We are indebted to the far-reaching correspondence of the Times,
this week, for some intelligence from Sweden ; a country in the concerns of which Englishmen generally take little interest, and of which they consequently know but little. The following is an extract from a letter dated Stockholm, October 17.
"This country is approaching to a crisis, and to such a one as the spirit of the times must operate on the elements of which it is composed. The symptoms are strikingly displayed by a general uneasiness, and a strong spirit of inquisitiveness about business of public importance, and the doings of public characters; but without finding as yet its proper vent, exhausting itself in dissatisfaction and invectives about persons and things at home, and following with an anxious curiosity the spirit and course of affairs abroad. In the mean time, there appear a few persons who give indications of a more determined opposition to the body of Bureaucrane which oppresses the country and its Sovereign with an overwhelming weight, and which is perhaps more difficult to break down than a real aristocracy. Of such there is none at all now to be found in Sweden, as all the avenues to power, or emanations from it, are, from the remotest to the highest step, occupied by the ruling influence,and thus the very road to a gradual reform is obstructed at every step, and by a strongly-united interest, extending through the clergy and laymen to almost every family in the,realm. The unfitness of our antiquated form of national representation, and of our unwieldy institutions, where every branch of administration and of business is subject to corporations' is grown, however, too evident; and its tottering state is indicated by the freedom of tpeech displayed on the subject, sturdily by the lower and middling classes, by the younger employ& themselves, and the doubts and waverings of the leading ones, who feel their situation safe neither on the score of principle nor of public opinion, and its influence on the whole system. Nevertheless, they do all they can to keep up the idea of the present state of things being the best possible."
The writer goes on to say, that the press is poor in purse and spirit; that it is saucy and libellous when it intends to be independent; and that it is decidedly under the control of the Bureaucratic, or Government officials. Tne country generally is labouring under financial difficulties. A new Diet is to meet in January, from whose proceedings much is expected. The letter Concludes with the remark—we have no doubt a perfectly correct one—that the Russian Legation at Stockholm "is particularly -active and enterprising, and full of intrigue." Where is that 'Russian Legation for which the same character will not serve?
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