upon his Mediaeval propensities, very soon found out that he could not
continue to reign without making some slight concession to the popular
outcry for that "Representation of the People," which, as the last
remnant of the long-forgotten promises of 1813 and 1815, had been
embodied in the law of 1820. He found the least objectionable mode of
satisfying this untoward law in calling together the Standing
Committees of the Provincial Diets. The Provincial Diets had been
instituted in 1823. They consisted for every one of the eight
provinces of the kingdom:--(1) Of the higher nobility, the formerly
sovereign families of the German Empire, the heads of which were
members of the Diet by birthright. (2) Of the representatives of the
knights, or lower nobility. (3) Of representatives of towns. (4) Of
deputies of the peasantry, or small farming class. The whole was
arranged in such a manner that in every province the two sections of
the nobility always had a majority of the Diet. Every one of these
eight Provincial Diets elected a Committee, and these eight Committees
were now called to Berlin in order to form a Representative Assembly
for the purpose of voting the much-desired loan. It was stated that
the Treasury was full, and that the loan was required, not for current
wants, but for the construction of a State railway. But the united
Committees gave the King a flat refusal, declaring themselves
incompetent to act as the representatives of the people, and called
upon His Majesty to fulfil the promise of a Representative
Constitution which his father had given, when he wanted the aid of the
people against Napoleon.
The sitting of the united Committees proved that the spirit of
opposition was no longer confined to the bourgeoisie. A part of the
peasantry had joined them, and many nobles, being themselves large
farmers on their own properties, and dealers in corn, wool, spirits,
and flax, requiring the same guarantees against absolutism,
bureaucracy, and feudal restoration, had equally pronounced against
the Government, and for a Representative Constitution. The King's plan
had signally failed; he had got no money, and had increased the power
of the opposition. The subsequent sitting of the Provincial Diets
themselves was still more unfortunate for the King. All of them asked
for reforms, for the fulfilment of the promises of 1813 and 1815, for
a Constitution and a Free Press; the resolutions to this effect of
some of them were rather disrespectfully worded, and the ill-humored
replies of the exasperated King made the evil still greater.
In the meantime, the financial difficulties of the Government went on
increasing. For a time, abatements made upon the moneys appropriated
for the different public services, fraudulent transactions with the
"Seehandlung," a commercial establishment speculating and trading for
account and risk of the State, and long since acting as its
money-broker, had sufficed to keep up appearances; increased issues of
State paper-money had furnished some resources; and the secret, upon
the whole, had been pretty well kept. But all these contrivances were
soon exhausted. There was another plan tried: the establishment of a
bank, the capital of which was to be furnished partly by the State and
partly by private shareholders; the chief direction to belong to the
State, in such a manner as to enable the Government to draw upon the
funds of this bank to a large amount, and thus to repeat the same
fraudulent transactions that would no longer do with the
"Seehandlung." But, as a matter of course, there were no capitalists
to be found who would hand over their money upon such conditions; the
statutes of the bank had to be altered, and the property of the
shareholders guaranteed from the encroachments of the Treasury, before
any shares were subscribed for. Thus, this plan having failed, there
remained nothing but to try a loan, if capitalists could be found who
would lend their cash without requiring the permission and guarantee
of that mysterious "future Representation of the People." Rothschild
was applied to, and he declared that if the loan was to be guaranteed
by this "Representation of the People," he would undertake the thing
at a moment's notice--if not, he could not have anything to do with
the transaction.
Thus every hope of obtaining money had vanished, and there was no
possibility of escaping the fatal "Representation of the People."
Rothschild's refusal was known in autumn, 1846, and in February of the
next year the King called together all the eight Provincial Diets to
Berlin, forming them into one "United Diet." This Diet was to do the
work required, in case of need, by the law of 1820; it was to vote
loans and increased taxes, but beyond that it was to have no rights.
Its voice upon general legislation was to be merely consultative; it
was to assemble, not at fixed periods, but whenever it pleased the
King; it was to discuss nothing but what the Government pleased to
lay before it. Of course, the members were very little satisfied with
the part they were expected to perform. They repeated the wishes they
had enounced when they met in the provincial assembles; the relations
between them and the Government soon became acrimonious, and when the
loan, which was again stated to be required for railway constructions,
was demanded from them, they again refused to grant it.
This vote very soon brought their sitting to a close. The King, more
and more exasperated, dismissed them with a reprimand, but still
remained without money. And, indeed, he had every reason to be alarmed
at his position, seeing that the Liberal League, headed by the middle
classes, comprising a large part of the lower nobility, and all the
different sections of the lower orders--that this Liberal League was
determined to have what it wanted. In vain the King had declared, in
the opening speech, that he would never, never grant a Constitution in
the modern sense of the word; the Liberal League insisted upon such a
modern, anti-feudal, Representative Constitution, with all its
sequels, Liberty of the Press, Trial by Jury, etc.; and before they
got it, not a farthing of money would they grant. There was one thing
evident: that things could not go on long in this manner, and that
either one of the parties must give way, or that a rupture--a bloody
struggle--must ensue. And the middle classes knew that they were on
the eve of a revolution, and they prepared themselves for it. They
sought to obtain by every possible means the support of the working
class of the towns, and of the peasantry in the agricultural
districts, and it is well known that there was, in the latter end of
1847, hardly a single prominent political character among the
bourgeoisie who did not proclaim himself a "Socialist," in order to
insure to himself the sympathy of the proletarian class. We shall see
these "Socialists" at work by and by.
This eagerness of the leading bourgeoisie to adopt, at least the
outward show of Socialism, was caused by a great change that had come
over the working classes of Germany. There had been ever since 1840 a
fraction of German workmen, who, travelling in France and Switzerland,
had more or less imbibed the crude Socialist or Communist notions then
current among the French workmen. The increasing attention paid to
similar ideas in France ever since 1840 made Socialism and Communism
fashionable in Germany also, and as far back as 1843, all newspapers
teemed with discussions of social questions. A school of Socialists
very soon formed itself in Germany, distinguished more for the
obscurity than for the novelty of its ideas; its principal efforts
consisted in the translation of French Fourierist, Saint-Simonian, and
other doctrines into the abstruse language of German philosophy. The
German Communist school, entirely different from this sect, was formed
about the same time.
In 1844, there occurred the Silesian weavers' riots, followed by the
insurrection of the calico printers of Prague. These riots, cruelly
suppressed, riots of working men not against the Government, but
against their employers, created a deep sensation, and gave a new
stimulus to Socialist and Communist propaganda amongst the working
people. So did the bread riots during the year of famine, 1847. In
short, in the same manner as Constitutional Opposition rallied around
its banner the great bulk of the propertied classes (with the
exception of the large feudal land-holders), so the working classes of
the larger towns looked for their emancipation to the Socialist and
Communist doctrines, although, under the then existing Press laws,
they could be made to know only very little about them. They could not
be expected to have any very definite ideas as to what they wanted;
they only knew that the programme of the Constitutional bourgeoisie
did not contain all they wanted, and that their wants were no wise
contained in the Constitutional circle of ideas.
There was then no separate Republican party in Germany. People were
either Constitutional Monarchists, or more or less clearly defined
Socialists or Communists.
With such elements the slightest collision must have brought about a
great revolution. While the higher nobility and the older civil and
military officers were the only safe supports of the existing system;
while the lower nobility, the trading middle classes, the
universities, the school-masters of every degree, and even part of
the lower ranks of the bureaucracy and military officers were all
leagued against the Government; while behind these there stood the
dissatisfied masses of the peasantry, and of the proletarians of the
large towns, supporting, for the time being, the Liberal Opposition,
but already muttering strange words about taking things into their own
hands; while the bourgeoisie was ready to hurl down the Government,
and the proletarians were preparing to hurl down the bourgeoisie in
its turn; this Government went on obstinately in a course which must
bring about a collision. Germany was, in the beginning of 1848, on the
eve of a revolution, and this revolution was sure to come, even had
the French Revolution of February not hastened it.
What the effects of this Parisian Revolution were upon Germany we
shall see in our next.
LONDON, September, 1851.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] "The Rhenish Gazette." This paper was published at Cologne, as the
organ of the Liberal leaders, Hansemann and Camphausen. Marx
contributed certain articles on the Landtag, which created so great a
sensation that he was offered in 1842--although only 24 years of
age--the editorship of the paper. He accepted the offer, and then
began his long fight with the Prussian Government. Of course the paper
was published under the supervision of a censor, but he, good, easy
man, was hopelessly outwitted by the young firebrand. So the
Government sent a second "special" censor from Berlin, but the double
censorship proved unequal to the task, and in 1843 the paper was
suppressed.
III.
THE OTHER GERMAN STATES.
NOVEMBER 6th, 1851.
In our last we confined ourselves almost exclusively to that State
which, during the years 1840 to 1848, was by far the most important in
the German movement, namely, to Prussia. It is, however, time to pass
a rapid glance over the other States of Germany during the same
period.
As to the petty States, they had, ever since the revolutionary
movements of 1830, completely passed under the dictatorship of the
Diet, that is of Austria and Prussia. The several Constitutions,
established as much as a means of defence against the dictates of the
larger States, as to insure popularity to their princely authors, and
unity to heterogeneous Assemblies of Provinces, formed by the Congress
of Vienna, without any leading principle whatever--these
Constitutions, illusory as they were, had yet proved dangerous to the
authority of the petty princes themselves during the exciting times of
1830 and 1831. They were all but destroyed; whatever of them was
allowed to remain was less than a shadow, and it required the
loquacious self-complacency of a Welcker, a Rotteck, a Dahlmann, to
imagine that any results could possibly flow from the humble
opposition, mingled with degrading flattery, which they were allowed
to show off in the impotent Chambers of these petty States.
The more energetic portion of the middle class in these smaller
States, very soon after 1840, abandoned all the hopes they had
formerly based upon the development of Parliamentary government in
these dependencies of Austria and Prussia. No sooner had the Prussian
bourgeoisie and the classes allied to it shown a serious resolution to
struggle for Parliamentary government in Prussia, than they were
allowed to take the lead of the Constitutional movement over all
non-Austrian Germany. It is a fact which now will not any longer be
contested, that the nucleus of those Constitutionalists of Central
Germany, who afterwards seceded from the Frankfort National Assembly,
and who, from the place of their separate meetings, were called the
Gotha party, long before 1848 contemplated a plan which, with little
modification, they in 1849 proposed to the representatives of all
Germany. They intended a complete exclusion of Austria from the German
Confederation, the establishment of a new Confederation, with a new
fundamental law, and with a Federal Parliament, of the more
insignificant States into the larger ones. All this was to be carried
out the moment Prussia entered into the ranks of Constitutional
Monarchy, established the Liberty of the Press, assumed a policy
independent from that of Russia and Austria, and thus enabled the
Constitutionalists of the lesser States to obtain a real control over
their respective Governments. The inventor of this scheme was
Professor Gervinus, of Heidelberg (Baden). Thus the emancipation of
the Prussian bourgeoisie was to be the signal for that of the middle
classes of Germany generally, and for an alliance, offensive and
defensive of both against Russia and Austria, for Austria was, as we
shall see presently, considered as an entirely barbarian country, of
which very little was known, and that little not to the credit of its
population; Austria, therefore, was not considered as an essential
part of Germany.
As to the other classes of society, in the smaller States they
followed, more or less rapidly, in the wake of their equals in
Prussia. The shopkeeping class got more and more dissatisfied with
their respective Governments, with the increase of taxation, with the
curtailments of those political sham-privileges of which they used to
boast when comparing themselves to the "slaves of despotism" in
Austria and Prussia; but as yet they had nothing definite in their
opposition which might stamp them as an independent party, distinct
from the Constitutionalism of the higher bourgeoisie. The
dissatisfaction among the peasantry was equally growing, but it is
well known that this section of the people, in quiet and peaceful
times, will never assert its interests and assume its position as an
independent class, except in countries where universal suffrage is
established. The working classes in the trades and manufactures of
the towns commenced to be infected with the "poison" of Socialism and
Communism, but there being few towns of any importance out of Prussia,
and still fewer manufacturing districts, the movement of this class,
owing to the want of centres of action and propaganda, was extremely
slow in the smaller States.
Both in Prussia and in the smaller States the difficulty of giving vent
to political opposition created a sort of religious opposition in the
parallel movements of German Catholicism and Free Congregationalism.
History affords us numerous examples where, in countries which enjoy
the blessings of a State Church, and where political discussion is
fettered, the profane and dangerous opposition against the worldly
power is hid under the more sanctified and apparently more
disinterested struggle against spiritual despotism. Many a Government
that will not allow of any of its acts being discussed, will hesitate
before it creates martyrs and excites the religious fanaticism of the
masses. Thus in Germany, in 1845, in every State, either the Roman
Catholic or the Protestant religion, or both, were considered part and
parcel of the law of the land. In every State, too, the clergy of
either of those denominations, or of both, formed an essential part of
the bureaucratic establishment of the Government. To attack Protestant
or Catholic orthodoxy, to attack priestcraft, was then to make an
underhand attack upon the Government itself. As to the German
Catholics, their very existence was an attack upon the Catholic
Governments of Germany, particularly Austria and Bavaria; and as such
it was taken by those Governments. The Free Congregationalists,
Protestant Dissenters, somewhat resembling the English and American
Unitarians, openly professed their opposition to the clerical and
rigidly orthodox tendency of the King of Prussia and his favourite
Minister for the Educational and Clerical Department, Mr. Eickhorn.
The two new sects, rapidly extending for a moment, the first in
Catholic, the second in Protestant countries, had no other distinction
but their different origin; as to their tenets, they perfectly agreed
upon this most important point--that all definite dogmas were
nugatory. This want of any definition was their very essence; they
pretended to build that great temple under the roof of which all
Germans might unite; they thus represented, in a religious form,
another political idea of the day--that of German unity, and yet they
could never agree among themselves.
The idea of German unity, which the above-mentioned sects sought to
realize, at least, upon religious ground, by inventing a common
religion for all Germans, manufactured expressly for their use,
habits, and taste--this idea was, indeed, very widely spread,
particularly in the smaller States. Ever since the dissolution of the
German Empire by Napoleon, the cry for a union of all the _disjecta
membra_ of the German body had been the most general expression of
discontent with the established order of things, and most so in the
smaller States, where costliness of a court, an administration, an
army, in short, the dead weight of taxation, increased in a direct
ratio with the smallness and impotency of the State. But what this
German unity was to be when carried out was a question upon which
parties disagreed. The bourgeoisie, which wanted no serious
revolutionary convulsion, were satisfied with what we have seen they
considered "practicable," namely a union of all Germany, exclusive of
Austria, under the supremacy of a Constitutional Government of
Prussia; and surely, without conjuring dangerous storms, nothing more
could, at that time, be done. The shopkeeping class and the peasantry,
as far as these latter troubled themselves about such things, never
arrived at any definition of that German unity they so loudly
clamoured after; a few dreamers, mostly feudalist reactionists, hoped
for the re-establishment of the German Empire; some few ignorant,
_soi-disant_ Radicals, admiring Swiss institutions, of which they had
not yet made that practical experience which afterwards most
ludicrously undeceived them, pronounced for a Federated Republic; and
it was only the most extreme party which, at that time, dared
pronounce for a German Republic, one and indivisible. Thus, German
unity was in itself a question big with disunion, discord, and, in the
case of certain eventualities, even civil war.
To resume, then; this was the state of Prussia, and the smaller States
of Germany, at the end of 1847. The middle class, feeling their
power, and resolved not to endure much longer the fetters with which
a feudal and bureaucratic despotism enchained their commercial
transactions, their industrial productivity, their common action as a
class; a portion of the landed nobility so far changed into producers
of mere marketable commodities, as to have the same interests and to
make common cause with the middle class; the smaller trading class,
dissatisfied, grumbling at the taxes, at the impediments thrown in the
way of their business, but without any definite plan for such reforms
as should secure their position in the social and political body; the
peasantry, oppressed here by feudal exactions, there by money-lenders,
usurers, and lawyers; the working people of the towns infected with
the general discontent, equally hating the Government and the large
industrial capitalists, and catching the contagion of Socialist and
Communist ideas; in short, a heterogeneous mass of opposition,
springing from various interests, but more or less led on by the
bourgeoisie, in the first ranks of which again marched the bourgeoisie
of Prussia, and particularly of the Rhine Province. On the other hand,
Governments disagreeing upon many points, distrustful of each other,
and particularly of that of Prussia, upon which yet they had to rely
for protection; in Prussia a Government forsaken by public opinion,
forsaken by even a portion of the nobility, leaning upon an army and a
bureaucracy which every day got more infected by the ideas, and
subjected to the influence, of the oppositional bourgeoisie--a
Government, besides all this, penniless in the most literal meaning of
the word, and which could not procure a single cent to cover its
increasing deficit, but by surrendering at discretion to the
opposition of the bourgeoisie. Was there ever a more splendid position
for the middle class of any country, while it struggled for power
against the established Government?
LONDON, September, 1851.
IV.
AUSTRIA.
NOVEMBER 7th, 1851.
We have now to consider Austria; that country which, up to March,
1848, was sealed up to the eyes of foreign nations almost as much as
China before the late war with England.
As a matter of course, we can here take into consideration nothing but
German Austria. The affairs of the Polish, Hungarian, or Italian
Austrians do not belong to our subject, and as far as they, since
1848, have influenced the fate of the German Austrians, they will have
to be taken into account hereafter.