1863, a shipping tax is imposed, which greatly hampers foreign shipping. On this point also public opinion is unanimous that the tax ought to be abolished.

But if it is agreed that the Customs duties ought to be revised and the shipping tax abolished, why is it not done? Because the Minister of Finance insists on the so-called "principle of compensation ❞—¿.e., he demands that, for every million sacrificed in one direction, another million shall be secured from some other quarter. In other words, he will not allow the revenue of the State to be diminished, although, as before stated, the receipts are greater by many million crowns than the expenditure. The Folkething (i.e., the Danish House of Commons), however, demands not only a reform in the taxes, but also their diminution. This difference of opinion has for its result that nothing is done, that the Finance Minister year after year exacts the old, bad, and oppressive taxes.

It has already been stated that the Customs duties are fixed by a law passed July 4, 1863. It must, however, be added that some of the most important Customs duties were considerably increased by the so-called "war tax" of August 5, 1864. This law increased different taxes in order to recoup to the Treasury the loss it had sustained from the unfortunate war with Germany in 1864. By virtue of this law the Finance Minister has yearly obtained between three and four million crowns, and the whole of the loss from the war is thus now completely covered. Therefore it is that the Folkething says:-"As the law has now procured for the Treasury full compensation, there is no longer any reason for demanding these millions from the people." The taxpayers have at least a moral right to insist that these war taxes shall no longer be taken from them-nay, even more: Bishop Monrad, who was the Danish Finance Minister during the war of 1864, and who therefore must be better acquainted than any one else with the conditions under which the Act was passed, has expressly declared that it was the presupposition that the new taxation should only continue until the Treasury had recovered its loss, and that the retention of the law to the present day is a breach of public faith and justice. The present Minister of Finance, Herr Estrup, is, however, of another opinion. He will not relinquish these millions, and therefore the tax

payers, in defiance of all justice, and in spite of the protests of the Folkething, are obliged to submit to these unnecessary imposts.

But what excuse does the Finance Minister give for thus continuing to demand that the taxpayers, in opposition to what is universally considered to be a sound principle of financial policy, are required to pay taxes which he himself confesses to be bad, and which the State does not need? Well, he answers, it is true the State does not want the money just now, but it will perhaps at some future time, especially if the military expenses should increase, or if at some future time other expenses should be augmented.

This reference to new expenditure which at some future time may be resolved upon is the rock on which taxation reform has been wrecked; and the consequence is, in the first place, that the taxes which press disproportionately on the poor still exist, and under the present Ministry will continue to exist; and in the second place, that the reforms which manufacture and trade are longing for have not been carried out, though all agree that they are extremely necessary. The larger future expenses, about which the Cabinet during the eleven years of its existence has constantly been talking, have indeed recently begun to show themselves, and no one knows how rapidly they may grow. This much, however, is certain, if they do grow it will not be in the regular course, for it will never be with the consent of Parliament. But it can be done without Parliament (Rigsdag): the Government grants itself whatever it wishes to obtain. To an Englishman's ear this will of course be incomprehensible; but it is quite natural that a foreigner should be unable to understand the Danish Constitution, inasmuch as the Danes themselves differ so greatly in their interpretation of it. For I must remark that the Danish Government does not admit that it has violated the national charter in granting itself money, and passing any law it pleases, without the consent of the Rigsdag; on the contrary, it protests that its efforts are directed to the preservation of the national charter-only, it understands the charter in another sense than Parliament does it does not violate the charter-it only interprets it.

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The political contest in Denmark is therefore a contest as to the understanding of the charter. It began directly the anti-Ministerial party-the Left-was in the majority in the Folkething. The Folkething is that one of the two Houses of Parliament which corresponds to the House of Commons; the upper House is called the Landsthing. The latter consists of sixty-six members, of whom twelve are nominated for life by the Crown, and the rest are elected for the term of eight years indirectly, mainly by the wealthier classes of the population. The Folkething consists of 102 members, returned by direct election, by universal suffrage, for the term of three years.

As long as the Cabinet was in accordance with the parliamentary majority no contest, of course, arose as to the interpretation of the charter; but the moment the majority in the Folkething became anti-Ministerial, and the Cabinet declared it would not retire, strife broke out. The majority in the Folkething thought, that as the charter lays it down that "the power of making and amending laws is in the Government in conjunction with the Rigsdag," a necessary

condition for the constitutional exercise of legislative power was that. the Cabinet should be in harmony with the majority in the Folkething. The Cabinet, on the other hand, declared such a claim to be illegal. The Cabinet pointed to sec. 13 of the charter, according to which "the King nominates and dismisses his Ministers," and asserted this right to be unlimited. To the question, whether the King had a right to take "seven lackeys " for his Ministers, the answer was, that we might perfectly rely upon the wisdom of the King. To the question whether the Right would also perfectly rely upon this wisdom, when the King should dismiss Herr Estrup, the present Premier, and make Herr Berg, the leader of the Left, the Prime Minister, the answer was evasive. When again it was answered, "We always shall rely upon the wisdom of the King," it seemed that the Right thought it impossible that the King ever slrould take members of the Left for Ministers. The Cabinet feels its position strong, because the majority of the Landsthing supports it. From a theoretical point of view the support of the Landsthing ought indeed to be of no consequence to the Cabinet, for if the right of the King to nominate and dismiss Ministers be quite unlimited, as Herr Estrup asserts it to be, it makes no difference of course whether it is the Folkething or the Landsthing, or the Folkething in conjunction with the Landsthing, that is against the Cabinet. From a practical point of view the matter is, however, quite different. The Landsthing has, for instance (besides its legislative functions together with the Folkething), the right of appointing from amongst its own members half the judges of the "Rigsret"-i.e., the Court of the Realm, which has to try parliamentary impeachments. The consequence is, that if the Landsthing as well as the Folkething were against the Cabinet, the latter would be accused by the Folkething and found guilty by the Landsthing, and the "Rigsret" would be obliged to retire, notwithstanding the pretended unlimited right of the King to appoint and dismiss his Ministers. When the charter granted to the Landsthing the duty of forming half of the Court of the Realm (the "Rigsret ") it was supposed that this House would occupy an impartial and mediating position; perhaps a rather naïve assumption-at least one which has been disproved by the facts. Of course this prerogative of the Landsthing is under present circumstances of the greatest importance; and when the Folkething, on the other hand, argues that the charter has granted another prerogative to the lower House-namely, that the budget must in the first instance be submitted to the Folkething, so that that House might be able to exercise a special control over the nervus rerum of the State, the revenue and the expenditure, the Cabinet answers that that does not matter at all, because the Cabinet may itself take such money and make such expenditure as it thinks necessary, even if the Folkething should refuse the money and declare the expenditure unnecessary.

The dispute on the question of the right of the Folkething to influence the formation of the Cabinet had already broken out before Herr Estrup became the Danish Premier, on June 11, 1875; but under this Cabinet, and especially since the elections of April 25, 1876, when the Left succeeded in carrying almost three-fourths of the seats in the Folkething, the contest has become bitter.

It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that the contest has

exclusively turned on the great constitutional question about the pretended unlimited right of the King to choose his Ministers as he pleases. It is true that the Folkething has refused a series of Bills, not because it disapproved of them in themselves, or thought it impossible to turn them into good laws, but only because the House was hostile to this Cabinet; and in the same manner the Cabinet has refused Bills merely because they were proposed by this Folkething. The stoppage of legislation is, however, not exclusively caused by this policy of obstruction: as regards the most important questions, especially the question of the fortification of Copenhagen, the Folkething entertains quite different views from those of the Cabinet.

I have already shown how differently the Cabinet and the Folkething consider the taxation question-the latter considering the relief of the burden of taxation to be highly necessary, especially for the poorer classes; while the Finance Minister absolutely opposes any such diminution. But the dissension between the Cabinet and the Folkething becomes yet more evident in the "national defence" question. The Left have by no means been unwilling to vote considerable sums for military purposes, but they have declined to assent to as much as the Cabinet demanded, and they have considered the fortification of Copenhagen on the land side, as proposed by the Government, as quite beyond the means of the country, and generally unreasonable. The Left have therefore asked for some place of defence which should be better proportioned to our resources, and they have insisted that the necessary funds should be raised by a tax not pressing specially upon the poorer classes. In 1876 the Government dissolved the Folkething, and in a manifesto to the electors declared the national defence to be the main question, and demanded a Folkething which would work for its solution in the Government sense. The answer given by the electors in the election of April 25, 1876, was not to be misunderstood: the electors not only reelected all the opponents of the Government who had hitherto had seats in the Folkething, but also rejected the adherents of the Cabinet, so as to give the Opposition a majority of more than three-fourths. The Government, however, took no notice of this clear answer; they did, it is true, lay aside for a time the question they had declared to be a "question of life and death" for the country; but later on they brought it forward again and again, and each time in a form that less and less corresponded with the opinions of the Folkething. The same thing has occurred in a great many other cases; the Folkething, in reading both Government and private Bills, has most distinctly intimated the direction which the majority think it desirable legislation should take. The Government, on the contrary, has not considered it necessary to pay any attention to the opinions of the Folkething, though the Government party has gradually decreased, until at this moment it only numbers 19 members of the Folkething, against 83 in opposition. It is not to be denied that, during the eleven years of M. Estrup's Government, many Bills have been brought in, and some have been passed, though the greater number have been voted down; but at the present day (1885-6) legislation has fallen completely into the background,* the main question being the very existence of the

In the last session (October 1885 to February 1886), out of forty-one Bills proposed by the Government and by members of Parliament, only one was passed.

charter. While the lower House thinks that the very corner-stone of the Constitution is to be found in the words of the charter, paragraph 2 ("The legislative power belongs to the King conjointly with the Rigsdag."), the Cabinet has set itself to prove that the co-operation of the Folkething is by no means necessary, but that, on the contrary, the Ministers can carry on the government of the country and make laws in defiance of it. The Government has hitherto mainly based its contention on section 25 of the charter, insisting that this paragraph gives the Government a right to promulgate what is called a "provisional law"-including even a Money Bill-whenever the Government itself considers such a law urgent; and if the Rigsdag be not sitting, can even prorogue the Rigsdag for the purpose of doing so. Appealing to this section 25, the Government, after having closed the session of the Rigsdag on April 1, 1885, on the same day issued a provisional law" by which it empowered itself to raise taxes and spend them. As early as 1877, indeed, the Government had issued such a "provisional " Money Bill, but there is this difference between the provisional Money Bill of 1877 and that of 1885, that the latter went still further, and even empowered the Government to incur expenditure which the Folkething already had positively objected to. The provisional law of April 1, 1885, was, on January 25, 1886, rejected by the Folkething, and the Government, which would not acknowledge the validity of other votes of the Folkething, nevertheless acknowledged the validity of this rejection, and provided itself with a so-called "royal decree" ("kongelig resolution"), by which the Government was empowered, provisionally and until further orders, to provide for current expenses: True, section 49 of the charter expressly states that no expenditure must be made that is not authorized by the budget ("Finansloven "), and no budget was in existence at this time; but the Government did not consider this circumstance any impediment to its spending the money. How the Government has been able to interpret the charter so as to obtain the right to incur expenses which are expressly forbidden by section 49 of the charter we are not told. In the same section 49 it is expressly declared that "taxes must not be raised before the budget (Finanslov') had been passed," and yet taxes have been raised in the period between January 25, 1886 (when the "provisional law" of April 1, 1885, was rejected), and February 10, 1886, when the Government issued another "provisional law" to the same effect as the rejected one of April 1, 1885. Behind what interpretation the Government seeks to defend its raising of taxes at a time when neither budget, nor "provisional law," nor decree, nor anything at all was in existence to authorize it, and in the face of the charter, is not known.

Besides these provisional Money Bills, the Government has also promulgated several other "provisional laws "—namely, a law which restricts the right of the citizens to procure weapons, and to exercise themselves in their use; a law for the institution of a military corps of gens-d'armes; a law to permit the Minister of Justice to make what expenditure he may think necessary for the police; and another law which greatly restricts the freedom of speech of the people. The Folkething has protested against all these laws, but the Government has paid no attention to its opinion, and though the laws were declared to be provisional, they exist to this very day, and will probably continue to exist as long as the Ministry itself exists.