reign matters which concerned Norway. In 1839
the first great Union-Committee was formed, and both in this one, and two
later--the last 1895-98--Norway was offered from the Swedish side
complete equality in the Union on certain conditions. Added to this
Sweden has on several occasions granted partial concessions. Some have
been accepted by Norway--as for instance the law passed in 1844
concerning equality in Government Symbols etc. etc.--others again were
refused--as the offer in 1885 and 1891 of increased influence in the
administration of Foreign affairs. If offers of equality worded in more
general terms are added--as in 1893 and during the present year--,
NANSEN'S characterising Sweden's Union policy as "90 years' labour to
procure a supremacy for Sweden",--ought to appear in its true
colours[2:1].

[Sidenote: _Unauthorized accusations against Sweden for endeavouring to
gain the supremacy._]

The accusations against Sweden for endeavouring to acquire the supremacy
have, time after time, arisen from a mixture of various matters, partly
the different conceptions of the legal character of the existing Union,
partly the different programmes for the reformation of the Union.

Owing to the very indistinct and confused wording in the legal documents
of the Act of Union the Swedish and Norwegian conceptions of the Union
itself have finally become so antagonistic to each other, that the
unionistic transactions have, in an excessive degree, taken the character
of a continual judicial process, and the real questions have been more or
less ignored[2:2]. Swedish Policy on its part has always maintained that
Sweden's supremacy in the Union is based on legal grounds. It has
especially insisted that the administration of Foreign affairs was, from
the first, placed in Sweden's hands[2:3], and this Swedish standpoint has
also been acknowledged as the right one by the most eminent of Norwegian
writers on State law[3:1]. But of late those on the Norwegian Left Side
have made stronger and stronger efforts to prove, that the order existed
on no legal grounds, that Norway, as a Sovereign Kingdom, had the right,
for instance, to create an entire Foreign Office of its own. And under
this influence the Norwegian sensitiveness has in Sweden's defence of her
conception of Union Law persisted more and more in seeing insulting
"designs of supremacy".

Meanwhile future prospects and reform programmes have had little to do
with the Swedish con