ception of the legal character of the Union. The most
extreme representatives of the so-called supremacy partizans--to
mention one, the late professor OSCAR ALIN--have on different occasions
maintained reform programmes, built on the principle of perfect equality
within the Union, and it must be asserted that _no Swedish political
party in recent times has refused perfect equality to Norway_[3:2].

[Sidenote: _The different programmes of Sweden and Norway for reforming
the Union._]

That the result seems to become the rupture of the Union, and not the
reorganization of the same has depended on more and more insurmountable
oppositions in opinions concerning _the manner_ and _the aim_ for a
reform.

Sweden has, as a rule, preferred the _entire_ reorganization, Norway the
_partial_--the consequence being, for instance, the struggles in the
so-called Stadtholder disputes in the sixties of the last century. Sweden
has held her standpoint, especially as she has considered it to the
interest of the Union to insist on creating perfect equality by
concessions also from Norway, and it seemed that these demands could not
gain sufficient consideration unless the reorganization was
complete[4:1].

Sweden has furthermore insisted on _negotiations_ and _agreements_, as
the natural road to reform; how Norway has more and more allowed herself
to take matters into her own hands, shall now be more clearly explained.

Above all, however, the differences of opinion respecting the _aim_ of
the reform have become more and more pronounced. Sweden has adhered to a
Union, which outworldly represents a perfect unity, and tried to create a
safe and secure Union. Norway has, by degrees, in her ever increasing
overwrought sensitiveness, developed her reform programme towards a
purely personal union, behind which the rupture of the Union has stood as
the main object in view.

The connection of the Norwegian Union with the inner party struggles in
Norway, has had a disastrous effect on the development of the Norwegian
programme, especially since 1885.

Through the Constitutional Crisis in 1884, when the Royal Powers were
forced--practically if not legally--to capitulate in essentials to
the orthodox parliamentarism, the Norwegian party champions became in
need of new programmes upon which to fling themselves. It was then, that
the Norwegian radicals through the demand for their own Minister of State
for Foreign Affairs cast a firebrand into th