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NORWAY 
 
 AND THE UNION 
 
 WITH SWEDEN 
 
NORWAY 
 
 AND THE UNION 
 
 WITH SWEDEN 
 
 FRIDTJOF NANSEN 
 
 iLonHon 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1905 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 3 
 
'D 
 
 %^ 
 
 Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, 
 
 bread street hill, e.c., and 
 
 bungav, suffolk. 
 
 First Edition., June, 1905 
 Reprinted June and July, 1905 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In order to understand the differences, which, 
 especially of late, have reached a critical point in the 
 political relations between Norway and Sweden, it is 
 necessary to know something of the earlier history of 
 the two peoples, and the circumstances under which 
 the Union between them came to be established and 
 under which it has developed. The purpose of this 
 little book is to give readers abroad, who know little 
 about the early history of the Norwegians, a concise 
 and authentic account of the most important circum- 
 stances and events, which, with almost logical con- 
 sistency, have led up to the present crisis. The book 
 does not in any way claim to contain anything new 
 or original. It treats of matters about which a great 
 deal has been and will still be written. 
 
 I have tried, rather, to the best of my ability to 
 state everything on the basis of the most trustworthy 
 and most recognised authorities, and have obtained 
 the counsel and assistance of leading men of the 
 most divergent general political views. 
 
 I think, therefore, I may venture to say that the 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 contents of these pages are a neutral and reliable 
 statement of what has happened, and of what is the 
 opinion of the Norwegian people. My hope is that 
 a foreigner, after having read this little book, will 
 have gained a sufficient knowledge of our history 
 and aspirations to form a somewhat more just esti- 
 mate regarding the difficulties which have arisen in 
 the relations between the two Northern countries. 
 
 FRIDTJOF NANSEN. 
 Lysaker, 
 
 NEAR Christia'nia, 
 
 May, 1905. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I 
 
 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION . . i 
 
 II 
 
 THE TREATY OF KIEL AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF 
 
 THE UNION 14 
 
 III 
 
 THE ACT OF UNION (RIGSAKTEN) 23 
 
 IV 
 EPISODES FROM THE HISTORY OF THE UNION . .28 
 
 V. 
 
 THE CONDUCT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS .... . . 49 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE CONSULAR SERVICE 64 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE POLITICAL SITUATION WITHIN THE UNION AT THE 
 
 MOMENT . 82 
 
NORWAY AND THE UNION 
 WITH SWEDEN 
 
 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 It may often be heard said that the Norwegian 
 nation is young. Flattering as that idea may be to 
 us Norwegians, it is nevertheless erroneous to believe 
 that Norway is young as a sovereign state. 
 
 Norway is one of the oldest kingdoms in Europe, 
 with a history as a sovereign state extending over 
 more than a thousand years. To compare it with the 
 examples nearest at hand, it may be mentioned that 
 Norway became a united kingdom at the end of the 
 ninth century (a.D. 872), and had a well-authenticated 
 history covering the next two or three centuries, while 
 Sweden's history was still obscure, consisting mostly 
 of a series of kings' names. At the time that King 
 Harold Fairhair overcame the last of the lesser kings 
 
 B 
 
2 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 and founded the kingdom of Norway by the sea-fight 
 of Hafrsfjord, Alfred the Great had been king of 
 England for only one year. Of the states at present 
 constituting Europe, only the kingdom of Denmark, 
 the kingdom of England, and a kingdom of France 
 or of the Franks, together with a Russian principality, 
 are to be recognised as existent at that time. At 
 that far-off date Norway manifested a power that is 
 indeed remarkable. The Norwegians played a 
 prominent part in the founding of new states 
 during the Viking period. They founded colonies 
 on Iceland and Greenland and on the Scottish 
 Islands, which were part of the kingdom of 
 Norway ; they settled on the Isle of Man, 
 founded a kingdom in Dublin, and took part in 
 the raid that seized Normandy.^ They played a 
 part also in France's history, and, indirectly, they 
 also supplied fruitful inspiration to British culture. 
 The Norsemen of that day were also the first real 
 ocean travellers in history ; heedless of navigating 
 along the coasts as was until then customary, they 
 fearlessly set their course across the Atlantic, and 
 during these voyages Leiv Eriksson discovered and 
 landed upon the American continent (a.D. iooo) — 
 probably upon Nova Scotia — which he called 
 
 ' Rollo or Rolf the Ganger who conquered Normandy was, 
 according to Norwegian history, the son of Ragnvald Morejarl 
 of Oplandene, in Norway ; he is a direct ancestor of the English 
 kings. 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 Vinland (Vine-land).^ A Norwegian colony was 
 established there for a time, but owing to the 
 incompleteness of the historical record, it is im- 
 possible to say for how long the connection was 
 maintained. 
 
 The Norwegian stock was at an early date spread 
 abroad in this way, among many small kingdoms 
 outside its own territory. And the reason for it is no 
 doubt partly to be found in the fact that the remark- 
 able natural features of Norway's strongly indented 
 coast, had caused its population to develop into the 
 foremost maritime nation of that day ; contributory 
 influences were the strong spirit of independence 
 and the love for adventurous exploits in the people 
 itself. A steady stream of travellers — Vikings, war- 
 riors, and merchants — the Norsemen brought con- 
 tributions home towards a comparatively new and 
 characteristic culture, which belonged to the whole 
 of the Norse people, but whose most admirable 
 flowering in the literature of the middle ages was 
 connected with the Norwegian colony, Iceland. 
 
 The union of numerous small kingships into one 
 Norwegian kingdom, in 872, did not lead to any 
 national concentration ; the kingdom lacked a strong 
 central power. The land had in proportion to its 
 great extension a scanty population which lived 
 
 1 Gustav Storm, Studies on the Vineland Voyages. Extracts 
 of M^moires de la Socidte Royale des Antiquaires du Nord. 
 Copenhagen, 1889. 
 
 B 2 
 
4, NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN. 
 
 comparatively dispersed. With its fortunate geo- 
 graphical position, the mountainous country was 
 little subject to the onset of foes without, whose heavy 
 attacks might have forced the inhabitants into strong 
 concord and unity. The homesteads in the country 
 lay scattered, often at considerable distances apart, 
 they were not gathered into villages as in other coun- 
 tries of Europe ; the different communities were also 
 often widely separated by mountain ridges and 
 woods. In this manner, the yeomen peasants de- 
 veloped a very marked disposition towards inde- 
 pendence and complete local government, which 
 hardly made for the solidarity which the national exi- 
 gencies demanded. In advance of the rest of Europe, 
 Norwaj' was during this period of its earlier history, 
 as it is eve'n now, far too much a collection of individuals 
 and localities with different views, which made it diffi- 
 cult for them to unite in subordinating themselves to 
 a leading will for the furtherance of national objects. 
 And herein is our weakness ; it made possible, for 
 example, a long period of relationship in union with 
 Denmark, under which we were able to enjoy only a 
 very unsatisfactory position. But herein, it may be 
 also, in a way, lies our strength as a people. 
 
 Internal strife over Crown and supremacy con- 
 sumed for centuries the country's strength. The 
 old aristocratic families were comparatively few in 
 number in that democracy of yeomen farmers, and 
 they mutually enfeebled one another in the struggle. 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 the people as a whole being at the same time 
 weakened in the process. In this way the country 
 came to feel the want of leading families, able by the 
 fame of their name to rally the people around them in 
 times of stress and to combat incursion from without. 
 This lack of leading men and families, who in other 
 countries maintained the law and stood between king 
 and people, brought the latter into more direct 
 contact with the government of the state, and made 
 it more law-abiding and loyal to the king. Fidelity 
 to their Royal House has therefore always been 
 particularly characteristic of the Norwegian pea- 
 santry ; it has however sometimes had unfortunate 
 consequences in the history of our people, as will 
 appear later. 
 
 When the Norwegian Royal House died out in the 
 male line in 1387, Norway's crown fell by right of 
 descent to the Danish Royal House,^ and owing to 
 the loyalty of the Norwegian folk and its lack of in- 
 fluential families, the country came to be united, and 
 without opposition, first with Denmark and Sweden 
 (the so-called " Kalmarunion "), and subsequently with 
 Denmark alone. 
 
 Each of the three peoples had by then long before 
 
 1 The union between the two countries originated, however, 
 in the Norwegian heir to the throne of Norway, Olav Haakons- 
 son, being elected king of Denmark in 1376. He became king 
 also of Norway in 1380, but died in 1387, and the succession to 
 the Norwegian throne then passed over to the Danish royal 
 family. 
 
6 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 developed its own linguistic and ethnographic pecu- 
 liarities, which were quite distinct from one another ; 
 history and traditions had gone forward each along 
 their own lines, and the three nations had often had 
 bitter wars with each other. This " Kalmarunion " was 
 therefore from the first unfortunate. Sweden broke 
 out of it on the occasion of an insurrection in 1521, 
 while Denmark and Norway still held together, never- 
 theless, as two separate and independent kingdoms, 
 but with a common dynasty. The Norwegians' 
 loyalty to their king manifested itself again at the 
 time when the Danish king, Christian II., who was 
 first of all driven from Sweden by the rising of 1521, 
 later on also had to leave Denmark, but who finally 
 found a last refuge in Norway with the faithful 
 Norwegian subjects that would not abandon their 
 lawful monarch. Norway always continued during 
 that union to be a hereditary monarchy ; Denmark 
 had, however, an elective king ; and this also ex- 
 plains the fact that the kings very generally came 
 to look upon the democratic Norwegians as their 
 surest support, and not the Danish nobility. The 
 latter to preserve the union with Norway, however, 
 always elected the nearest heir to succeed their king. 
 It was not until 1660 that a resolution was carried, 
 making also the Danish Crown hereditary. Norway 
 continued to be united with Denmark until 18 14!, 
 but, it is worth noticing, as a quite independent 
 kingdom ; it was a hierarchy of a different kind and 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 with its own constitution.^ The king could act in 
 his capacity as Norwegian monarch alone, as he also 
 did under certain circumstances ; for example, on the 
 occasion of the arrangement of a boundary treaty 
 between Norway and Sweden. It is specially worthy 
 of mention, that Norway has always had its own 
 independent and entirely national army, upon whose 
 history we may well look back with satisfaction ; 
 when circumstances at the beginning of the nine- 
 teenth century made it necessary to call upon it for 
 support, it responded well to the call. 
 
 Sweden developed under its own national dynasty, 
 and became a power of the first rank. Under 
 Gustavus Adolphus it played a prominent rdle in 
 Europe's history, and under the warrior Charles XII. 
 
 ' It has been maintained in some quarters that Norway 
 became a province of Denmark, inasmuch as the Danish nobles 
 at an assembly in Copenhagen in 1536 compelled Christian III., 
 in writing, to decree that Norway, if he had to conquer it by 
 arms, should not continue to be a separate kingdom but should 
 become a part of Denmark. But he did not hold to his decree, 
 since Norway was not subjugated ; the agreement could not 
 in any case have been in the least binding upon Norway. 
 That was long ago recognised in the eighteenth century by 
 Danish and Norwegian historians ; it has been demonstrated 
 in detail that every suggestion of Norway ever having been a 
 province is entirely erroneous. Even Christian III., one month 
 after the date of the above document, in a treaty concluded with 
 Sweden, himself recognised Norway's independence. Norway 
 all along continued to preserve its status as a sovereign state, 
 and was therefore, among other things, not itself bound by the 
 Treaty of Kiel. 
 
8 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 it was able to enter the lists with the Great Power 
 that rapidly developed on its eastern borders ; it 
 raised itself to be the mistress of the Baltic. With 
 its dominion over Pomerania and a great part of the 
 Baltic provinces in the south, and over Finland in 
 the east, it was one of the Great Powers — a power 
 that was specially menacing to the other two 
 Northern nations. It was natural that Sweden 
 should come to aim at the complete dominion over 
 the Scandinavian peninsula. A notable Swedish 
 writer ■'■ has recognised " that Norway for centuries 
 constituted the objective of our great kings' policy," 
 that this idea excited the aspirations of the Swedish 
 people, and that the possession of Norway after 
 the loss of Finland in 1809 was looked upon as 
 essential for Sweden's security and independence in 
 the future. Time after time Sweden made attempts 
 upon Norway, but, curiously enough, fortune always 
 left the Swedish arms as soon as ever they got over 
 the Norwegian border. As, however, our Danish 
 brothers-in-arms, as a rule, were even less fortunate, 
 it nevertheless came about that at the termination 
 of these wars Denmark's and Norway's king had to 
 cede Norway's southern and eastern provinces, 
 Bohuslan, Jemteland, and Herjedalen, which are 
 now a part of Sweden. The Swedes' last serious 
 attempt to subjugate Norway by force terminated 
 with the death of Charles XII. under the walls of 
 ' Schinkel-Bergmann, Minnen, vol. ii, pp. 31 — 32. 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 the Norwegian fortress of Fredriksten in 1718. 
 During the succeeding ninety years Sweden was fully 
 occupied at home, partly in healing the wounds it 
 got in times of war and conquest, and partly in 
 defending itself against Russia ; but the compulsory 
 cession of Finland to that Power in 1 809 only served 
 to revive more intensely than ever the old dream of 
 subjugating Norway. 
 
 In Norway there arose at that time a demand for 
 a more independent form of existence than the one 
 which the union with Denmark had little by little 
 developed. The loss of the Danish-Norwegian fleet 
 by the English attack on Copenhagen, in 1807, was 
 the finishing touch. Denmark thus lost the means 
 of coming to Norway's support, and negotiations 
 now took place between influential Norwegians and 
 Swedes for a form of union, in part between the three 
 Scandinavian nations, in part between Norway and 
 Sweden alone. These negotiations between private 
 individuals led to a result quite unique in history. 
 Sweden in March, 1 809, stood on the verge of ruin : 
 it was involved in war with Russia, as well as with 
 Denmark-Norway. The Russians had occupied Fin- 
 land and had advanced against Sweden itself; they 
 were making ready to cross the Baltic, which resolve 
 they also actually put into execution. A Norwegian 
 army of 28,000 men stood on the Swedish border under 
 Prince Christian Augustus ; this force was superior 
 to Swedish resistance, and would most certainly 
 
10 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 have been capable, had advantage been taken of the 
 opportunity, of having acquired a portion of Sweden, or 
 at any rate of having got back the provinces formerly 
 lost. But even at that time we looked farther ahead 
 than the mere advantages of the moment ; a weaken- 
 ing of Sweden's powers of resistance to the foe 
 pressing upon it from the east would have threatened 
 great danger to the future of the Scandinavian coun- 
 tries ; 1 and in spite of the fact that our Commander- 
 in-Chief, Prince Christian Augustus, had his King's 
 explicit instructions to push into Sweden and 
 pursue the war as vigorously as possible, he agreed 
 to a truce with the Swedish army, which was there- 
 upon able by forced marches to make for Stockholm 
 to depose the imbecile Gustavus Adolphus IV., and 
 to make peace with Russia and Denmark-Norway. 
 We Norwegians are even now glad and proud of the 
 magnanimous attitude adopted by Norway towards 
 the hapless Sweden of 1809 ; it forms, however, a 
 remarkable contrast to the Swedish views finding 
 expression through the Swedish writers of the present 
 day ; e.g., Dr. Sven Hedin, who informs us that if 
 Norway's union with Sweden be abandoned it would 
 cease to be a matter of interest to the Swedes 
 
 1 We have a definite expression contained in a subsequently 
 published letter written by one of the leading Norwegians of 
 that time, Count Wedel, actually to the effect that we must not 
 help barbarians in crippling the Scandinavian countries. 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 whether or not Norway were to be overthrown and 
 partitioned among other European Powers. That 
 the Swedes at any rate at that time (1809) felt some 
 gratitude for the Norwegian course of action, may 
 be gathered from the fact, among others, that the 
 Swedish Parliament, which the same year had to 
 elect an heir to its new and childless king, 
 Charles XIII., selected the leader of the Norwegian 
 army, with the explicit declaration that Christian 
 Augustus "had done Sweden the greatest service 
 that it had hitherto ever had done to it by a 
 foreigner." Unfortunately Christian Augustus died 
 during the following year, and the Swedes again had 
 to elect an heir. Their choice fell upon the French 
 soldier. Marshal Bernadotte, who took the name of 
 Carl Johan. The Swedes seem to have pretty quickly 
 forgotten their feelings of gratitude towards Norway. 
 It soon became apparent to Carl Johan, that all hope 
 of reconquering Finland must be abandoned, if 
 Sweden, with its two and a half million inhabitants 
 and its ruined finances, were to maintain its position 
 as an independent State, and that Sweden had better 
 seek compensation in the acquisition of Norway. 
 Certainly Carl Johan had at first no idea other than 
 of an incorporation of Sweden and Norway on 
 the friendliest possible basis. It was not until the 
 difficulties had shown themselves greater than were 
 at first expected that he, without reflection and 
 
12 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 only three years after his predecessor with the 
 assistance of the Norwegians had rescued Sweden 
 from ruin, cast every nobler thought aside, and sold 
 his military genius by agreeing to fight against 
 Napoleon and France, the price being that the Czar 
 Alexander I. undertook to abandon his hitherto 
 allies, Denmark-Norway, and to acquire Norway for 
 Sweden {^procurer la Norvege d la Suede)} 
 
 After having in this way made sure of Russia's 
 agreement to his plans against Norway, the Swedish 
 Crown Prince concluded alliances,^ first with England 
 (March, 1813) and shortly afterwards with Prussia, 
 giving him a free hand against Denmark-Norway, 
 which had been forced into an unfortunate alliance 
 with Napoleon. His goal was the conquest of 
 Norway. Immediately after the battle of Leipzig, 
 Carl Johan turned with the allied Swedish, Russian, 
 and Prussian forces against Denmark, and won an easy 
 victory over a small part of Frederick VI. 's Danish 
 (not Norwegian) troops at Holstein. Upon that, the 
 -Treaty of Kiel, of January 14, 18 14, was forced upon 
 Frederick, according to which he relinquished Nor- 
 way's throne to the Swedish king. That fact would 
 make it appear as though Norway's future fate was 
 decided, threatened as it was by Sweden as well ^s 
 
 ' Traits de S. P^tersbourg, date du 5 Avril, 1812. 
 2 See Aubert, La Norvige devant le droit international, 
 p. 9. 
 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 by the Great Powers ; but in thus reckoning, Norway 
 itself had been left out of account. Without being 
 asked Norway had been treated altogether as a 
 quantity n^gligeable. And that being the case, it soon 
 became apparent that it was a very bad piece of 
 reckoning indeed. 
 
II 
 
 THE TREATY OF KIEL AND THE 
 ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UNION 
 
 • By the Treaty of Kiel Norway was ceded to the 
 Swedish king — not to the kingdom of Sweden. 
 There is no definite expression in that treaty which 
 might propose to make Norway an integral part of 
 Sweden, or which should make it dependent to that 
 kingdom. The Norwegian people were to continue 
 in the enjoyment of their own laws, rights, privileges, 
 and liberty. The treaty dissolved the Union 
 existent at that time between the kingdoms of 
 Denmark and Norway, but that really did not 
 involve Norway in any obligation to enter into 
 any combination with Sweden. When Norway's king 
 abdicated and abandoned all claims to the crown of 
 that country, Norway itself, of course, inherited ipso 
 facto the sovereign state's prerogative of itself settling 
 the question of its own constitution and the occupa- 
 tion of its throne. The transference to an outsider of 
 the authority Norway's constitution had given him. 
 
THE TREATY OF KIEL 15 
 
 was an action on the part of the king that was quite 
 illegal and could not be in any way binding upon the 
 Norwegian people itself. And the recognition of 
 that fact very soon and spontaneously led to action 
 in Norway. Immediately news of the new treaty of 
 Kiel arrived, opposition to it was aroused all over 
 the country. The Norwegian viceroy of that time 
 — the Danish and Norwegian Prince Christian 
 Frederick — called an assembly of representatives from 
 the different parts of the country at Eidsvold, near 
 Christiania ; they were entrusted with the task of 
 preparing the constitution and government of the 
 country for the future. That assembly on May 17, 
 1 8 14, adopted a new constitution (Grundlov) for 
 the kingdom of Norway, and on the same day it 
 elected Christian Frederick to be king. At the 
 same time the army, which, as a matter of fact, was 
 already on the Swedish border, was put on a proper 
 war-footing. The Norwegians knew very well from 
 former experiences that they were quite able to 
 protect their almost inaccessible country against 
 attack from Sweden. 
 
 The Swedish king was, however, not disposed to 
 give up his idea of usurping Norway's crown, and 
 Swedish troops were therefore sent into the country 
 under Carl Johan, on July 28th, 18 14. This cam- 
 paign, mainly of a demonstrative character, lasted 
 only fourteen days ; the only general action resulted 
 in victory for the Norwegians, who drove the northern 
 
16 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 wing of the Swedish army back over the border ; the 
 strongly fortified rocky fortress of Fredriksten (where 
 Charles XII. fell in 1718) the Swedes could not take ; 
 on the other hand, they occupied the fortress of 
 Fredrikstad, which Christian Frederick had already 
 decided to abandon, and from which the heavy guns 
 had been removed. And then, before any decisive 
 action had been fought, and before Carl Johan had 
 got as far as the Norwegian army's first line of 
 defence, where the difficulties of his campaign would 
 have really commenced, he opened negotiations with 
 the Norwegians. Among historians different views 
 have been put forward in explanation of Carl Johan's 
 action ; his eager admirers and defenders, seeing in 
 him a great statesman, hold that with a statesman's 
 intuition he soon saw that as the regent of Norway 
 he would in the future attain a more felicitous posi- 
 tion if he could succeed in enticing that country into 
 a voluntary union with Sweden, than he would by 
 forcing it upon them by right of conquest. Other 
 authorities and especially military historians, as e.g. 
 the Danish writer Sorensen ^ and the Swedish writer 
 Mankell,^ hold strongly that the prospects of con- 
 tinuing the campaign appeared very imfavourable to 
 the French soldier Bernadotte, who was not ac- 
 quainted with our country nor with our style of 
 campaign. They maintain that with the eye of the 
 
 ' Siirensen, Kampefi om JVor^e. Copenhagen, 1 871. 
 '•* y[.2ix^&% Felttoget i Norge. 1814. 
 
THE TREATY OF KIEL 17 
 
 soldier he saw that the difficulties he would encounter 
 before he could break the Norwegian line of defence, 
 would be too great, and that with the army and re- 
 sources at his disposal he would never be able to con- 
 quer the mountainous and thickly wooded country. 
 It might therefore seem that it was not the statesman, 
 Carl Johan, but the soldier, Bernadotte, who entered 
 into negotiations after only fourteen days' campaign. 
 Whatever the real reason, it would be quite imma- 
 terial now, except that it has often been maintained 
 on the side of Sweden, in extenuation of her subse- 
 quent offensive attitude towards Norway, that it was 
 really owing to the magnanimity of the Swedes and 
 Carl Johan that they desisted from subjugating ■ 
 Norway in 1814.^ But certain it is that, at the time, 
 
 ^ Of great interest in connection with the solution of this ' 
 question is the correspondence recently published of the then 
 Swedish queen, Hedvig Elizabeth Charlotte, Charles XIII.'s 
 Consort (see Baron Carl Carlson Bonde, Sverige og Norge, 
 1 8 14, Stockholm, 1896). On August 28, 18 14, two weeks after 
 the Convention of Moss, she wrote (Bonde, p. 128, note i) to her 
 sister-in-law, Sofia Albertine, among other things, that it was 
 fortunate for Sweden that the Norwegian king. Christian 
 Frederick, desisted when he might have otherwise done the 
 Swedes great damage, and she continues, " One must not delude 
 oneself, and! even the Crown Prince (Carl Johan) himself does 
 not try to hide the fact that it would have been really quite 
 impossible to have succeeded in winning anything out of the 
 Norwegians if they had not been amenable, as it would be quite 
 impossible to get at them among their high mountains and 
 inaccessible passes if only well led and determined to defend 
 themselves. It would be possible enough to drive them back 
 upon Christiania, but it would not be within the power of any 
 
 C 
 
18 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 representations were made to Carl Johan by the 
 Swedes to continue the campaign and to carry into 
 effect his vow to conquer Norway for Sweden ; he 
 replied that if he had 40,000 men and six millions 
 in his war-chest he could in six months force upon 
 Norway the terms of a conquered people. But he 
 had not got such resources.^ 
 
 On every occasion Carl Johan always acted with 
 remarkable agility in the difficult position he 
 occupied. The Swedish army was undoubtedly 
 in some respects superior to the Norwegian ; the 
 
 army to follow them up further." These words were not penned 
 out of sympathy for the Norwegians, whom the Swedish queen 
 described as " rioters and law-breakers," but they are certainly 
 based on communications from Carl Johan himself, which also 
 follows directly from the wording given above. 
 
 In her diary covering the same period, the Swedish queen 
 speaks with even more candour. As she was anxious " to leave 
 behind her some secret details," she writes further (Bonde, 
 p. igo, note i), "The districts of Bergen and Trondhjem would 
 have been capable of resistance for a long time, and if the Nor- 
 wegians had only withdrawn to the hills they would have been 
 able to have protected themselves easily. . . . Sweden in the 
 course of time would have little by little lost its whole army, 
 and would furthermore have had to provide much money to 
 pay for everything without external assistance.'' In addition, 
 Carl Johan did not wish for any interference or assistance from 
 outside, " he preferred to try for himself to overawe his future 
 subjects." The Swedish talk of magnanimity and the possibility 
 of conquest in face of these confidential and unmistakable 
 statements of the Swedish queen, which themselves refer to the 
 utterances and opinions of Carl Johan, undoubtedly sounds a 
 little ridiculous. 
 
 ' Schinkel-Bergman, Minnen, vol. viii. 
 
THE TREATY OF KIEL 19 
 
 country itself, however, offered many natural lines of 
 defence, and the history of Spain had taught him 
 well enough the kind of resistance a desperate 
 mountain folk can offer. The Swedish finances were 
 furthermore so parlous that with a few months' 
 campaign "all resources would have been exhausted."^ 
 In addition, the attitude of the Great Powers was 
 by no means so favourable to Sweden and so un- 
 favourable to Norway as might have been wished 
 from Sweden's point of view. The Norwegians 
 themselves thought the state of affairs in this 
 respect worse than it, as a matter of fact, really was. 
 What they had to fear most was a blockade of their 
 coasts by the English fleet, by which the country 
 would have been cut off from all sources of supply ; 
 but Lord Castlereagh had before the opening of the 
 campaign decided that there could be no question of 
 offering Prince Bernadotte any additional assistance. 
 If the Norwegians had been aware of that decision 
 and had in that way felt secure against blockade, it 
 is certain that they would not have consented to a 
 peace. In view of the attitude of the Powers, 
 and with an eye on the Congress of Vienna, 
 then just about to meet, it was therefore no wonder 
 that Carl Johan himself wrote that "it is of the 
 utmost importance that the Norwegian affair should 
 be settled as soon as possible, and that a Union 
 
 1 Trolle-Wachtmeister, Anteckninger och minnen, vol. ii, 
 p. 9. 
 
 C 2 
 
20 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 between Norway and Sweden, free and with complete 
 agreement, should be established " {librement et avec 
 une parfaite unanimity) ; but in view of Swedish 
 opinion it was desirable, if possible, to give the Union 
 quite a different aspect, and we consequently find in 
 the same letter, that if it should be necessary, in view 
 of the Congress of Vienna, to make certain con- 
 cessions to the Norwegians {faire des sacrifices), it 
 should always be possible to revoke them subsequently 
 {gue I'on pourra refaire a une autre diete)} In the 
 light of this double dealing it must also be borne in 
 mind that Carl Johan rejected the intermediation 
 offered by the Commissioners of the Powers (England, 
 Russia, Austria, and Prussia), whose assistance he 
 had himself invoked. There can be no doubt that, 
 in addition to the mere difficulties of pursuing the 
 campaign, the attitude of the Great Powers was a con- 
 tributory factor in calling forth the offer of a Union, 
 and which gave this offer the stamp of an association 
 between two free and equal peoples — the only possible 
 form that could have been acceptable to the Nor- 
 wegians. The opening of negotiations led to a truce 
 and to the Convention of Moss, on August 14, 18 14, 
 between the Crown Prince, Carl Johan, in the name of 
 the Swedish king, and the Norwegian Government, 
 with the object of considering the establishment of a 
 Union between Norway and Sweden. The King of 
 Norway, Christian Frederick, pledged himself, in the 
 ' TroUe-Wachtmeister, loc. cit., p. 12. 
 
THE TREATY OF KIEL 21 
 
 words of the Convention, immediately to call together 
 " the Kingdom of Norway's Parliament in the manner 
 directed by the terms of the existing constitution," 
 with whom the Swedish king's representatives were 
 to treat directly. Christian Frederick declared him- 
 self willing to lay the exercise of his prerogative at 
 the disposal of the nation, after Parliament had been 
 called, and then to leave the country. On the other 
 hand, the Swedish king pledged himself to accept the 
 constitution agreed upon by the representatives of 
 the nation at Eidsvold, and not to propose any modi- 
 fications other than those that might be necessary to 
 render a Union between the two kingdoms possible. 
 
 This Convention of Moss is an agreement between 
 the two nations. It implies, according to inter- 
 national law, a recognition by Sweden of Norway's 
 status as an independent state. The Treaty of Kiel 
 was ipso facto abandoned on the part of Sweden ; ■ 
 Norway's agreement to the establishment of a Union 
 was recognised as necessary. None the less, some 
 Swedish political historians have subsequently endea- 
 voured to maintain that the Treaty of Kiel is still in 
 force. 
 
 The greater part of the Norwegian army remained 
 under arms during the truce, and the extraordinary 
 Parliament, which met in October, 1814, was there- 
 fore able to treat the question of a Union on fully 
 equal terms with the Swedish king ; and it stood 
 agreed that the Norwegian state remained legally 
 
22 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 unfettered in the matter of Norway's future relation- 
 ship to Sweden, as also on the question of the 
 election of a new king. 
 
 On October 20, Parliament made a preliminary 
 announcement to the effect that Norway shall, as an 
 independent kingdom, be "united to Sweden under 
 one king, with the maintenance of its constitution, 
 but with such alterations as should be to the 
 advantage of the kingdom and necessary by reason 
 of the Union with Sweden." The changes in the 
 constitution of May 17, which were adopted for 
 these reasons, were made with the object of bringing 
 about legally a Union on terms of complete equality 
 with Sweden. The constitution, revised in only a 
 few particulars in this way, was accepted by Parlia- 
 ment on November 4, 18 14, and on the same day 
 Charles XIII. of Sweden was elected also King of 
 Norway, Carl Johan becoming therefore Crown Prince 
 of Norway. 
 
 . By the election of the king and the acceptance of 
 the revised constitution, merely a joint Crown was 
 established. A" union between the two states was 
 first consummated by the so-called Rigsakt (or 
 Act of Union), of August 6, 1815, which, after 
 having been agreed to by each kingdom's national 
 assembly, was then accepted by the king. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE ACT OF UNION (RIGSAKTEN) 
 
 The "Rigsakt" is the only legal instrument of the 
 constitutional Union between the two kingdoms/ and 
 in its own terms it embodies " the conditions of the 
 Union under one king, but with separate laws of 
 government, which has been entered into between 
 Norway and Sweden." 
 
 Sweden cannot claim any more stringent com- 
 bination, nor does Norway assert that the Union is 
 limited to something less than that defined by this 
 agreement. The basis of the Rigsakt is complete 
 equality between the two states, or, in the words of 
 the unanimous petition of the Norwegian Parliament 
 to the Crown in i860, the basis of the Act of 
 Union is "the equality of the kingdoms, and each 
 kingdom's independence in all matters that are not 
 described as being of a unionistic character." In the 
 note which Carl Johan, on April 12, 1815, appended to 
 
 ' The Swedish Order of Succession of 1810 is also in force in 
 both countries, but that is of minor importance. 
 
24 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 the Swedish king's address to the Swedish Parlia- 
 ment covering the draft Act of Union, is to be 
 found the following extract : " When two peoples 
 voluntarily put themselves under the same rule, every 
 possible occasion of difference in respect of their 
 relationship to their joint regent ought to be elimin- 
 ated as carefully as possible. The association will 
 otherwise sooner or later be broken, and either the 
 one people will subjugate the other, or the fresh seed 
 of a disposition to a bitter century-long policy of 
 disunion, tending to separation, is sown in the de- 
 plorable schism." ..." For the attainment of that 
 object (the establishment of a Scandinavian Power of 
 two free peoples) there must be complete equality 
 established, with the definition of the two peoples' 
 joint rights, and without reference to the population or 
 productiveness of the two lands." ..." The Crown 
 recognises the principle of complete equality between 
 the two kingdoms in all those questions concerning 
 their joint government." 
 
 Thus ran the words of the Swedish sovereign's 
 ideas for the Union, and the Swedish Parliament 
 itself not only agreed to the draft of the Act of 
 Union communicated to it, just as it was adopted 
 by the Norwegian Parliament, but it also expressly 
 recognised " the principle of equality," and declared 
 that " the National Assembly has recognised com- 
 plete equality between the two kingdoms." 
 
THE ACT OF UNION 25 
 
 The introduction to the " Rigsakt " itself declares 
 the object of the Union to be " the defence of their 
 {i.e. the peoples') joint thrones," and § i of the Nor- 
 wegian edition of it runs as follows : — " The kingdom 
 of Norway shall be a free, independent, indivisible, and 
 inalienable kingdom, united with Sweden under one 
 king!' The Union is a combination between two 
 equal sovereign states, for association in War and 
 Peace and union in the Crown's person ; it is merely 
 a personal union for offensive and defensive pur- 
 poses. The " Rigsakt " goes on to specify in detail 
 the several provisions of that union ; it concerns 
 itself partly with the separate regulations for the 
 preservation of the union in the matter of the 
 Crown's person, and further with regulations cover- 
 ing the possibility of there happening to be no king 
 personally able to watch the affairs of the two nations. 
 In § 4 it is provided that the Crown hold in its 
 person certain important executive functions, as, for 
 example, the right of mobilising troops, of beginning 
 war and of making peace, the making and abrogation 
 of treaties, of appointing and receiving ambassadors. 
 That is to say, each of the kingdoms has bound 
 itself by treaty to vest the exercise of these func- 
 tions, so far as it is itself concerned, in the hands 
 of the Crown. In the same paragraph special forms 
 are prescribed for declarations of war. In § 5 
 provision is made for the Crown's treatment of 
 
26 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 matters concerning the two kingdoms jointly, in 
 the simultaneous presence of members of the two 
 governments. 
 
 • The real bond of union, serving to guarantee the 
 attainment of its object, namely, association in War 
 and Peace, is the union in the Crown's person. 
 Apart from this union, embracing the question of 
 War and Peace and the body authorised in certain 
 eventualities to exercise temporarily the functions of 
 the Crown, the " Rigsakt " does not establish any other 
 bond of union between the two kingdoms. Each 
 kingdom has therefore preserved in entirety its own 
 right of action as a sovereign state, in all other 
 affairs not clashing with the above clearly delimited 
 union. 
 
 To be quite clear as to how little the association 
 itself and the Treaty of Union really affect the 
 separate sovereignty of the two kingdoms, it is 
 necessary always to bear in mind that it was two 
 absolutely foreign Powers that were united in 1814; 
 to talk of " Home Rule " in Norway is therefore 
 beside the point. 
 
 There is in reality the same state of affairs and the 
 same degree of union as would be obtained by con- 
 ceiving of the state of, eg., England and France after 
 agreeing upon and concluding a permanent offensive 
 and defensive aUiance under one and the same king ; 
 but with the preservation of all other institutions by 
 each for itself, and with no other grounds of unity 
 
THE ACT OF UNION 27 
 
 whatever ; ^ in such circumstances, to speak of 
 " Home Rule " in England when it still held for itself 
 its own right of action in its own affairs, would hardly 
 meet the case. 
 
 Norway's and Sweden's constitutions are quite 
 different and hold good only for each land separately. 
 Not a section of them is of the nature of a Treaty or a 
 Union. The opposite has, however, on certain occa- 
 sions, as will be seen later, been maintained from the 
 Swedish side. But the non-unionistic nature of the con- 
 stitutions has now been explicitly recognised by the 
 Swedes themselves, inasmuch as at a joint Council of 
 State (of Swedish and Norwegian ministers) on April 
 17, 1885, the Swedish ministers present unanimously 
 declared among other things that "the reciprocity 
 which Norway has the right to demand in return for 
 Sweden of itself determining to alter its constitution, 
 in this as in other parts of it, lies therein that Norway 
 also can of itself dispose of its constitution in all its 
 concerns." The " Rigsakt " has therefore nothing to 
 do with the actual constitutions of the two kingdoms ; 
 it is to be regarded as an international treaty between 
 two sovereign states. 
 
 1 The two kingdoms Norway and Sweden have therefore 
 separate governments and national assemblies, partly modelled 
 on different lines, separate military and marine forces, finances 
 and tariffs, different judicial, military, and ecclesiastical systems; 
 there is a tariff-boundary between the two, their money and 
 coinage systems are different, as well as their codes of law, 
 &c., &c. 
 
IV 
 
 EPISODES FROM THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 UNION 
 
 After a century's strife a Union between" the two 
 kingdoms was brought into being ; not of the kind, 
 however, that the influential men and aristocracy of 
 Sweden had hoped for and desired, namely, the 
 acquisition of Norway as a compensation for Finland. 
 And this did not bode very well for the projected 
 union ; it soon led to a policy of opposition from the 
 Swedish side, often of quite a petty character, against 
 everything symbolical of the existence of Norway as 
 a kingdom. We had to wrestle over the king's 
 Norwegian title (he was King of Norway and 
 Sweden, in Norway, and not of Sweden and Norway, 
 as the Swedes would have it), over the inscription of 
 our coinage, over our flag and the arms of the 
 kingdom.^ 
 
 Furthermore, the two peoples were and still are 
 
 ' In illustration of the Swedish conception of Norway and the 
 Union, it may be mentioned that a short time after its establish- 
 ment in 1815, a, Swedish officer was nominated to the command 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE UNION 29 
 
 very different from one another, and not least in their 
 form of government. 
 
 Just as their former history has always pursued a 
 quite different course, and can show few points of 
 direct contact with Norway, except on the occasions 
 of conflict in war, their future national development 
 was also inevitably destined to be different. While 
 the Norwegians have developed along the paths of 
 democracy, and under rapid adoption of all modern 
 trains of thought, have created an extremely thorough 
 form of responsible government similar to the English 
 form, the Swedes, bound to the traditions of their 
 days as a Great Power, and to their strongly marked 
 aristocratic proclivities, have developed very little 
 indeed politically. The Norwegians consume pos- 
 sibly too much time in, and give too great a pro- 
 minence to, political questions ; every peasant and 
 artisan follows with his newspaper, and is on the 
 whole well informed and self-opinionated on every- 
 
 of the strong Norwegian fortress of Fredriksten on the borders. 
 That the man was originally of Norwegian birth, did not make the 
 selection any the better, because he had become a Swedish 
 citizen and had taken part in the war against Norway ; it was 
 an obvious attempt to treat the Norwegians as though they had 
 been subjugated. It was, of course, not tolerated, and the man 
 had to be instantly removed. At the beginning of the Union, 
 Sweden also allowed itself to emblazon the Norwegian arms 
 together with the Swedish on the Swedish coinage, and even on 
 the Great Seal of the kingdom, just as though Norway were 
 actually a province of Sweden. It was only after considerable 
 opposition from Norway that this was given up. 
 
30 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 thing that happens. Among the Swedes, on the 
 other hand, such matters are able to arouse only 
 little interest. 
 
 The upper and aristocratic classes, which play a 
 conspicuously prominent rdle in the Swedish com- 
 munity, have also always had a tendency to look 
 with a certain amount of contempt on the Norwegian 
 people, consisting mainly of " Bonder " (peasants). As 
 the result of a deficient knowledge of the former 
 history of the Norwegians and of the real origin of 
 the Union, the aristocratic Swedes have been ex- 
 tremely prone to look upon the claims of these 
 ■'peasant folks" for equality as an unwarrantable 
 piece of insolence ; even as base ingratitude, for 
 they have got the idea that Sweden nobly helped 
 to "free" Norway from Denmark in 1814, and 
 in that way helped " to raise it to the rank of a 
 sovereign state.'' Even to-day we occasionally get 
 examples of Swedish ignorance of this kind. When, 
 for example, a man like Dr. Sven Hedin, in a foreign 
 organ,^ tells the world that the Norwegian go-ahead 
 politicians " forget Sweden's ancient connections with 
 mid-Europe, and do not remember that at the time 
 the victors of Lutzen and Narva were arousing the 
 admiration of the whole world, Norway was a Danish 
 province, and continued to be one until the year 18 14, 
 when it was elevated to be a sovereign state united 
 with Sweden under one king." 
 
 It is difficult to believe that an assertion like this, 
 ' K'dlnische Zeitung, April 22, 1905. 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE UNION 31 
 
 to the effect that Norway was a Danish province, &c., 
 is intentional misrepresentation ; it must be ascribed to 
 a cheerful ignorance of the subject. It must also be 
 believed that Dr. Sven Hedin is ignorant of the fact 
 that Norway was a kingdom and had a well authen- 
 ticated and often remarkable history several centuries 
 before Sweden had. When a man who ought to 
 have been trained in scientific method can write in 
 this strain, what is to be expected of others ? 
 
 In the same way it was formerly to be found in the 
 history books used in the Swedish schools that 
 Norway was a land that had been conquered. It is 
 perhaps easy enough to understand why Swedish 
 policy towards Norway has been unfortunate and 
 even highly offensive to Norwegian susceptibilities, 
 when such perverse representations are inculcated in 
 the minds of the Swedes from childhood upwards. 
 And the upper classes in Sweden have always looked 
 with misgivings at Norwegian democratic and liberal 
 politics lest the other classes in Sweden should also 
 become inoculated with similar propensities, with 
 eventual effects on Swedish internal politics disastrous 
 to the upper classes themselves. That has, as a matter 
 of fact, to an extent actuallj' been the case. It has 
 consequently always been the policy of the Swedish 
 aristocracy — the so-called " Storsvensker " — to resist 
 every Norwegian effort at all costs, and, if possible, to 
 suppress the Norwegians continually more and more 
 until the two kingdoms should become moulded 
 together into one. In other words, while Norwegians 
 
32 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 held by the Union as it, according to the " Rigsakt " 
 and its provisions, should be and partly tvas, it was 
 at the best regarded by Sweden's leading men as an 
 intolerable and merely temporary compromise ; it was, 
 as they expressed it, a Union " to be deplored," which 
 shed only one ray of light, and that was that by per- 
 sistent effort ii might become something else and some- 
 thing more. 
 
 This fact must be continually borne in mind in 
 trying to arrive at a correct verdict on the strife in 
 the union of the two peoples ; a verdict equitable not 
 only to the Norwegians, who as the weaker of the two 
 parties to the Union have, it may be, often showed a 
 sensitiveness that is generally apparent in cases where 
 the weaker of two intimately connected individuals 
 fears encroachments by the stronger ; but equitable 
 also to the Swedish, who in their attempts at 
 encroachment have proceeded at any rate in 
 part from false conceptions and incomplete know- 
 ledge of the past, and have regarded , Norway in the 
 light of a compensation for Finland. Whatever 
 Carl Johan's original opinion on Norway's position 
 of equality in the Union may have been, certain it is 
 that he soon had to yield to the Swedish aristocracy's 
 dissatisfaction with that Union, and within seven 
 years he made an attempt to carry into effect the 
 prcmnise of his letter cited above, in which he said 
 th'^t the concessions Sweden had made to bring the 
 Union into being might indeed always be revoked. 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE UNION 33 
 
 In 1 82 1 the true Swedish idea of a Union manifested 
 itself; the moment, in view of the state of Europe at 
 that time, was propitious ; the Holy Alliance had 
 reached its height, and the Norwegian Parliament, by 
 its actions, had put itself on rather bad terms with 
 the king. According to the Norwegian Constitution 
 (Grundlov, § 79), the Crown has the right of sus- 
 pensive veto only ; a withholding of the Crown's 
 sanction may throw out a law on two occasions (in two 
 separately and successively elected Parliaments), but if 
 the same law be passed by a third Parliament after an- 
 other new election, the law comes into force in spite of 
 the veto of the Crown. The Parliament in this year 
 availed itself for the first time of its right, and, 
 against the wishes of the king, it passed a resolution 
 repulsive and anarchistic in Swedish eyes, namely, for 
 the abolition of nobility in Norway. Parliament also 
 rather unfortunately made difficulties about the voting 
 of three million specie dollars (twelve million kroner), 
 which it had been agreed by convention between the 
 Danish and Norwegian Governments, should be paid 
 by Norway as a reasonable proportion of the Danish- 
 Norwegian state debts still remaining from the time 
 Denmark and Norway were united. It was unwise 
 of Parliament to make difficulties over the matter ; 
 the money was, however, voted. 
 
 Carl Johan, now king, in the summer of 1821 de- 
 cided to hold a review of troops near Christiania, 
 in spite of the protests of the Norwegian Govern- 
 
 D 
 
34 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 ment.^ Three thousand men is the greatest num- 
 ber of troops which, according to the Norwegian 
 Constitution, § 25, may be introduced for military 
 exercise, from the one kingdom to the other. 
 The camp was made up of 3,000 men from each 
 kingdom ; the Norwegian troops had only blank 
 ammunition served out to them, while as the result of 
 an indiscretion it leaked out that the Swedish troops 
 had got ball cartridges. At the same time a Swedish 
 fleet of 300 guns and 2,000 men put into Christiania 
 harbour, and finally Carl Johan himself came to 
 Christiania accompanied by generals, admirals, and 
 the foreign diplomats. He laid a number of pro- 
 posals before Parliament for a recast of the Nor- 
 wegian Constitution, and when his whole attitude on 
 the occasion is viewed in the light of the Swedish 
 Foreign Minister's notorious circular note of June i, 
 1 82 1, by which, through an improper attack on the 
 Norwegian people, an attempt was made to prepare 
 the Powers for a coup d'etat, there can be no manner 
 of doubt that a coup was meditated but abandoned 
 at the last minute, though it is not necessary here to 
 go further into the probable causes that led to the 
 abandonment of the idea.^ The circular note men- 
 
 ' As the economic state of the country was at that time quite 
 the reverse of satisfactory, and as such a review cost an amount 
 of money rather great in view of the country's resources, the 
 Norwegian Government thought the moment rather badly 
 chosen for this quite unnecessary display. 
 
 ^ J. E. Sars, Norges politiske Historie fra, 1815-1885. 
 Christianict, 1904. Pp. 61 — 74. 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE UNION 35 
 
 tioned serves as an illustration of the way in which the 
 Swedish Foreign Minister and the Swedish Embas- 
 sies, which have up to the present also represented 
 Norway, and have been paid for it by Norway, may 
 also be used to Norway's detriment ; it was and still 
 remains monstrous that it should be possible for 
 money paid out by us to representatives not respon- 
 sible to Norwegian authority, to be employed against 
 the interests of the country. In that note Norway's 
 King let his Swedish Foreign Minister — who was 
 also " ours " — inform the Great Powers that he would 
 not recoil from using force if the Parliament did not 
 undertake a part of the Danish State debt mentioned 
 above. That had, however, already been done by 
 Parliament when the mendacious indictment of 
 Norway was sent to the Great Powers through " our " 
 embassies. 
 
 The note begins by lauding in lofty tones the 
 magnanimity of Carl Johan in " presenting " Norway 
 with a free constitution in spite of the fact that he 
 had by his " victory " brought the Norwegians back 
 to their " duty and reason." The magnanimous king 
 had not been blind to the " defects " of the Norwegian 
 Constitution, but he hoped that time would rectify 
 all that. Sweden and the king had also submitted to 
 excesses on the part of the Norwegian Parliament 
 and Press, and in them would not see " anything else 
 than follies to be rectified, not insults to be punished." 
 Further on, it runs : " A spirit of intoxication which has 
 begun to increase and which may become contagious if 
 
 D 2 
 
36 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 it be allowed to disseminate itself unhindered, has 
 strengthe7ied itself by an accession of intriguers and with 
 that help has been imparted to a very little enlightened 
 majority .... If the principles generally recognised 
 and accepted throughout Europe concerning the 
 importance attached to solemnly enacted treaties 
 being demolished, and concerning the equilibrium of 
 the executives and constitutional forms being set 
 aside by a legal majority, fail to be appreciated, 
 the king asks pardon of his conscience and Europe 
 • if he resolve to protect the great masses' interests and 
 weal against delusions." ^ Carl Johan had under these 
 circumstances, he says further, certainly the right to 
 say to Norway : 
 
 " Through breaking by your action the agreement 
 to which I have given my assent, I therefore again 
 assume the rights assured to me by the Treaty, of Kiel 
 and I take from you the freedom I once granted you, 
 but of which you have made such unworthy use!' 
 
 The king also speaks of another course of action, 
 namely, " the actual fusion together of the two king- 
 doms." 
 
 He will not, however, avail himself of either of these 
 
 courses ; but if " selfishness and blind infatuation 
 
 continue to fail in appreciating his advice, he will feel 
 
 1 It is a remarkable and scarcely quite accidental coincidence 
 that during the present conflict between Norway and Sweden 
 there is often to be seen used in the Press on the Swedish side 
 very nearly the same mode of expression about Norwegians and 
 Norwegian politics. 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE UNION 37 
 
 compelled to re-erect the fabric of Norway's consti- 
 tution on a foundation that is more secure to general 
 safety." The King, therefore, desires " to hear candidly 
 what his allies think of the steps he contemplates 
 taking and which are already demanded by all 
 " thinking Norwegians" 
 
 Of these steps there are mentioned among others : 
 the abrogation of the right of making law without the 
 Crown's sanction whatever shall have passed three 
 successive parliaments ; a new parliament every fifth 
 year only ; the removability of higher state officials ; 
 more explicit regulations delimiting the legislative 
 power's authority ; the necessary limitation of Press 
 abuses. When all this shall have been set to rights 
 " Norway will have experienced for the second time 
 the beneficent influence of the prince to whom they 
 are indebted for their free institutions." 
 
 The Embassies (" our " Embassies) were given 
 instructions to obtain exact information without 
 delay as to how the Great Powers viewed his scheme 
 against the Norwegian State. 
 
 It was the time of the Holy Alliance. The Great 
 Powers were very quiet ; the condition of Russia was 
 at length particularly favourable in this respect, at 
 any rate formally. In none of them was there a 
 Norwegian to speak on his nation's behalf. We were 
 then — as we are even to-day — without any direction in 
 the matter of foreign affairs, without connection with 
 foreign powers. 
 
38 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 As has been mentioned, this plot against our inde- 
 pendence and against our constitution did not come 
 to anything ; it was prepared against us unknown 
 through the agency of " our " Foreign Minister and 
 " our " Embassies, a province in which we are as a 
 nation defenceless. And in this matter we have no 
 greater security now than we had then. If "our" 
 diplomats should once again desire to act in oppo- 
 sition to Norway's interests, there is nothing to 
 prevent them doing so ; there is no way even of 
 us knowing anything about it. We have no direct 
 means of entering into communication directly with 
 foreign powers ; that is reserved by Sweden under 
 present arrangements. This is the way the equality 
 guaranteed to us by agreement and by the Act of 
 Union has hitherto been put into practice ! 
 
 The mistrust implanted in the minds of Norwegians 
 in 1 82 1 has in course of time often been renewed by 
 the Swedish Governments, not only by a lack of 
 appreciation of Norway's rights, but by words of 
 levity at Norway's sovereignty as a State. 
 
 In the aristocratic party in the Upper House of the 
 Swedish Parliament — the party we in Norway call the 
 " Storsvenske " Party — the independence of Norway, 
 and, therefore, the existing union, has an actual enemy. 
 It would lead us too far here to speak of the great 
 amount of friction that has arisen between the two 
 kingdoms from this cause ; several times the situation 
 has become very critical, and however ready the 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE UNION 39 
 
 Crown may have been to have acceded to Norway's 
 wishes, it has always been compelled by the more 
 powerful Sweden at the decisive moment to take the 
 Swedish view. This was the case, ^.^. in i860, when 
 the Norwegians wanted to alter a paragraph in their 
 constitution which gave the Crown the right to 
 nominate a Governor for Norway, and even to appoint 
 a Swede as such. The abolition of the office was 
 agreed upon by the Norwegian Parliament almost 
 unanimously, on December 9, 1859, and King Carl 
 had promised his Norwegian ministry that he would 
 sanction the change. On that occasion the temper of 
 the aristocratic party of the Swedish Upper House 
 (the Riddarhus) towards Norway manifested itself 
 in a way that left no possibility of a doubt as to 
 how matters then stood. Count K. H. Anckarsvard 
 moved a resolution in the Riddarhus framed in the 
 bitterest and harshest terms ; it furiously attacked 
 the Royal House's Norwegian proclivities, maintained 
 Sweden's predominance, and called for a revision of 
 the Act of Union. This very same Anckai-svard, as 
 an officer in the Swedish army, was on the borders in 
 1 809, and had had better experience than any other 
 man in the Chamber of the enormous assistance 
 Norway rendered Sweden on that occasion. The 
 movement this affair subsequently originated in 
 Sweden showed fully how little the upper classes 
 really understood either Norway's historic rights 
 or its treaty relationship to Sweden, The journalist, 
 
40 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 V. F. Dalman, afterwards moved that the Swedish 
 Parliament should request the King, before sanc- 
 tioning the change proposed by the Norwegian Par- 
 liament, to submit the matter to it also. That the 
 tenor of a paragraph in the Norwegian Constitution 
 should be made dependent on a Swedish resolution 
 was indeed a monstrous request in the eyes of the Nor- 
 wegian. On a motion, which was highly offensive to 
 Norway, and which maintained a supremacy for 
 Sweden in the Union, the Swedish Parliament pre- 
 sented an address to the King on April 2, i860, in 
 which it prayed for revision of the Act of Union, based 
 on joint regulations for the disposal by the Crown of 
 both kingdoms' forces, land and marine, a rearrange- 
 ment of responsible government with joint repre- 
 sentation, &c., and that the changing of the office 
 of governor into that of a Minister of State 
 (Prime Minister), resolved upon by the Norwegian 
 Parliament, be not sanctioned except in connec- 
 tion with the scheme of the proposed revision. 
 History often repeats itself We see this is some- 
 what similar to the demands now put forward 
 from Sweden to-day to prevent another purely do- 
 mestic Norwegian affair — the Consular question — 
 from being carried through without the introduc- 
 tion of other Union disputes. Norway's king 
 was not able to exercise a free hand in the matter, 
 and could not redeem the promise to sanction the 
 bill which he had given his Norwegian Ministry ; as 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE UNION 41 
 
 Swedish King he had to give way to Swedish 
 pressure. In Norwegian Council he, therefore, had 
 to refuse his sanction, although in an addition to 
 the protocol he declared that in all essentials he 
 shared the opinions held by his councillors as to 
 the importance of the matter for Norway, and that 
 he, therefore, would have been very glad to have 
 agreed to the change, if only the occasion had been 
 in other respects propitious. This note to the 
 protocol, which clearly admitted that deference to 
 Sweden prevented the King from acting as Nor- 
 wegian King, did not tend to make the matter less 
 offensive to Norway. The Norwegian Parliament 
 answered on April 23, i860, with a unanimous 
 address to the King, in which it emphatically pro- 
 tested against the attitude of the Swedish Parliament 
 in wanting the suspension of the governorship to be 
 considered as a matter subject to Swedish disposition, 
 and it declared further that " a revision of the terms 
 of the Union cannot be entertained from the Nor- 
 wegian side except on the basis set forth in the 
 Act of Union, namely, the equality of the two king- 
 doms and the independence of each kingdom in all 
 matters that do not concern the Union. The Parlia- 
 ment is agreed that no Norwegian who respects the 
 rights of his native country and his own honour will 
 take part in a revision on any other terms, and 
 events that have happened lately in Sweden have 
 unfortunately given rise to the fear in Norway lest 
 
42 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 an attempt "be made from the Swedish side to give 
 the revision another character." 
 
 From the Swedish side several unsuccessful attempts 
 were made during the following years to get the Union 
 revised in agreement with Swedish wishes and with 
 the establishment of Sweden's supremacy. 
 
 It was only after thirteen years of deplorable dis- 
 sension that Swedish objections in the matter of the 
 governorship were abandoned and the present King 
 Oscar II. at the beginning of his reign sarlctioned the 
 renewed resolution of the Norwegian Parliament, and 
 the question was settled as an exclusively Norwegian 
 affair in a Norwegian Council held June sth, 1873. 
 The Swedes by their resistance had only been able to 
 protract the affair ; if they had not interposed oppo- 
 sition in a purely Norwegian matter, much unneces- 
 sary bitterness between the two countries would then, 
 as on many other occasions, have been saved.^ 
 
 ' The Swedish attitude as to the right of interference in 
 matters concerning the Norwegian Constitution was first 
 abandoned definitely, and the Norwegian attitude explicitly 
 settled by the deletion in 1891 of the paragraph in the Constitu- 
 tion concerning the Viceroyalty (according to this paragraph 
 the King had a right to nominate his son Viceroy of Norway). 
 It was carried unanimously in Parliament and was accepted in 
 Norwegian Council without opposition from Sweden ; no one 
 thought then of Sweden's right to interfere, although this para- 
 graph was introduced into the Constitution by the extraordinary 
 Parliament of 1814 on the recommendation of the Swedish 
 Commissioners. This fact shows quite clearly how Sweden 
 has by degrees gradually come to see that the Norwegians are 
 entitled to what they have demanded. 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE UNION 43 
 
 On subsequent occasions, however, the Swedish 
 aristocracy's mania for making incursions into Nor- 
 wegian affairs has appeared again in a way that is in 
 the highest degree prejudicial to the relationship of 
 the two countries to one another, and has made 
 Norwegians extremely sensitive to the Swedish de- 
 sire for supremacy. On these occasions the attempt 
 has always been made to prevent the King from 
 acting as the sovereign of Norway by means of 
 Swedish pressure. In that way it came about that 
 when the Norwegian Parliament in the '8o's wished 
 to give the ministers access to the sittings of the 
 Storthing — a purely Norwegian matter — a sharp dis- 
 pute arose. The King under the influence of the 
 Swedish aristocrats attempted to prevent the law by 
 an absolute veto, which the Constitution does not 
 concede to him. That led to the impeachment and 
 trial of the Norwegian ministry, and ended with the 
 power of the Crown having to bow before the will 
 of the people. The burning question of the moment, 
 the establishment of separate Consuls for Norway, 
 which also is purely a Norwegian question, has 
 been the cause of several similar sharp crises between 
 the Norwegian Parliament and people on the one 
 side, and the Crown acting under Swedish pressure 
 on the other. These crises came to a climax in 1895 ; 
 it was then quite apparent how much the Norwegians 
 in reality had relied upon Swedish feelings of 
 brotherhood, and how little they credited any pos- 
 
44 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 sibility of a forcible breach from that side. With 
 good-natured unconcern, the Norwegians had Httle 
 by Httle not only forgotten Swedish warnings, but, 
 influenced by a false idea of peace, they had neglected 
 their defences so much that they stood in 1895 as 
 badly equipped as Sweden did in 1864, when the 
 question arose as to an alliance with England to help 
 Denmark in the war with Prussia. 
 
 But Norway's weakness then was too strong a 
 temptation to the Swedish aristocrats, and while the 
 Consular question was coming to a head, that party 
 prepared, with the help of the Minister of Defence, 
 for an invasion of Norway to bring about the so- 
 called " compulsory-revision " which aimed at a com- 
 plete recasting of the Norwegian Constitution and of 
 the Union,^ in much the same way as Carl Johan con- 
 templated this in 1 821. The idea certainly fell to the 
 ground before Swedish public opinion, but no one 
 unprejudiced can deny the justification of the deep 
 indignation which even now smoulders among us 
 Norwegians. And though, of course, our people had 
 not acted wisely in neglecting our defences, this served 
 nevertheless to show that the feelings of brotherhood 
 were really to us not merely an empty phrase for use 
 on festive occasions, but a reality that had penetrated 
 
 . ' In his article in The TiVw^j of April ist, 1905, in reply to my 
 version of the Union disputes, Dr. Sven Hedin had to admit 
 that " a tendency in the direction of a compulsory revision was 
 really to be noticed here and there among us if.e. in Sweden) in 
 
 ^ ^" 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE UNION 45 
 
 the whole of our intellectual life to the exclusion of 
 every thought of hostility against the other nation. 
 We Norwegians do not believe for one moment that 
 Sweden could succeed in conquering and holding 
 Norway, but with a full knowledge of the incalculable 
 catastrophe implied in a war between brother nations, 
 for us and for the whole North, we live in perpetual 
 insecurity so long as the Swedes by means of new 
 constitutional institutions have not taken the rudder 
 into their own hands and eradicated the possibility of 
 a recurrence of what the King, under Swedish in- 
 fluence, tried in 1821 and the aristocrats wished to 
 do in 1895. 
 
 An example instar omnium of the power of this 
 aristocratic party may be cited here. The Minister 
 of State, Hr. Louis de Geer, enjoys in Sweden 
 the reputation of being one of the ablest of their 
 modern statesmen; he it was who, in 1865, worked 
 out and carried through, after many years' labour, the 
 changes in the mode of representation in Sweden by 
 which the old system of four bodies has given place to 
 a two-chamber assembly. We mentioned above that 
 the Swedish King and the Swedish Parliament in 1815 
 conjointly recognised Norway's complete equality 
 in all matters concerning the Union, and that recog- 
 nition is based on the consideration that though 
 Sweden has a greater population and greater re- 
 sources than Norway, yet the latter has in its favour 
 a far more advantageous geographical position. 
 
46 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 besides which, stress was expHcitly laid on the opinion 
 that both peoples should undoubtedly have an equal 
 right in giving expression to their opinions with 
 •• equal voice. In glaring contrast to this acknowledg- 
 ment of equal rights, in which the Norwegians had 
 believed and upon which they had formed their 
 interpretation of the Union, De Geer in 1861 pro- 
 posed a new Act of Union with the introduction 
 of a Union-Parliament, elected according to the 
 population in the two kingdoms. " Without doubt," 
 said De Geer, " the principle of equality ought to 
 constitute the foundation of a new Treaty of Union, 
 and Sweden does not demand more than to be 
 recognised as primus inter pares in the few cases in 
 which absolute equality cannot be carried through." 
 But under such an arrangement, in a Union-Parlia- 
 ment consisting of two-thirds Swedish and one-third 
 Norwegian members, Norway would always be in the 
 minority, and would actually be robbed of every right 
 whenever the national points of view were opposed. 
 It was answered from De Gfcer's side that that mode 
 of arrangement would be an application of the prin- 
 ciple of equality as correctly understood — equality 
 could not be absolute ; it must be relative.^ 
 
 Twenty years later that undoubtedly noble-minded 
 and truth-seeking man, when he was still in full 
 vigour and free from the pressure of the aristo- 
 crats and the restrictions of official life, made for 
 ' Sars, loc. cit. p. 527. 
 
THE HISTORY OF THE UNION 47 
 
 himself a monument by stating in his Memoirs ^ 
 "that if the verdict be based on general legal 
 principles it can scarcely be denied that the Nor- 
 wegians are essentially in the right in almost all 
 their demands. It is not reasonable that the one 
 people should forego more of its independence than 
 the other, and that one should thus become more or 
 less dependent on the other. . . . Sweden ought to 
 meet Norway's wishes as far as is possible. If 
 Norway, therefore, wishes to have its own Con- 
 suls and separate commercial, customs, and postal 
 treaties, it ought not to be opposed from the Swedish 
 side." 
 
 But the spirit that compelled De Geer, in making 
 his proposal for a Union-Parliament, to sin against all 
 logic, and to act in opposition to the very basis of the 
 Union — that spirit is once more rampant in Swedish 
 politics and it was on its altar that the ex-Swedish 
 Premier, Hr. Bostrom, had to sacrifice the pledge 
 he had given Norway. And as long as the passion 
 for supremacy and thoughts of transforming the 
 two independent kingdoms of Norway and Sweden 
 into one Sweden in which Norway shall be merged 
 as in a larger unit, and as long as these ambitious 
 desires prevail, so long are we in right and duty 
 bound to meet all negotiations with a " non 
 possumus." We cannot negotiate without an un- 
 equivocal admission by word or by deed that 
 ' De Geer, Minnen, vol. ii, p. 274. 
 
48 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 the ninety years' labour to procure for Sweden a 
 superiority in the Union has been abandoned, and 
 that a " complete equality," as was the basis of the 
 Union originally, shall be acted upon in spirit and in 
 truth. 
 
V 
 
 THE CONDUCT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 
 
 The principal cause of dissension between the two • 
 kingdoms has been the method of conducting foreign 
 affairs. Hitherto, under the Union, these have been 
 conducted by the Swedish Foreign Minister, who is 
 not responsible to Norway ; such an arrangement is 
 incompatible with Norway's position as a sovereign 
 state, and is in direct conflict with the equality be- 
 tween the two kingdoms, explicitly determined by the 
 terms of the Union. It has, however, been im- 
 possible to agree upon a better arrangement, not- 
 withstanding the many attempts that have been 
 made. The reason for this is partly to be found 
 in the fact that Sweden has not been anxious to give 
 up a supremacy unauthorised by the Act of Union, 
 and enjoyed in that sphere only by reason of appoint- 
 ments made by the Crown ; it is also to some extent 
 due to the different conceptions formed of the Act 
 of Union in the two countries. 
 
 While the Norwegians have held themselves 
 
 E 
 
50 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 literally to the words of the Treaty, so that the condi- 
 tions of the union under one king, but with separate 
 governments, which has been entered upon by Nor- 
 way and Sweden, are introduced and embodied in 
 this treaty, " absolutely word for word " ; and while 
 they have held by " each kingdom's independence in 
 all affairs not (in the ' Rigsakt ') described as con- 
 cerning the Union," ^ the Swedes, on the otl^r hand, 
 have been anxious to give the Treaty another inter- 
 pretation, and to enlarge the Union in a way not 
 authorised, but which they say is according to the 
 very nature of the compact. So far as the question 
 of foreign affairs is concerned they have indeed 
 gone so far as to state through their Government 
 (1891) that "neither the Rigsakt nor other agree- 
 ment concerning the Union concedes Norway's par- 
 ticipation in the treatment of ministerial {i.e., foreign) 
 .affairs." 
 
 While the union agreement, extraordinarily enough, 
 does not concern itself ^ with a word as to how joint 
 foreign affairs should be managed under normal 
 circumstances,^ it is clear enough that with such 
 different conceptions even as to the nature itself of 
 that treaty, sharp dissensions over such a very im- 
 portant question must inevitably arise. For a reason 
 that will be explained, it is especially since 1885 that 
 
 ' Parliament's address to the King, April 23rd, i860. 
 2 Vide infra. 
 
 ^ It only concerns itself with joint foreign affairs under a 
 temporary government, functional when the throne is vacant. 
 
THE CONDUCT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 51 
 
 this cause of difference has come so conspicuously to 
 the fore, and is now the reason of the chief difficuhies 
 between the two peoples. 
 
 As the question is of such great importance, an 
 attempt will now be made to give a short account 
 of its development and history. 
 
 Both Sweden's and Norway's constitutions origin- 
 ally gave the King a very free hand in the matter 
 of foreign affairs ; in Norway he had even more 
 freedom in the matter than in Sweden. The Nor- 
 wegian constitution left the control of these affairs 
 to the King personally ; he can allow them to be 
 treated in the manner he thinks most suitable, and 
 he can avail himself of the assistance of other than 
 responsible Norwegian advisers, inasmuch as it is 
 expressly stated that diplomatic affairs are exempted 
 from being obliged to be brought up in council. 
 With this authority the Norwegian King, from , 
 the commencement of the Union, has allowed the 
 Swedish Foreign Minister to administer also Nor- 
 way's foreign affairs,^ and he has employed joint 
 
 1 As pointed out by the late Chief Law Officer of the Crown 
 Hr. Rigsadvokat B. Getz ("Norges folkerethge stilling og 
 statsforfatning," Norge i det tiittende arhundrede, Kristiania, 
 1900, vol. i, p. 175), the relationship in that particular is in the 
 Norwegian-Swedish Union quite the same as it was in the 
 Austria-Hungarian until the new arrangement dating from 
 1867, inasmuch as in the latter case foreign administration 
 was according to Hungarian law left to the personal judgment 
 of the King, who availed himself of that authority to allow an 
 Austrian minister to take charge of the foreign affairs of both 
 
 E 2 
 
52 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 ambassadors for the two countries. But that Swedish 
 minister is in no way constitutionally answerable 
 for his conduct of Norwegian affairs. That cir- 
 cumstance has, of course, been the cause of dis- 
 satisfaction to Norway, especially after the idea had 
 gained ground that the principles underlying all 
 that is implied by constitutional monarchy should 
 be carried even into the conduct of foreign affairs. 
 However, until 1885, there was more or less equality 
 in the matter between the two kingdoms, because 
 until then the Foreign Minister occupied a mor^ 
 strictly personal relationship to the King. According 
 to the Swedish constitution of 1809, the King had 
 personal control over matters of a diplomatic nature, 
 as was then generally customary in all lands. He 
 could on his own initiative allow them to be managed 
 in the way he might happen to think best ; but he 
 could not, to the same extent as he was able to do 
 in Norway, withhold them from consideration in 
 Council ; he had to have them brought before the 
 so-called Ministerial Council of State, i.e., in the 
 presence of a second Swedish minister (certain 
 matters had to be presented in full Council). The 
 consequence of all this was that foreign affairs con- 
 cerning both countries were treated in the same way 
 
 countries. To prevent misunderstanding, it must at the same 
 time be pointed out, however, that the union between Norway 
 and Sweden has never been so complete nor of the same 
 intimate nature as has that between Austria and Hungary. 
 
THE CONDUCT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 53 
 
 as affairs purely Swedish. That state of things was 
 improved to some extent by a royal decree in 1835, 
 which settled that the Norwegian Minister of State 
 (Statsminister) resident in Stockholm, or another 
 Norwegian minister, should be present in the Swedish 
 Ministerial Council when diplomatic matters concern- 
 ing Norway were communicated to the King. 
 
 The succeeding Norwegian Parliament (1837) ex- 
 pressed in a petition its recognition of the King's 
 position in the matter, but with the addition that 
 it was able to regard the decree only as preliminary 
 to a more Satisfactory arrangement. None the less, 
 the preliminary arrangement has remained unchanged 
 for nearly fifty years, as Norway has been completely 
 absorbed in other Union and home questions. 
 
 ^ A change in the Swedish constitution in 1885, ' 
 however, made matters much worse ; by that change 
 the conduct of foreign affairs was placed entirely in 
 the hands of the Foreign Minister, and the King 
 lost all his former right of personal management 
 except through that agency. At the same time 
 the Swedish Premier was made ex officio a third 
 member of the Ministerial Council, in which diplo- 
 matic affairs were considered. By these changes 
 in the Swedish constitution the Foreign Minister, 
 who acted for Norway also, was placed completely 
 
 ■ under the Swedish Parliament ; and the practice 
 instituted by the decree of 183 S for the consideration 
 of Norwegian foreign affairs separately, on that 
 
54 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 account practically fell into abeyance. Natural 
 and desirable enough as it may be from the Swedish 
 point of view not to bring these affairs under stricter 
 parliamentary control, it is likewise clear that the 
 new arrangement, according to which the Swedish 
 Foreign Minister was also to act in the interests of 
 Norway, was more unsatisfactory to Norway than 
 ever, and it was now necessary to come to a more 
 reasonable arrangement for the conduct of foreign 
 affairs. 
 
 The change in the Swedish constitution in 1885 
 has, therefore, become the principal cause of the last 
 twenty years' strife in the Union, and it is in this 
 way that Sweden and not Norway has been the 
 occasion of it — a fact that will overthrow the usual 
 conception of the matter abroad, to the effect that 
 Norway is the unreasonable partner in the Union.^ 
 
 By acting as it did in 1885, Sweden has maintained 
 
 1 It has been maintained in Sweden that the change adopted 
 in 1885 was not in the least directed against Norwegian 
 interests, but only had in view the benefiting of Swedish and 
 both kingdoms' joint interests. But that argument has been 
 put into rather a curious position by the light thrown on it 
 a short time ago by the famous Swedish parliamentary 'veteran, 
 and one of the representatives for Sweden's capital, Hr. Adolf 
 Hedin. According to him, the proposals as accepted in 1885 
 were calculated also to hinder the conducting of diplomatic 
 affairs before the joint Norwegian-Swedish Council instituted ' 
 by the " Rigsakt." A suggestion to this effect had just then been 
 made in Sweden, and it was thought that these affairs would 
 then come under Norwegian control in a way which many in 
 Sweden looked upon as unsatisfactory. , 
 
THE CONDUCT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 55 
 
 that it has the right to alter, its own constitution 
 itself, and without reference to its relations with 
 Norway. But we for our part reserve to ourselves 
 the same right of action in the matter of our constitu- 
 tion, and when the modus operandi hitherto is rendered 
 impossible for Norway because of these Swedish 
 changes, we maintain that we have not only the 
 legal, but also the moral right and duty of making 
 those changes which may be necessary for the safe- 
 guarding of our interests, and which are not incom- 
 patible with the " Rigsakt." Norway did not imme- 
 diately after 1885 bring matters to an issue by 
 arranging its diplomatic affairs as Sweden had done 
 of its own accord, and with the same exclusive 
 object of self-interests in view ; it tried, instead, to 
 arrange a more conciliatory solution by means of 
 sincere, but eventually unsuccessful, negotiations with 
 the other country. Many may see weakness in this 
 course of action ; but, at any rate, we cannot be re- 
 proached with having acted without due consideration. 
 We have in this matter, as on so many occasions before, 
 possibly shown an excessive amount of patience. 
 
 The first efforts of the Norwegians in and after 
 1885 had for their object the improvement of the new 
 and unequal constitution of the Ministerial Council 
 of State (three Swedish members and one Norwegian 
 member). That these efforts were reasonable even 
 the Swedes conceded ; and they, therefore, brought 
 forward proposals which were, however, not accept- 
 
56 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 able to the Norwegians. In the negotiations of 1885- 
 1886 they endeavoured to have the Swedish Foreign 
 Minister legally appointed as such for Norway as 
 well. A new proposal in 1891 was wrecked at the 
 outset by the Swedish Government accompanying 
 certain concessions with an endorsement of the 
 protocol very offensive to Norwegian feeling, to the 
 effect that " neither the ' Rigsakt ' nor any other 
 agreement concedes to Norway the right of partici- 
 pation in the management of ministerial {i.e., diplo- 
 matic) affairs." 
 
 Even before that time two different Union com- 
 mittees had attempted to settle, among other things, 
 this knotty question. The first Norwegian-Swedish 
 Committee's proposal (1844) led to nothing; it 
 was shelved by the Swedish Government. The 
 second Union Committee's proposal (1865-1867) was 
 rejected by the Norwegian Parliament by an enor- 
 mous majority, really because of its unsatisfactory 
 solution of the question of equality between the two 
 kingdoms. 
 
 A third Union Committee, strong in numbers, 
 wa:s specially appointed in 1895, and worked until 
 1898 to solve the contested question of the rela- 
 tionship between the Foreign Office and Consular 
 Service ; but the result was not very encouraging. 
 The Committee divided on the proposals into four 
 fractions, two Norwegian and two Swedish, and it 
 appeared impossible even for the most friendly disposed 
 
THE CONDUCT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 57 
 
 on the two sides to come to an agreement. When every 
 one of Norway's earnest attempts to bring about by 
 negotiation an honourable equality on the basis of 
 co-operation in the conduct of foreign affairs had 
 been brought to nought by the more or less incompre- 
 hensible resistance offered by Sweden, the idea arose 
 towards the end of the '8o's that Norway would have 
 to have its own Foreign Minister just as Sweden had. 
 Norwegian affairs would then be managed by the 
 Norwegian Foreign Minister, Swedish affairs by the" 
 Swedish Foreign Minister, and Union affairs by the 
 two Ministers in co-operation. That idea has, how- 
 ever, never become an item in practical politics ; it 
 has remained on the programme for the future. It 
 was thought that the fewer institutions the kingdoms 
 had in common, the less would be the occasion for 
 their further dissension, and the greater would be the 
 chance of co-operation and the manifestation of a 
 bold and united front. The Conservative party in 
 Norway formerly held that a united foreign policy is 
 best assured by means of a joint Foreign Minister, 
 Norwegian or Swedish, responsible to both countries. 
 That programme with a joint Foreign Minister can- 
 not, however, now reckon on the support of any 
 appreciable section of the electorate. It is, in fact, in 
 Norway practically a shelved proposal, which, how- 
 ever, appears to have obtained a large measure of 
 support in Sweden. The great difficulty in this 
 proposal is in seeing how it can be possible for a 
 
58 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 minister to be responsible to two countries ; if ex- 
 istent not merely on paper, this responsibility might 
 easily prove to be the cause of unfortunate conflict. 
 ■ It is, at all events, certain that Norway is not bound 
 by the Act of Union to make use of the Swedish 
 Foreign Minister. The employment of him in the 
 treatment of Norwegian foreign affairs depends only 
 upon the Norwegian Crown's constitutional preroga- 
 tive of determining how these affairs shall be con- 
 ducted. And while the Foreign Minister has, there- 
 fore, not been regarded as a constitutional adviser, 
 his rdle has been almost completely limited to repre- 
 sentation of the Crown abroad, and to acting as inter- 
 mediary in negotiations with foreign powers, while 
 the subjects in question themselves are settled in 
 exclusively Norwegian council. Formerly the King, 
 in such Norwegian council, frequently gave explicit 
 instructions to the Foreign Minister, who was also, 
 on the other hand, now and then called upon to 
 take part in its deliberations.^ On one occasion 
 the King completely ignored the Swedish Foreign 
 Minister, namely, on the ratification of a treaty with 
 a foreign Power (Denmark in 1822) ; he then, in 
 reality, employed a Norwegian minister as Norwegian 
 Foreign Minister ; and this is a precedent to show 
 that such an arrangement is possible. 
 
 It would appear reasonable to suppose that associ- 
 ation in War and in Peace must also involve a certain 
 ' B. Getz, loc. cit., p. 176. 
 
THE CONDUCT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 59 
 
 co-operation in foreign policy, in a narrower sense ; 
 and that has, as a matter of fact, never been denied. 
 But the Act of Union omitted to lay down regu- 
 lations for the conduct of foreign affairs which might 
 serve to assure such co-operation. It is, perhaps, re- 
 markable that such an important question should not 
 have been mentioned ; to suggest that that omission is 
 due to an oversight, as has been attempted in some 
 quarters, is of course inadmissible. The reason is 
 probably to be sought in the circumstance that 
 the Norwegian Constitution vested the control of 
 foreign affairs in the Crown's person ; but this is an 
 arrangement between the Norwegian King and the 
 Norwegian people, and it cannot bind us in any way 
 in our relation to Sweden.^ 
 
 ' In support of the view that the two countries should only 
 have one Foreign Minister, it has been maintained that in the 
 " Rigsakt," wherever regulations are given for the action to be 
 taken by the interim Government, acting during the vacancy of 
 the throne, there is always mentioned only one Foreign Minister. 
 Hr. Getz (Joe. cit., p. 175) has pointed out that it is of no import- 
 ance in connection with the question now at issue. While the 
 interim Government provided for is a Union Government, 
 which even in the purely internal affairs of the separate 
 kingdoms acts in place of the usual governments, it goes with- 
 out saying that foreign affairs must also be treated as matters 
 concerning the Union. While the freedom given to the King 
 by the Norwegian Constitution, which empowered him to em- 
 ploy even quite private assistance in the administration of 
 foreign affairs, could not be upheld when there was no reigning 
 monarch, and while the King had not the same power in 
 Sweden, it was convenient to leave the conduct of foreign affairs 
 before the Union Interim Government to one of the Swedish 
 
60 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 It must be emphasised that the arrangement men- 
 tioned which caused the Swedish Foreign Minister 
 for the time also to administer Norwegian diplomatic 
 affairs does not imply that Norway and Sweden are 
 united together in so far as their action towards other 
 Powers is concerned. It has, on the contrary, always 
 been recognised that each of the kingdoms can of its 
 own accord act as a " member of the Society of 
 States," 1 and as a separate unit in international law ; 
 it may make treaties with foreign Powers on its own 
 account. In those cases where the kingdom's interests 
 have happened to be coincident, it has been customary 
 for the two to act together. On the other hand, when- 
 ever the one kingdom has had its own interests to 
 safeguard — which has specially been the case of late 
 years — it has made the treaty on its own behalf alone. 
 Both Norway and Sweden have in this way a number 
 of separate agreements with foreign Powers, e.g., many 
 commercial, boundary, extradition and other similar 
 treaties. The conduct of Foreign affairs is also 
 
 members, who had, in the course of his past duties as a civil 
 servant, become acquainted with these matters. According 
 to the Norwegian Government's own motion, § 7 of the 
 " Rigsakt " therefore provides for the introduction of the sub- 
 ject in question being made by the Swedish Lord High 
 Chancellor — whose position in this matter was subsequently 
 transferred to the Swedish Foreign Minister — and to the same 
 Swedish Minister, also, was entrusted the introduction of other 
 matters of joint concern which under ordinary circumstances 
 are vested in the Crown's person. 
 
 ' Manning, International Law, p. 91. 
 
THE CONDUCT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 61 
 
 to a certain extent different for each of the two 
 kingdoms, and the partnership is — at all events with 
 the exception of the actual foreign policy itself — in 
 the manner of this administration, of a purely formal 
 character. It should specially be borne in mind, that 
 it is in every case only possible for the executive of 
 the country concerned to decide whether that country 
 shall enter upon a treaty or not. The Swedish 
 Foreign Minister and Ambassadors are not authorised, 
 without special instruction from the Norwegian 
 executive for the purpose, in any way to commit 
 Norway to any course of action with respect to a 
 foreign Power. If the making of a treaty requires a 
 modification of Norwegian law, or if the Exchequer 
 is in any way affected, it must, as a rule, also be 
 approved by the Norwegian Parliament. 
 
 There have, however, in the course of time, been 
 several changes of front not only in Sweden's attitude 
 towards Norway's right in the present matter, but also 
 in its willingness to meet legitimate demands. While 
 the Swedish Government as late as 1891 appeared, as 
 already mentioned, inclined to deny Norway every 
 right of taking part in the administration of foreign 
 affairs, the Swedish Foreign Minister in 1893 stated 
 that he did not doubt that it would be possible by 
 mutual arrangement to arrive at a satisfactory solution 
 of that question on the basis of equality, and with one 
 joint Foreign Minister, a Swede or a Norwegian. But 
 that utterance did not find support in the Swedish 
 
62 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 Parliament, and it can by no means be regarded as 
 carrying the weight of Swedish public opinion at that 
 time. It was not until the third Union Committee's 
 Report in 1 898 that the different Swedish parties had 
 come into line on that particular form of solution, 
 on conditions, however, which were on every hand in 
 Norway regarded as unacceptable. Finally, in 1903 
 the Swedish Government declared openly that the 
 present arrangement was not in accordance with Nor- 
 way's just demands for equality in the Union. To 
 arrive at a just verdict on the many negotiations over 
 the question, it must be remembered that Norway has 
 never asked for any concession from Sweden ; it has 
 only demanded the respect due to its rights as a 
 sovereign state. Every stipulation put forward by 
 Sweden as a condition of the recognition of that right 
 must be stigmatised as in the nature of an unwarrant- 
 able, and therefore unlawful, attack on Norway's 
 sovereignty. It is, as already mentioned, not Norway 
 that has been the exacting "partner, always approach- 
 ing Sweden with demands lacking reason. The 
 Norwegians would not regard it as unjust if Sweden 
 should decide that the Swedish Foreign Minister 
 shall for the future not be employed on Norwegian 
 business or administer Norwegian foreign affairs, and 
 it is not likely that the Swedish politicians are going 
 to concede that we have any right to try to hinder 
 such a decision. But at the same time, we also re- 
 serve to ourselves the same right of managing our own 
 
THE CONDUCT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 63 
 
 affairs— foreign affairs included — as we may happen 
 to consider most in keeping with the furtherance of 
 Norway's and the best interests of the Union. We have, 
 however, so far not availed ourselves of our right of 
 action in this direction, because it would easily lead 
 to unfortunate conflicts, as Sweden still seems to have 
 great difficulty in understanding our demands. We 
 have, therefore, meanwhile confined ourselves to the 
 less important question of the arrangement of our 
 Consular Service. 
 
VI 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE CONSULAR 
 SERVICE 
 
 * According to the Norwegian view of the matter 
 there is no shadow of a doubt that Norway has the 
 right to establish its own Consular service. 
 
 The Norwegian Constitution, as accepted at Eids- 
 vold, May 17th, 1814, contains instructions covering 
 the appointment of Norwegian Consuls. On the 
 subsequent establishment of the Union between 
 Norway and Sweden, the Swedish King pledged him- 
 self (at the Convention of Moss in August, 1814) to 
 accept that Constitution, and only to propose such 
 alterations as might be necessary in view of the con- 
 templated union. No change in the Consular regu- 
 lations was made, and it, therefore, follows that even 
 the Swedish Commissioners did not think it incom- 
 patible with the terms of the Union for Norway to 
 have separate Consuls. And in addition, the im- 
 portant fact must be cited that the Act of Union 
 — the " Rigsakt " of 181 5 — does not concern itself 
 
QUESTION OF THE CONSULAR SERVICE 65 
 
 with a word regarding Consuls. Thus in two ways, 
 direct and indirect, the right of Norway to its own 
 Consuls is certain, and there exists no contract what- 
 ever binding the two countries to a partnership in 
 the Consular service.^ 
 
 Purely as a matter of convenience, Norway has 
 found it appropriate, from the time of the Union 
 and onwards, to employ the same persons for Con--, 
 suls as Sweden, and this it has been able to do 
 by taking advantage of a provision in § 92 of the 
 Constitution, which makes it permissible to nominate 
 foreigners as Norwegian Consuls. Consequentl}?, 
 Swedes are also competent for nomination as such. 
 
 1 In order to explain away the right of Norway to its own 
 Consuls, it has been claimed on behalf of Sweden {e.g., by Dr. 
 Sven Hedin, in The Times of April ist, 1905) that the fact that 
 the regulations for the Consular service stood in the Constitu- 
 tion unaltered by the establishment of the Union must be 
 ascribed to an " omission." But that explanation implies an 
 open recognition of the right of Norway, as contained in the 
 Constitution, to establish a separate Consular service. And 
 according to the usages of International Law, the legality 
 of a law is judged according to what stands written in it, 
 and not according to what might have been written. A Nor- 
 wegian authority. Professor Aschehoug has been cited in 
 support of the "omission" theory, but the historical facts, 
 which Aschehoug in his time overlooked, prove the exact 
 opposite. In 18 14 an alteration of one of the paragraphs 
 containing regulations for Consuls was desired on behalf of 
 Sweden ; but when the Norwegians asked what might be the 
 object of it, the paragraph was left as it stood. The theory of 
 " omission " is, therefore, utterly untenable, as also the idea that 
 the Commissioners in 1814 and 181 5 accepted a jointConsular 
 service, as postulated by the Union. 
 
 F 
 
66 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 Step by step an organised partnership covering the 
 whole Consular service developed in this way, and the 
 management of it was, in 1858, vested in the person 
 of the Foreign Minister. 
 
 During the development of this partnership, and 
 during the time it has existed as at present, it has 
 many times been resolutely maintained, both by the 
 Government and Parliament, that Norway, while em- 
 ploying the same Consuls as Sweden, does not regard 
 itself as legally bound to do so. And every attempt 
 to induce us to make a compact binding us to the 
 partnership has been answered clearly and emphatic- 
 ally {e.g., in 1847, by the whole Government) that 
 Norway cannot forgo its right of nominating separate 
 Consuls whenever in the future its interests make it 
 desirable to do so. 
 
 The Swedes, from their point of view, maintain 
 that the appointment of Consuls is a part of the 
 political union in foreign affairs, and that on that 
 ground the Consular system cannot be separated 
 from the management of foreign affairs. That idea 
 has in recent times been shown to be erroneous, 
 inasmuch as a special Norwegian-Swedish committee, 
 on which the present Minister in London, Baron 
 Bildt, served as a member, unanimously agreed 
 and resolved that a system of separate Consuls is 
 quite practicable, without danger to the present unity 
 in foreign affairs. Both Swedish and Norwegian 
 Governments, as well as the Crown, have later con- 
 
QUESTION OF THE CONSULAR SERVICE 67 
 
 curred in that pronouncement, and have agreed to 
 the principle recommended as practicable. And it 
 is an actual fact, that while the Consular partnership 
 from 1814 onwards arose in the way already stated, 
 the Foreign Office itself has, nevertheless, for half 
 the time the Union has lasted, had no control of the 
 Consular service at all. In Sweden, the Consular 
 service was placed entirely under the control of the 
 so-called Kommerce-Kollegium (Board of Trade), a 
 department quite distinct from the Foreign Office, 
 and a few years later Norway's interests in the matter 
 were likewise vested in the Norwegian Finance De- 
 partment. It was not until April 20th, 1858, that' 
 the Foreign Minister, by Royal decree, obtained his 
 present commanding position with respect to the 
 Consular service. It is, therefore, certain that the 
 Swedish standpoint, namely, that the partnership is 
 an essential and inevitable result of the Union, is 
 demonstrably and historically incorrect ; that fact is, 
 moreover, actually so recognised by the Swedish 
 Government itself 
 
 In the course of time, as Norway's commerce and 
 shipping have developed, it became inevitable that a de- 
 mand should be heard for a Consular service such as 
 could concentrate its undivided attention, under Nor- 
 wegian direction, on the furtherance of Norwegian 
 commercial interests alone. It may be mentioned that 
 Norway has its own flag, which flies over a mercantile 
 fleet the fourth among nations, and about three times 
 
 F 2 
 
68 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 as great as the Swedish. Inconveniences resulting from 
 the partnership arose ; as time went on Norway's and 
 Sweden's commercial interests came more and more 
 into conflict with one another, and especially when in 
 the '8o's Sweden began to adopt a system of high 
 tariffs, while Norway continued to remain, as before, 
 an almost Free Trade country. The result of this 
 distinctive fiscal policy on the part of Sweden was 
 that commercial treaties with foreign Powers, hitherto 
 made conjointly for the two countries, had now to 
 be modified into separate agreements, different for 
 Norway and for Sweden. This inevitably tended to 
 make a joint Consul's position difficult, and with a 
 Swedish Foreign Minister at the head of affairs it is 
 much to be feared that where interests clashed the 
 sufferer has probably been Norway. Commercial 
 rivalry was sharpened considerably a decade ago as 
 a result of Sweden giving up the hitherto existing 
 agreement with Norway, which had allowed trade 
 between the two to be carried on more or less duty- 
 free, and which now forced both countries more and 
 more to seek foreign markets for their goods. 
 
 The Free Trade hitherto possible between the two 
 countries was without doubt the strongest real bond 
 of union between them, and by the breaking of it by 
 Sweden a fatal injury was done to the commercial and 
 industrial co-operation between the two countries.^ 
 
 1 This is certainly becoming more and more recognised in 
 Sweden. The ex-Foreign Minister, Hr. Lagerheim, a short 
 
QUESTION OF THE CONSULAR SERVICE 69 
 
 This was particularly unfortunate for Norway which, 
 with several times the shipping of Sweden, had come 
 to have less than half the influence in determining 
 the appointment of the Consuls, who were to be 
 responsible for watching over these great interests. 
 Although having perhaps barely half the inhabitants 
 of Sweden, Norway has until quite recently paid in 
 the shape of ship-dues by far the 'greater part of the 
 expenses of the Consular partnership ; the division of 
 the cost is now fixed at a half for each countrj'. 
 Frequent conflicts of interest between the kingdoms 
 were hardly calculated to strengthen the real Union 
 itself, and it would now seem, from the Norwegian 
 point of view, that its well-being can under the 
 circumstances only be safeguarded by dissolving 
 partnership in the Consular service, since there no 
 longer exists as a basis the natural and satisfactory 
 partnership-deed of mutual interests in the matter. 
 
 The finishing touch came when the Swedish 
 
 Foreign Minister, who since 1858 had controlled 
 
 the joint Consular service, was placed completely 
 
 under the control of the Swedish Parliament by the 
 
 change in the Swedish Constitution of 1885 (see ' 
 
 p. 49) ; as a result the centre of gravity of the two 
 
 kingdoms' management of foreign affairs went right ' 
 
 over to Sweden. 
 
 time ago at a Swedish meeting, characterised the action in 
 breaking this agreement, the so-called " mellemrigslov," as the 
 greatest folly of Swedish politicians in connection with the 
 maintenance of the Union between the two countries. 
 
70 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 After Norway's vain attempts to restore by negoti- 
 ation the equilibrium that had been destroyed by the 
 Swedish changes of 1885, the question of the estab- 
 lishment of a separate Consular service became part 
 of practical Norwegian politics in 1891. A Nor- 
 wegian Committee appointed in 1891 to consider this 
 question agreed unanimously, among other things, 
 that, having regard to Norway's maritime and com- 
 mercial interests the Norwegians should demand full 
 control of their Consular service, and that the chief 
 Consular posts abroad should be occupied exclusively 
 by Norwegians. The resolution of Parliament made 
 on the basis of that Committee's report, had for its 
 central object the establishment of a separate Nor- 
 wegian Consular service. It was, however, brought 
 to nought when the King, acting in response to 
 Swedish public opinion, refused to take action in the 
 matter. 
 
 This led to a crisis in 1892 ; the Government felt 
 that it could not undertake the responsibility of the 
 Crown's refusal to take any action, and sent in their 
 resignation. Further consideration of the matter was 
 postponed, and the Ministry returned to office ; but a 
 similar crisis arose in 1893, Parliament having passed 
 a new resolution to the same effect as that of the 
 previous year. This crisis was overcome for the time 
 being by the actual resignation of the Ministry and 
 the appointment of a new Government by the Crown. 
 Parliament in the meantime passed a resolution of 
 
QUESTION OF THE CONSULAR SERVICE 71 
 
 "no confidence" in the Government, and immediately 
 renewed its resolutions for the establishment of a 
 separate Consular service. But the Crown refused to 
 consider the resolution arrived at, and the situation 
 came to a climax in 1895 ; then the Crown kept a 
 Ministry, which had resigned as a result of the tri- 
 ennial elections in 1894, in office for another nine 
 months, although it was not competent to assume 
 responsibility for the complications that had arisen. 
 At the same time there was a strong movement in 
 Sweden in favour of a compulsory revision of the 
 Act of Union in favour of Sweden — in fact, a resort 
 to arms. 
 
 To prevent a breach. Parliament agreed to a mutual 
 reconsideration of the whole question of both Foreign 
 Minister and Consular service. A committee com- 
 posed of representatives of both countries was ap- 
 pointed and sat in 1898. Unfortunately they could 
 not arrive at unanimity in their conclusions, but 
 divided into four sections, two Norwegian and two 
 Swedish. Division arose partly over the resistance 
 from the Swedish side to the unanimous demand 
 of the Norwegian delegates for a separate Consular 
 service. Things went on after this until 1902, when a 
 proposal was made, on the initiative of the Swedish 
 Foreign Minister, Hr. Lagerheim, for a joint com- 
 mittee to consider only the question of the separate 
 Consular services. This was really an agreement to 
 consider the question on the basis already previously 
 
72 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 proposed by the Norwegian Parliament. It was 
 expressly agreed that the question of the Foreign 
 Minister should not come under consideration. The 
 Norwegian delegates were Dr. Sigurd Ibsen and 
 Hr. W. Christophersen, Consul-General at Antwerp ; 
 the Swedish representatives were Baron Bildt, now 
 Norwegian-Swedish Minister in London, and Hr. 
 Ameen, Consul-General at Barcelona. They came 
 unanimously to the conclusion that " it was possible 
 to appoint separate Norwegian Consuls solely res- 
 ponsible to Norwegian authority, and separate 
 Swedish Consuls solely responsible to Swedish au- 
 thority. The Foreign Minister's connection with 
 Norwegian Consular affairs should cease, except in so 
 far as what concerns the Consul's status (exequatur), 
 while his control of the Norwegian Consuls should 
 also cease. This control should then be transferred 
 to a Norwegian Government department for the 
 Consular service.'' 
 
 This was the unanimous conclusion of the com- 
 mittee consisting of experts from both countries. 
 The committee further dealt with the question how 
 the relationship between the Consular service and 
 the Foreign Office should be arranged. The pro- 
 posal under this heading promised a satisfactory 
 adjustment of diplomatic and Consular business 
 without in any way touching on or prejudicing the 
 question of hierarchic superiority or inferiority, and 
 without diminishing the importance or power of 
 
QUESTION OF THE CONSULAR SERVICE 73 
 
 initiative either of the Foreign Minister or of the 
 department controlling the national Consular system 
 in either kingdom. 
 
 Thereupon, negotiations were carried on between 
 the Norwegian and Swedish Governments with this 
 report as a basis. These negotiations resulted in 
 a preliminary agreement formulated in a document, 
 the so-called "Communique," of March 24, 1903, in 
 which the Swedish representatives declared, among 
 other things, that it has " proved to be not impos- 
 sible, on certain conditions, to arrange a service with 
 separate Consuls for each kingdom, which, while 
 satisfying Norway's pronounced wishes, might at the 
 same time be capable of allaying the most important 
 of the doubts felt on the Swedish side." It is further 
 stated in this document that the Swedish representa- 
 tives " have found themselves able to recommend a 
 settlement on the following basis : — 
 
 "(i) Separate Consular services shall be estab- 
 lished for Sweden and for Norway. Each king- 
 dom's Consuls shall be placed under whichever 
 department at home the country concerned shall 
 decide. 
 
 " (2) The relationship between the respective 
 Consuls and the Foreign Minister and Embassies 
 shall be arranged according to identical laws, which 
 cannot be altered or suspended without the consent 
 of the Executives of both kingdoms." 
 
 This agreement was signed by the Swedish Premier 
 
74 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 Hr. Bostrom, the Foreign Minister Hr. Lagerheim, the 
 Norwegian Premier Hr. Blehr, and several other mini- 
 sters. It was greeted with great satisfaction in Norway, 
 and everything was done there to ensure the negotia- 
 tions being continued to a happy conclusion. Two 
 members of the Government had to resign, as they 
 were not completely in accord with the agreement ; 
 and it was feared that other members of the Govern- 
 ment also lacked a little enthusiasm in the cause. 
 A new election in the autumn of 1903 returned a 
 different majority, upon which a Government in the 
 highest degree disposed to friendly negotiations came 
 into power, with the leader of the Conservative party, 
 Hr. Hagerup, as Premier. 
 
 In Sweden, on the other hand, the agreement was 
 not looked upon with the same feelings of satisfaction, 
 and that is perhaps the best explanation of the fact 
 that the Swedish Government, and especially its chief 
 minister, soon showed a waning desire to arrive at a 
 final agreement. 
 
 The document of March 24, 1903, was, in Decem- 
 ber of the same year, officially sanctioned by the 
 King in Council, on the advice and in the presence 
 of the Governments of both countries, who at the 
 same time were authorised to continue negotiations 
 on the basis thus defined. And it arranged for the 
 working out of the organisation and budgets of the 
 separate Consular services, which were to be brought 
 before the National Assemblies simultaneously with 
 
QUESTION OF THE CONSULAR SERVICE 75 
 
 the identical laws mentioned. The organisation and 
 budget recommendations were prepared here in Nor- 
 way by a committee appointed for the purpose, and 
 were ready on December 31, 1904. It appears, on 
 the other hand, that no corresponding preparations 
 have hitherto been made in Sweden. 
 
 The Norwegian Government in May, 1904, brought 
 forward a draft of the identical laws, worked out in 
 exact accord with the recommendations of the Union 
 Committee (1902) as well as of the preliminary agree- 
 ment of March, 1903. In those proposals the relation- 
 ship of the separate Consuls to the Foreign Office and 
 Embassies was determined by a number of regula- 
 tions. They provide that the separate Consuls un- 
 conditionally shall attend to all inquiries and requests 
 from the Minister of Foreign Affairs in matters which 
 have assumed or are likely to assume a diplomatic 
 character ; they provide that as a rule a Consul shall 
 not come into contact with the executive authorities 
 — the Foreign Ministry especially — of the country 
 in which he is placed. In short, provisions were 
 made clearly defining the Consuls' position as 
 well as for their control being brought under 
 Norwegian authority. The Swedish Government, 
 on the other hand, for a long time evaded giving 
 a direct reply to these proposals, and in the mean- 
 time the Foreign Minister, Hr. Lagerheim, who 
 had primarily brought about the negotiations and 
 conducted them on behalf of Sweden, was forced by 
 
76 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 the action of the Premier, Hr. Bostrom, to resign. 
 Thereupon the latter took matters into his own hands, 
 and, finally, put forward in November, 1904 — six 
 months after the receipt of the Norwegian draft law — 
 a number of proposals on a basis quite different to 
 that of the Communique of March, 1903. In his reply 
 to the Swedish Premier, the Norwegian Premier, 
 Hr. Hagerup, on November 26, 1904, characterised 
 one of these demands as " calculated to stamp 
 Norway as a dependency according to general inter- 
 national and common law principles," and declared 
 that " from a national point of view it indicates a very 
 great retrogression on the present arrangement of the 
 Consular service." 
 
 In December, 1904, there was brought forward on 
 behalf of Sweden a draft of the identical laws. It was 
 supported by the majority of the Swedish ministers, 
 whereas Hr. Bostrom appeared unable to forego 
 the standpoint he already had taken up. It will 
 easily be understood that it inevitably made it ex- 
 ceedingly difficult to come to any settlement when 
 the Swedish Premier and Sweden's most influential 
 statesman was in open opposition over the draft 
 which he himself had proffered on behalf of the Gov- 
 ernment to the Norwegians. It appeared also that 
 the Swedish draft contained a number of demands 
 quite unacceptable to Norway, inasmuch as they 
 were opposed to the very basis and object of the 
 negotiations. 
 
QUESTION OF THE CONSULAR SERVICE 77 
 
 The Norwegian Government thereupon replied that 
 the proposals contained at least six points which 
 introduced quite a new number of demands into the 
 question at issue, and which, had they been introduced 
 and maintained at an earlier stage, would have led to 
 the abandonment of all prospects of mutual agree- 
 ment." These points, the Norwegian Government 
 further declared, are obviously impossible of accept- 
 ance, " partly because they are opposed to the Nor- 
 wegian constitution, or to the demands in this country 
 claimed as to the form and substance of independence, 
 partly also because what was expected of the whole 
 negotiations is thereby not to be attained — namely, to 
 make use of the very words of the Swedish repre- 
 sentatives, that ' Separate Consular services shall be 
 established for Sweden and for Norway. Each king- 
 dom's Consuls shall be placed under whichever 
 department at home the country concerned shall 
 decide.' " If the Swedish proposals had been ac- 
 cepted, the Norwegian Consular service would have 
 been very largely placed under the control of the 
 Foreign Minister, who is constitutionally a Swedish 
 Minister. To the Norwegian ministry's description 
 of the regulations proposed by the Swedish draft, 
 and regarded by the former as impossible of accept- 
 ance, the Swedish Government answered by declaring 
 that it must in essentials hold to the points, and 
 moreover that the willingness of the Swedish Govern- 
 ment to continue negotiations was conditional upon 
 
78 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 the Norwegian Government feeling itself prepared to 
 forego its standpoint. 
 
 In this way negotiations were once more broken 
 off ; and without result. It was apparent that, in spite 
 of the friendliness and earnestness with which the 
 desire for accord was approached from the side of 
 Norway, from the very moment of the preliminary 
 agreement, it was also clear that the Swedish Govern- 
 ment was no longer agreeable to a dissolution of the 
 Consular partnership on the basis of the document of 
 March 24, 1903, approved and decreed by the Crown 
 in constitutional form. Instead, it made the estab- 
 lishment of a separate Consular service contingent on 
 a new series of conditions and limitations, the accept- 
 ance of which by Norway would have been national 
 suicide. The Norwegian Government, immediately 
 after the receipt of the Swedish answer, replied that 
 the latter did not call for further comment from 
 Norway. 
 
 Recognising how very threatening to the Union 
 this latest breach of negotiations has proved itself to 
 be, it has been attempted in some Swedish quarters 
 to make it appear as though the breach must be 
 laid to the charge of the Norwegian Government. 
 This must, in the light of what has already been 
 stated above, be regarded as a fruitless task ; but the 
 attempt is even more hopeless in the light of the 
 revelations which have now been made by Hr. Adolf 
 Hedin, Sweden's foremost parliamentarian (for many 
 
QUESTION OF THE CONSULAR SERVICE 79 
 
 years one of the members for Stockholm, the Swedish 
 capital), and the Nestor of Swedish politics. In a 
 public speech a short time ago, he stated that it was 
 not at the end of last year that it first became evi- 
 dent to those in Sweden who were competent to know 
 that the negotiations " were going to be wrecked " ; 
 it was evident in the previous spring. And on that 
 account Hr. Lagerheim, who until then had conducted 
 the negotiations so satisfactorily, let it be generally 
 understood that it would be just as well if he resigned 
 at once. " I can," said Hr. Adolf Hedin, "furthermore 
 say that the quite definite proposals brought forward 
 by him have never come under consideration at all " ; 
 it had already been determined by the Premier 
 Bostrom that the negotiations should not go through, 
 and Lagerheim was, therefore, compelled to seek 
 resignation. " But that," said Hr. Adolf Hedin, " does 
 not detract from the former Foreign Minister's 
 merits, it does not diminish the services of the 
 members of the Norwegian ministry with whom he 
 carried on the undoubtedly very difficult negotiations. 
 To them it is that we are indebted for having brought 
 the negotiations to the point indicated by the agree- 
 ment (of March, 1903). And what I know of the 
 matter tells me that what then remained to be done 
 was infinitely simple compared with the difficulties 
 that have been already overcome." 
 
 That is the verdict on Hr. Bostrom and his method 
 of breaking off the negotiations, of Sweden's most 
 
80 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 eminent parliamentarian, and without doubt the best 
 informed poHtician that country has. 
 
 When Hr. Bostrom found it necessary to resign a 
 short time ago, the Nya Dagligt Allelianda (April 9, 
 1905), Sweden's leading aristocratic and anti-Nor- 
 wegian organ — had an article on that minister that 
 throws a special light upon the Swedish view of the 
 matter. There we have it stated among other things 
 that " he and his colleagues laid stress on the Con- 
 sular question's inseparable connection with the ques- 
 tion of the management of Foreign affairs. His 
 mistake and his great misfortune it was, that, under 
 Norwegian influence, he allowed himself, for a mo- 
 ment, to agree to a departure from his original 
 standpoint, and which found expression in the Com- 
 munique (of March, 1903). But he made good his 
 mistake for the greater part, and took up again 
 anew, and before it was too late, his old standpoint, 
 which was the only correct one. On the Norwe- 
 gians' refusal to treat the question of the Foreign 
 Administration in conjunction with the Consular 
 question,! Bostrom acted with inflexible logic — 
 in spite of Norwegian wrath — and continued to 
 demand the subordination of the separate Consuls 
 
 ' In the preliminary agreement of March 24, 1903, it is 
 stated and recognised by both countries, as an explicit condition 
 of negotiations, that only the arrangement of the Consular 
 service is to come under consideration, and that the question of 
 the Consuls' relations to the Foreign Office was to be shelved 
 as a matter not yet ripe for discussion. 
 
QUESTION OF THE CONSULAR SERVICE 81 
 
 to the Swedish Foreign Minister." In this way the 
 leading organ of the Swedish Aristocratic classes, 
 without shame, admits that Bostrom's action in 1904 
 was an open breach of agreement, or, to put it in 
 the words employed, a return "to his old stand- 
 point." 
 
VII 
 
 THE POLITICAL SITUATION WITHIN THE 
 UNION AT THE MOMENT 
 
 The Bostrom ministry, as a result of the astonish- 
 ing course it took, brought negotiations to a stand- 
 still by its breach of agreement, and lost an ex- 
 ceptional opportunity of bringing the two peoples 
 to a better understanding. Never in the later history 
 of the Union has there, at all events here in Norway, 
 been so great a desire for, or such great confidence 
 in, the possibility of coming to an agreement with 
 Sweden, and of getting rid of the questions at issue 
 between the two nations. Why negotiations were 
 broken off in this way, whereby everything that had 
 been done was destroyed, it is impossible to say ; 
 but of one thing we may be certain, and that is 
 that in Sweden it was not foreseen what would be 
 the possible effect on public opinion in Norway of 
 the Swedish Government's action. In Sweden it was 
 regarded as probable that the Norwegians were really 
 divided into parties incapable of acting together ; 
 
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 83 
 
 " they are a patient folk, and have been sat upon by 
 Sweden before ; they will also put up with this new 
 insult, even if they make a great fuss about it." 
 
 .In this, however, the Swedes were out of their 
 reckoning. From the day the Swedish Government's ^ 
 attitude to its agreement and its own proposal became 
 known in Norway, Norwegians have been practically 
 one party, united with a determination to repudiate 
 every Swedish encroachment, and to maintain its own 
 right as a Sovereign State. Every demand for deference 
 and conciliation had been amply met ; we have not 
 treated with Sweden on the question of our rights, but 
 in order to arrive at a friendly understanding ; all that 
 we have succeeded in obtaining has been, time after 
 time, to get issues protracted, often in a way rather 
 humiliating for us. That must all be ended now — 
 we have no choice. When an unwarrantable attempt 
 is made by Sweden to interfere in the business of 
 Norway, our duty must be to prevent it; our honour as 
 a nation and our independence demand that we shall 
 see this thing through, that we shall see to it that our 
 own right of action in our own affairs is respected. 
 Thus, and thus only, must the unanimity and deter- 
 mination of the Norwegians to establish a separate 
 Consular service be regarded ; the affair has be- 
 come a parting of the ways towards independence 
 or towards suicide. As we refuse to give up 
 voluntarily our sovereignty, so we are determined to 
 carry through this, our own affair, in spite of possible 
 
 G 2 
 
84 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 protest from Sweden ; we shall stand or fall by 
 our lawful rights. 
 
 An announcement of the termination of the 
 negotiations was made to Parliament by the Premier 
 (Hr. Hagerup) in a speech on Feb. 8, 1905, in which 
 he described the resulting state of affairs as very 
 critical, and the present state of the Union impossi- 
 ble. Among other things the Premier said that 
 " the task now, more than ever before, is, complete 
 and uncurtailed, to get established the conditions 
 under which Norway can occupy the international 
 and constitutional position belonging to it as a 
 Sovereign State, and which all Norwegians have 
 been and are unanimous in demanding." 
 
 Parliament thereupon appointed a special Com- 
 mittee which, on March 6, 1905, issued a preliminary 
 report, by a majority of 16 to 3, providing for the 
 establishment of a separate Consular service by Nor- 
 wegian law, to come into operation on April i, 1906, 
 at latest. After the negotiations were broken off, the 
 Hagerup ministry, which took office on a programme 
 of solving the question by negotiations with Sweden, 
 resigned, and a new ministry with Hr. Christian 
 Michelsen (who had been a member of the Hagerup 
 Government) as Premier, and composed of prominent 
 men of the different political parties, came into power. 
 In Parliament on March 15, 1905, Hr. Michelsen 
 sketched the new Government's programme as follows : 
 " On the basis of and in agreement with the Special 
 
THE POLITld^IrS#UATION 85 
 
 Committee's proposals of March 6, 1905, and in 
 co-operation with ParHament, to carry into effect 
 Norway's constitutional right to its own Norwegian 
 Consular service, and to maintain Norway's sovereignty 
 as a free and independent kingdom." " We know," 
 he continued, " that there stand with us a unanimous 
 and united Parliament, and a unanimous and united 
 people. That is the strength of our position. Nor- 
 wegians have no stronger desire than to be able to 
 live in peace and goodwill with everyone, and not 
 least with our Swedish neighbours, and thus to be 
 free to devote, the whole of our strength as a nation 
 to the development of our material resources, and to 
 that work of culture in which nowadays even the 
 smaller peoples can also make name and fame among 
 nations. And true as it is, that we Norwegians have a 
 national as well as an historical and constitutional 
 right to live our own life as a free people, it is, we 
 are convinced, just as certain that the united and in- 
 flexible determination of our people to make every 
 sacrifice in carrying out this our right by the 
 Norwegian constitution, will carry us forward to 
 the goal." 
 
 These words having been greeted with acclama- 
 tion — the whole Assembly rising — the President 
 said : " I believe I may venture to express, on behalf 
 of Parliament, the confident hope that there will 
 be complete and satisfactory co-operation between 
 Government and Parliament, and I express more- 
 
86 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 over the conviction that Parliament will render the 
 Government its continuous support in the solution 
 of the great and difficult problem which they both 
 have to face." 
 
 The Premier's declaration before the Norwegian 
 Parliament was answered in Sweden by the appoint- 
 ment of a " secret " Parliamentary Commission for 
 the consideration of the political situation resulting 
 from the breach of the negotiations. This Com- 
 mittee began to work under the direction of the 
 Crown Prince Regent of both countries, an arrange- 
 ment that was calculated to call forth neither satis- 
 faction nor confidence in Norway. 
 
 As the direct result of that secret Committee's 
 deliberations, it is supposed, the Crown Prince Regent, 
 on April 5, 1905, laid the following proposals before 
 a joint Norwegian-Swedish Council of State ; — " I 
 invite herewith the Governments of the united king- 
 doms on both sides, without bias in favour of already 
 adopted views, immediately to open free and friendly 
 negotiations for a new arrangement of all matters 
 concerning the Union which ought to be conducted 
 on the basis of complete equality between the two 
 kingdoms. The course which, I think, ought to be 
 taken, and which may, in my judgment, with the 
 exercise of goodwill on both sides, lead to a solution 
 of the difficulties completely satisfactory to all 
 parties, is as follows : — 
 
 "A joint Foreign Minister — Swede or Norwegian 
 
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 87 
 
 — responsible to both kingdoms, or to a joint institu- 
 tion' ; a separate Consular service for each kingdom, 
 but so arranged that the Consuls in everything that 
 concerns their relationship to foreign Powers be 
 placed under the direction and control of the Foreign 
 Minister. 
 
 " If during the negotiations another way of arranging 
 foreign affairs should be found, always retaining 
 a unity in their management as an indispensable 
 guarantee for the continuance of the Union, I hereby 
 declare myself prepared to take the course proposed 
 under my earnest consideration." 
 
 That proposal, which may to an onlooker at first 
 sight appear conciliatory and responsive to Nor- 
 wegian demands, looks less promising when seen in 
 the light of recent events. The negotiations we 
 entered upon with such great readiness and confi- 
 dence were simply broken off by the action of Sweden, 
 in spite of the fact that we had apparently every 
 possible guarantee through agreements and Royal 
 resolution to lead us to expect a satisfactory termi- 
 nation. And now we are invited to new negotiations 
 with the same Swedish ministry,^ but without the same 
 guarantees as we had before. What guarantee have 
 
 1 It is true that immediately after the publication of the above 
 proposals, the Premier, Hr. Bostrom, resigned, which fact 
 certainly evinced a certain amount of concession to Norway, 
 but the remainder of the Swedish ministers remained in office, 
 even the very ones who had been in entire agreement with 
 Bostrom and his proposals. 
 
88 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 we that all that could be obtained would not this time 
 also only mean delay ? Furthermore, the last Nor- 
 wegian-Swedish Union Committee worked for three 
 years, from 1895 — 1898, on a very similar basis with- 
 out being able to arrive at a conclusion ; the Swedish 
 proposals were not acceptable to any section of 
 the Norwegian Commissioners. Is there any pro- 
 bability of better agreement now? It also ap- 
 pears from the context that the new proposals ex- 
 clude the consideration of the separate Norwegian 
 Foreign Office, demanded on behalf of Norway. In 
 Norway these suggestions were, therefore, on every 
 hand regarded as merely an attempt to cause a delay 
 which would hinder Parliament in carrying through 
 our own Consular service. And that impression was 
 further strengthened by the remarkable fact that the 
 proposal was published in Sweden immediately after 
 the Council, and was telegraphed to the foreign Press, 
 in spite of the fact that the Protocol should not be 
 published before the Norwegian Government's con- 
 siderations had been received. To publish spontane- 
 ously a part of a Protocol before the other part was 
 to hand, appears in any case to be not very respectful 
 to the other country, and would scarcely have occurred 
 if the intention had been to agree upon conciliating 
 Norway's just demands. 
 
 In the Norwegian-Swedish Council of State on 
 April 25, 1905, the Norwegian Government, as a result 
 of having taken counsel of the Department of Justice, 
 
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 89 
 
 replied among other things that, " The Norwegian 
 nation, as it is known, has maintained a unanimous 
 demand for the establishment of a separate Norwe- 
 gian Consular service, and with the same unanimity 
 has maintained that the right of carrying out that 
 matter is reserved by the Norwegian Executive as 
 being excluded from the terms of community be- 
 tween the kingdoms, established by the Act of Union. 
 ... In so far as the proposal put forward in Council 
 may happen to be based on the presupposition that 
 the Consular question should be set aside, Norway's 
 agreement to such a proposition would, according to 
 the Department's views of the question, be synony- 
 mous with the abandonment of the Norwegian 
 people's unanimous demands now to have carried into 
 effect the right that belongs to Norway as a Sove- 
 reign State, and which is guaranteed by its Constitu- 
 tion — a reform, more and more required, in order to 
 develop its commerce — and instead to embark on 
 negotiations between the kingdoms which, in view of 
 repeated experience, must unfortunately be regarded 
 as likely to be barren of result, or at the best pro- 
 ductive of delay in carrying the matter through. It 
 cannot but be recognised that the proposal is not 
 essentially new, but that similar proposals have seve- 
 ral times before in the history of the Union been tried 
 in vain. The three Union Committees of Norwe- 
 gians and Swedes which have worked out proposals 
 during the last half century — 1844, 1867, 1898 — for 
 
90 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 the mutual relations of the two countries, have not 
 been successful in bringing about any positive 
 result." 
 
 After having discussed in more detail the unfortu- 
 nate fate of the deliberations of these Union Com- 
 mittees, and especially those of the last one (1895- 
 1898) the Government referred to the fact "that the 
 proposals for the arrangement of the Ministerial 
 Council, negotiated between the two Governments 
 in 1885-1886 and in 1890-1891, were likewise barren 
 of result." 
 
 " And while the efforts mentioned have turned out 
 so discouraging, this may be said in an even more 
 marked degree of the newly terminated negotiations " 
 concerning questions connected with the establishment 
 of separate Consular services. The Norwegian Govern- 
 ment, advised by the Department of Justice, pointed 
 out how these negotiations, which were entered 
 upon as the result of Swedish initiative, had been 
 wrecked as a result of " there being put forward, 
 and maintained, on behalf of Sweden, a series of 
 demands partly to be regarded as in opposition to 
 Norway's Constitution and its right as a Sovereign 
 State, partly as calculated to exclude the very points 
 agreed upon in the preliminaries, namely, that each 
 kingdom's Consuls should be placed under that 
 authority which the home country should decide 
 upon. This has given ground for great disappoint- 
 
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 91 
 
 ment in Norway, and if increased by a renewal of 
 similar unfortunate experiments, will threaten the 
 gravest danger to the good relations existent between 
 the two peoples, which in a much higher degree than 
 agreements and legal forms are the basis of the 
 peoples' unity and strength. 
 
 " Under these circumstances the Department must 
 dissent from the proposal to open afresh negotiations 
 for the consideration of the relationship in the 
 Union before the establishment of the Norwegian 
 Consular service shall have been carried out. This 
 accomplished, that confidence which is the condition 
 for every friendly and fruitful enquiry into difficult and 
 delicate relations in a Union will have revived, and the 
 Department will then be able to agree to the renewal 
 of negotiations for the conduct of foreign affairs 
 and diplomatic services, as well as the union based 
 on the ' Rigsakt ' " with the questions belonging 
 to it. But these negotiations must in that case be 
 carried out on a perfectly free basis, with complete 
 recognition of each kingdom's sovereignty and 
 without reservations or limitations of any kind 
 whatsoever, and must also — as in 1898 — include the 
 recommendations put forward on behalf of Norway 
 providing for a separate Foreign Office for Norway 
 and for Sweden on any principle which each of the 
 kingdoms may consider necessary for the safeguarding 
 of its interests and enterprises. 
 
92 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 " In agreement herewith it must withal be recog- 
 nised that in the event of these new negotiations 
 being barren of result, it will not be possible to return 
 to the old status quo of continuing the present im- 
 possible relationship in the Union. There must be a 
 binding agreement to the effect that the present state 
 of affairs shall not prevent in any way the exercise of 
 each of the kingdom's right of action, but that each 
 kingdom can, of its own accord, determine the form 
 of its future state as a nation. For no compulsory 
 union but only that of trust and sympathy between 
 two free and independent nations can secure both 
 peoples' future and fortune as well as the kingdoms' 
 independence and integrity." 
 
 The Swedish Government, in reply, stated among 
 other things : " As all thought of further negotiation is 
 now put aside by Norway until a separate Norwegian 
 Consular service shall have been established, and as, 
 in addition, there have been stated the conditions upon 
 which Norway is willing to carry on fresh negotiations 
 in the future, and which are incompatible with the 
 Union and the ' Rigsakt,' " it is apparent that negoti- 
 ations on the basis indicated " cannot for the time 
 being be carried on with advantage." The Norwegian 
 Government representatives present thereupon, in 
 reply, stated among other things that it was evident 
 from the Norwegian Government's deliberations 
 " that it is not the object of Norwegian action to 
 have the present Union dissolved. On the other 
 
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 93 
 
 hand it is maintained that there is occasion to con- 
 sider the prospect of such a dissolution, and that 
 negotiations which after acceptance by the executives 
 of both kingdoms also presupposes that eventuality, 
 are compatible with the 'Rigsakt.'" Upon the 
 Crown Prince Regent's resolution the matter was 
 then shelved. 
 
 What will happen now ? The Norwegian Parlia- 
 ment has unanimously carried a Bill for the establish- 
 ment of a separate Consular service ; what will happen 
 now depends a greal deal on the action of the Crown. 
 We Norwegians find it hard to think of the possibility 
 of the Norwegian Crown being able to refuse to 
 sanction a law that has been so unanimously demanded 
 by the Norwegian people and which with continually 
 increased support has carried every new Election 
 since 1892. Should such a thing happen, as in reality 
 has been suggested from some quarters, it cannot be 
 the result of Norwegian influence, but on account of 
 Swedish pressure. Such a possibility in a Norwegian 
 matter is not provided for in Norway's Constitution, 
 however, and it will in that case be impossible for the 
 King to get another Norwegian Government to take 
 the responsibility of such a state of things. But with- 
 out a responsible Government the irresponsible King 
 cannot govern or frame measures of government. If 
 the Crown takes advantage of its power of withholding 
 sanction it will have placed itself outside the bound- 
 aries of the Norwegian Constitution, by an attempt 
 
94 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 to introduce a system of personal autocracy without 
 constitutional advisers, which is in open conflict with 
 the principle and wording of our Constitution. It has 
 been said that there would in such a case be a revolu- 
 tion in Norway ; but under such circumstances it 
 would not be the Norwegian people that desired 
 the revolution, not the Parliament nor the Government 
 that had produced an upheaval. The fact of the 
 Norwegians demanding their own Consular service is 
 no revolution ; the fact that Norway's Parliament in 
 agreement therewith framed resolutions on the question 
 is no revolution ; that Norway's Government advises 
 the sanction of such resolutions and is not able to take 
 the responsibility of a refusal is no revolution. For 
 a Government does not make a revolution by simply 
 refusing to act against the interests of the country ; 
 neither is it a revolution if the Crown is unable to get a 
 new Government, for it is not possible to compel our 
 citizens to undertake to enter a ministry. But the 
 legally elected and the legally constituted National 
 Assembly cannot allow the countrj^ to remain without 
 a Government, and if the Crown put itself out of 
 action. Parliament must invite the former ministry to 
 remain in power and exercise the authority of a 
 Government as though the Crown were still existent. 
 That would of course not be a revolution ; it would 
 simply be doing what the circumstances dictate as 
 necessary. It is for the moment impossible to see 
 
96 NORWAY AND THE UNION WITH SWEDEN 
 
 to its help with all our might. But a strong and 
 strenuous union between the two countries can only 
 be built upon the two people's complete independence 
 and freedom of action, united together voluntarily. 
 Any Union in which the one people is restrained in 
 exercising its freedom is and will remain a danger. 
 
 THE END 
 
 K. Cl-AV AND SONS, LTD., BKEAD 5TKEET HILL E.C., AND BUNGAV, SUFFOLIC.