BY BISHOP JOHN F. HURST.
In no European country has there been, in the last half century, such a thorough coming up of liberal sentiment concerning all that regards the rights of the citizen and the Christian as in Norway. Lying at the northwest corner of the continent, far removed from the excitements and jealousies common to the nervous central countries, Norway has moved on in its even way, and cared little for the general current of these lands. But these Norwegians have not been asleep. Nor has there ever been a time when they have slept, from the hazardous day when their Vikings invaded Britain, and became forever a part of the bone and fiber of Scotland in eastern England, down to our century. All Norwegian history is a romance, whether in former or recent times. The unexpected change happens on those mountain sides and in those happy valleys, and when a new movement does begin there it is apt to overthrow the whole of Scandinavia. Norwegian impulses, as a rule, have such abundant vitality in them that no resistance can be made successfully against them. They are as invincible with their new liberal policy, in state and church, as was their Harold the Fair-Haired, who fought and slew twenty-two hostile kings of Norway, in the one battle of Stavenger, and made the land first and for the whole future one and strong, and then took for his queen the fair lady who had declared she would never marry him until he became king of United Norway. He laid deep plans, and then both wise and believing, waited ten long years, and so came the Norway of to-day, stretching from North Cape down to Land’s Nose.
Here is an instance of the old and the anticipated never taking place in Norway. When the country separated from Denmark in the year 1814, and became consolidated with Sweden, it produced its own constitution, and has ever since been independent of either Scandinavian country, and produces all the liberal political and ecclesiastical sentiment in northern Europe, so far as the continent is concerned. But Norway has the same king as Sweden, and the two constitute the kingdom of Sweden and Norway. There is, however, nowhere a parallel to their internal arrangements. While the countries are one, there is a broad strip of felled forest, or open land, which marks the boundary line between them. They have two different postal systems, and two classes of postage stamps. The crowning of the king in Stockholm does not make him king of Norway. He must go five hundred and twenty-seven miles northwest, and be crowned in the cathedral of the ancient capital of Norway, Trondhjem, and be blest by Norwegian clerical hands, and benedictions rung out by Norwegian bells, before he is king of Norway. Then, too, he must have not only a Swedish cabinet and court, resident in Stockholm, and his two houses of Parliament as well, but must have the same double headed arrangement in Christiania, the capital of Norway. He must have his palace and court, his upper and lower houses of Parliament, and his Ministry. Sweden can not make a law for Norway, nor the latter for the former. The king has two sets of men for everything, and unlike most kings, has duplicate critics on every question of royal action.
The Norwegian Parliament, or Storthing, has always been a troublesome thing to handle, by both kings and nobility. It is made up of rich and poor alike—all men who prove themselves worthy of the popular confidence. Until 1869 it met only triennially, and as soon as it had fought a few months for the people it could say no more for so long a time that there was ample opportunity for its legislation to be half forgotten, and, where there was a will, to be often evaded. But so rapidly did the liberal sentiment grow throughout the land that a law was at last made requiring the Storthing to meet annually. This was the fatal day for the rule of the aristocratic and bureaucratic spirit in Norway. When, in 1869, for the first time, the parliament of the country found itself compelled to come together every year, to revise the affairs of the country, it began a series of legislative acts which covered all the great and overlooked needs of the people, and, without treading upon the authority of the throne, did pursue such a course as the kings had been accustomed to think belonged only to them. In 1872 the Storthing went so far as to order that the king’s ministers, who hitherto had been shut out from all participation in the proceedings of both houses, might appear, and in case of need must appear, and give all needful information concerning the points at any time under discussion. They must be “interpellated” without let or hindrance, and in this way be held responsible to the popular representations. But the king would not sign this law. His ministers were antideluvian and conservative, and strongly advised him not to do it. The Storthing could do nothing. Here was a violent clash between the people and the throne, and the relation was strained more violently than at any other time in the last thirty years. The fact is, the people had waked up, and were moving on. The Storthing adjourned, and the members went home.
Now began a strong current of liberal sentiment, which overspread the entire country. In five years, or by 1877, there was such a liberal Storthing in session that the law requiring the ministry to appear in person and give account of their discharge of official duty, was again passed, with an overwhelming majority. But the king and his ministry refused again to favor it. The royal signature was withheld, and so the law remained a dead letter. The same thing took place in 1879. The same refusal knocked it to pieces. In 1882 matters began to culminate. The Storthing passed the same law, by a vote of one hundred and five to eight, and determined to see it signed and executed. The king lost all patience. His ministers advised him not only not to sign it, but to veto it. This they supported, as his right, by a false interpretation of an article of the constitution. The Law Faculty of the University of Christiania indorsed the veto as constitutional, and so for the moment things seemed to be settled. Here was a case, however, where the people stepped in, and formed themselves masters of the king and his willing instruments. The next Storthing boldly declared that the new law was valid, with or without the king’s sanction, that he had no right to absolute veto at all, and demanded the government to promulgate the new law without ceremony, as a part of the laws of the land. This the ministers refused to do. This procedure, with several other unconstitutional acts, caused the Odelsthing, or select body of the Storthing, to remove the ministers before the Rigsret, which is the supreme court. From August 1883 until January 1884 the court deliberated on the case, and at last pronounced its verdict. We venture to say that no such excitement has been seen in Norway since it dropped off from Danish rule. By this verdict the entire ministry, including the prime minister, Selmer, were declared to have forfeited their right to be royal advisers, and two of the number were fined eight thousand crowns, as penalty for disobeying the laws.
The king still hesitated. He claimed that he had the right of veto, and was going to exercise it. The old and impeached ministry went out, of course, but the new one was a question. He chose, as his next ministry, the same kind of men he had been having. They were known in the country as enemies of the people’s rights, and the storm of indignation was violent throughout the country. In this chaotic condition, Sweden came in with its advice. The ministers over in Stockholm saw that there was danger of losing Norway entirely, and they plainly told the king that he must make peace there at all hazards. The king now looked at the status of things with great care, and seems to have feared for his crown. He turned suddenly about, and chose a new ministry, with the renowned liberal leader, Johan Sverdrup, as his premier. For thirty-three years this man had been an advocate of the people’s rights, and during all that time had been a member of the Storthing. He was known in every valley and on every mountain in the land of the midnight sun, as the one man who could be trusted to defend the poor and fight for the largest liberty to every one. He had been for at least a quarter of a century the most powerful man of the country. He was feared and hated by every despotic and aristocratic spirit in the land, and not one even dared to attack his patriotism and honor. That King Oscar should choose Sverdrup as his prime minister was infinitely more of a revolution than when Queen Victoria took Gladstone in place of Beaconsfield, to select a new ministry and preside over it.
The changes consequent upon this new and happy resolution of the king to make peace with the liberals, have been complete, and of great numbers. The question of the king’s veto of a law passed by the Storthing is settled forever. He can not do it. The Storthing is king, in fact. No sooner were the new ministry in power than they appeared in Parliament, took part in all debates, answered all questions concerning the policy of the government, and, to cap the climax, enlarged the right of suffrage to such an extent that forty thousand citizens could participate in all the canonical and political elections, for the first time. As to the work done, the Storthing now did more business in one week than had been done in months before.
This change in the political structure of Norway is the most significant event in Scandinavian history since 1814. It not only covers the past, but promises grandly for the future, to see the coming of the people to the front, in the land of our old Norse ancestors. And we may depend upon it that in Norway there will be no going backward. The king has had a hard task, but when the critical hour came, he chose discretion and the interests of the people. This assertion by the people, that they are supreme, means more than merely political liberation. It means that the day is not far distant when the Norwegian state church will be placed away among the rest of the useless antiquities.