СНАР. The party of progress in Germany. Its difficulties. proposed. These potentates, especially those of Northern Germany, were for the most part possessed by the same reactionary feelings as their two great neighbours; their rule was harsh and repressive, conceding little or nothing to the demands of their subjects, and prepared, especially after their alarms had been renewed by the revolution of 1830 in France, to check the most harmless expressions of the aspiration for national unity. Such unity now appeared further off than ever. While the old Empire lasted, princes and peoples owned one common head in the Emperor, and lived under a constitution which had descended, however modified, from the days when the nation formed a single powerful state. Now, by the mediatization of the lesser principalities, the extinction of the Knights of the Empire (Reichsritterschaft), the absorption of all the free cities save four, the class which had formed a link between the princes and the mass of the nation had been removed; the sovereigns had, in becoming fewer, become more isolated and more independent; they were members rather of the European than of the German commonwealth. Those moral effects of the War of Liberation, from which so much had at first been hoped, now seemed to have been lost utterly and for ever. Meanwhile the German liberals laboured under the immense difficulty of having no legitimate and constitutional mode of agitation, no lever, so to speak, by which they could move the mass of their countrymen. They were mere speakers and writers, because there was nothing else for them to do; dreamers and theorists, as unthinking people in more fortunate countries called them, because the field of practical politics was closed to them. In only a few of the states did representative assemblies exist; and these were too small and too limited in their powers to be able to stimulate the political interests of their constituents. XXIII. Prussia herself had no parliament of the whole monarchy CHAP. until 1847 up to that year there had been only local Landes-Stände, estates or diets for the several provinces. The liberal party had two objects to struggle for-the Its aims: establishment or extension of free institutions in the sev- establishment of constitueral states, and the attainment of national unity. As re- tional gov spects the first of these, it may be remarked that the mere ernment. passion for freedom in the abstract has never produced a great popular movement. Long habit has made Englishmen, Swiss, and Americans think liberty essential to national happiness; yet liberty has in general been desired rather as a means than as an end: and there must always exist, in order to rouse a nation to disaffection or insurrection, either such a withdrawal of rights previously enjoyed as wounds its pride and its conservative feeling, or else the infliction by the governing power of positive evils which affect the subject in his daily life, his religion, his social and domestic relations. Now in Germany, and particularly in the Prussian State, such liberties had not been known since primitive times; and there were few serious practical grievances to be complained of. From the time of Frederick the Great Prussia had been well and honestly administered. Conscience was free, trade and industry were growing, taxation was not heavy, the press censorship did not annoy the ordinary citizen, and the other restraints upon personal freedom were only those to which the subjects of all the Continental monarchies had been accustomed. The habit of submission was strong; and there existed over most of Germany a good deal of loyalty, unreasoning perhaps, but not therefore the less powerful, towards the long-descended reigning houses. In several of the petty states there was indeed serious misgovernment, and an arbitrary behaviour on the sovereign's part which might well have provoked revolt. Hessen-Cassel, CHAP. Attainment of national unity. for instance, was ruled by the unworthy minions of a singu- In labouring for the creation of one united German state out of the multitude of petty principalities, the party of progress found themselves at a still greater disadvantage. There was indeed a desire for it, but only a sentimental desire; an idea which worked powerfully upon imaginative minds, but had little hold on the world of fact and reality, little charm for the steady-going burgher and the peasant whose vision was bounded by his own valley. Practical benefits might no doubt have been expected from its realization, such as the establishment of a common code of laws, the better execution of great public works, the protection of the nation from the aggressions of France and Russia; but these were objects whose importance it was hard to bring home to the average citizen in peaceful times. The seven millions of Germans who owned allegiance to Austria presented a constant difficulty. They were nearly all Roman Catholics. They had in the course of centuries drifted away from their brethren to the north and west. They m On the death of William IV (of Great Britain) Hanover passed to his brother Ernest as heir male. * had comparatively little sympathy with liberal ideas in CHAP. politics, and they had stood outside the main current of XXIII. German literary developement. Yet they were of Teutonic stock, and in any scheme for the national union of all Germany room must be found for them. And where was the movement towards German unity to begin? Not in the Federal Diet, of all places, for it consisted of the envoys of princes who would have been the first to suffer. Not in the local legislatures, for they had no power to deal effectively with such questions, and would speedily have been silenced had they attempted by discussion to influence the policy of their masters. It was therefore only through the carefully guarded press, and occasionally in social or literary gatherings, that appeals to the nation could be made, or the semblance of an agitation kept up. There was no point to start from it was all aspiration and nothing more; and so this movement, to which so many of the noblest hearts and intellects of Germany devoted themselves (though the two greatest stood aloof), made during many years little apparent progress. A Customs Union (Zollverein) was indeed created, A.D. 1833-1835, which eventually came to include all the German States except Austria, and a tie thereby established whose material advantages were soon felt; but this was done by the individual action of Prussia and the several States which one after another entered into her views, not by the Diet as a national work. Meanwhile the strictness of the repressive system was still maintained: Prussia, though now ruled by the more liberal A.D. 1840 Frederick William the Fourth, was still silent: the influence of Metternich was still supreme. Then came the revolution of 1848. The monarchy of Louis Philippe fell with a crash that sounded over Europe, *Constitutions of some sort existed in most of the German States. CHAP. XXIII. The Revolution of 1848. and every German and Italian throne rocked to its foundation. In Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, and Munich, not to speak of smaller capitals, there came, sooner or later, risings more or less formidable; more popular constitutions were promised or granted by the terrified princes: the Federal Diet, after a hasty declaration in favour of the liberties it had so long withheld, made way for a national Parliament, which was duly summoned, and met at Frankfort on the 18th of May, 1848. As the king of Prussia, cherishing a sentimental respect for Austria together with a natural dislike to revolution, refused to accept leadership, this assembly appointed as Administrator of the Empire (Reichsverweser) the Archduke John of Austria, while the Diet, joining in this appointment of the Archduke, virtually abdicated its functions. Then the Assembly set to work to frame a constitution for united Germany. According to the draft, completed early in 1849, Germany was to be a federal state, under a hereditary Emperor, irresponsible, but advised by responsible ministers; and with a parliament of two houses, one representing the states, members of the Empire; the other the people. On the 28th of March the Assembly offered the imperial dignity to the king of Prussia." He hesitated to accept it without the consent of the other sovereigns; and In 1847, when things seemed quiet enough, Frederick William IV had opened negotiations with Austria with a view to improving the constitution of the Confederation, and making better provision for common defence and for internal communications. In the Berlin revolution of March, 1848, he had no doubt behaved with irresolution, but had shewn some real sympathy for the people. And this he felt. He heartily desired both the wellbeing and, to a certain extent, the freedom of his own Prussia and the greatness of Germany; but he was unhappily entangled with notions of divine right and various other mediaeval whimsies and sentiments. See as to this period Bismarck's Reflections and Reminiscences, vol. i. ch. ii. A German Parliament had been demanded in October, 1847, by a congress of constitutional reformers, and a resolution to that effect submitted in the |