„Neue Rheinische Zeitung“ – Agreement Debates

Agreement Debates

[„Neue Rheinische Zeitung“ No. 34, July 4, 1848]

Cologne
, July 2. After the tragedy, the idyll; after the thunder of the Paris June days, the drumming of the Berlin Agreement Deputies. We had quite lost sight of these gentlemen and now find that at the very moment when Cavaignac was cannonading the Faubourg St. Antoine, Herr Camphausen was delivering a melancholy farewell address and Herr Hansemann submitting the programme of the new ministry.

We note first of all with pleasure that Herr Hansemann has taken our advice <see “Das Kabinett Hansemann”> and has not become Prime Minister. He has recognised that it is greater to make Prime Ministers than to be Prime Minister.

The new ministry is and remains, despite the borrowing of the name (prête-nom) Auerswald, the ministry of Hansemann. It presents itself as such by setting itself up as the ministry of action, of execution. Herr Auerswald truly has no claim to be a minister of action!

The programme of Herr Hansemann is well known. We shall not go into its political points; they have already become fodder for the more or less small German newspapers. Only one point has not been ventured upon, and so that Herr Hansemann does not get short shrift, we shall take it up now.

Herr Hansemann declares:

“In order to stimulate gainful activity, and hence to remove the distress of the manual labouring classes, there is for the present no more efficacious means than the restoration of the weakened confidence in the maintenance of the legal order and the speedy firm establishment of the constitutional monarchy. By pursuing this goal with all our strength, we are thus most surely counteracting unemployment and distress.”

At the beginning of his programme Herr Hansemann had already said that he would for this purpose introduce new repressive laws, insofar as the old (police-state!) legislation was inadequate.

That is plain enough. The old despotic legislation is inadequate! It is not the Minister of Public Works, not the Minister of Finance, but the Minister of War whose department includes the relief of the distress of the labouring classes! Repressive laws in the first line, grapeshot and bayonets in the second—indeed, “there is no more efficacious means”! Does Herr Schreckenstein, whose bare name, after that Westphalian address, fills the agitators with terror, feel inclined to continue his Trier exploits and become a Cavaignac on a reduced Prussian scale?

But Herr Hansemann has other means besides this “most efficacious” one:

“But the procurement of employment through public works that bring real benefit to the country is likewise necessary for this purpose.”

Herr Hansemann will therefore “order still far more extensive works for the salvation of all gainful classes in the nation” than Herr Patow. But he will do this “as soon as the ministry succeeds in dispelling the fears, nourished by disturbances and incitements, of the overthrow of the political order, and in restoring the general confidence necessary for procuring the requisite financial means.”

Herr Hansemann cannot for the moment have any works undertaken because he cannot obtain money. He can obtain money only once confidence is restored. But as soon as confidence is restored, the workers, as he himself says, are employed, and the government no longer needs to provide employment.

In this by no means vicious but very bourgeois-virtuous circle revolve the measures of Herr Hansemann for the relief of distress. For the moment Herr Hansemann has nothing to offer the workers but September laws and a scaled-down Cavaignac. Indeed, that is a ministry of action!

We shall not go further into the recognition of the revolution in the programme. The “well-informed G correspondent” of the Kölnische Zeitung has already indicated to the public in what way Herr Hansemann has saved the legal basis for the benefit of neighbouring publicists. Herr Hansemann recognised in the revolution that it was fundamentally no revolution at all.

Hardly had Herr Hansemann finished when Prime Minister Auerswald rose, who also had to say something. He took out a written slip of paper and read out roughly the following, though it was sheer doggerel:

“Gentlemen! I’m happy today
In your midst to be staying,
Where so many noble souls at me
With love are loudly braying.

What I at this moment feel
Is boundless, without measure;
Ah! This lovely hour shall stay
For ever my dearest treasure.”

<H. Heine, “Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen”, Caput XII>

We note that in this we have given the most favourable interpretation to the rather unintelligible slip of the Prime Minister.

Hardly had Herr Auerswald finished when our Hansemann jumps up again to prove by a question of confidence that he is still the same old man. He demands that the draft address <see “Die Adreßfrage”> be referred back to the committee, and says:

“The reception met with by this first motion in the Assembly will provide a yardstick of the greater or lesser confidence with which the Honourable Assembly receives the new ministry.”

This was really going too far. Deputy Weichsel, undoubtedly a reader of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung <see “Lebens- und Sterbensfragen”>, dashes indignantly to the rostrum and expresses a resolute protest against this invariable method of the question of confidence. So far so good. But once a German has seized the floor, he does not relinquish it so quickly, and so Herr Weichsel now launched into a lengthy discourse on this and that, on the revolution, the year 1807 and the year 1815, on a warm heart under a smock-frock, and several other subjects. All this because “it was necessary for him to speak his mind”. A fearful uproar, mingled with a few bravos from the Left, forced the worthy man to descend from the rostrum.

Herr Hansemann assured the Assembly that it was by no means the intention of the ministry to raise questions of confidence lightly. Moreover, this time it was not a full question of confidence but only a half one, hence not worth wasting any more words on.

Now a debate ensues such as rarely occurs. Everybody talks at cross purposes, and the proceedings stray from the hundredth to the thousandth subject. Question of confidence, order of the day, rules of procedure, Polish nationality, adjournment with respective bravos and noises criss-crossed for a while. Finally Herr Parrisius observes that Herr Hansemann had moved a motion on behalf of the ministry, whereas the ministry as such could not put forward any motions at all, but only make communications.

Herr Hansemann replies: He had misspoken; the motion was fundamentally no motion, but merely a wish of the ministry.

The grand question of confidence thus reduces itself to a mere “wish” of the gentlemen ministers!

Herr Parrisius springs from the left side onto the rostrum. Herr Ritz from the right. They meet at the top. A collision is inevitable—neither of the two heroes wants to give way—whereupon the Chairman, Herr Esser, takes the floor and both heroes turn back.

Herr Zachariä makes the motion of the ministry his own and demands immediate debate. Herr Zachariä, the obliging henchman of this ministry as of the previous one, who also appeared as a saving angel with a timely amendment in connection with the Berends motion <see “Die Berliner Debatte über die Revolution”, p. 74>, finds nothing more to say in justification of his motion. What the Minister of Finance has said is perfectly sufficient.

A lengthy debate now ensues with the indispensable amendments, interruptions, drummings, rumblings and quibbles over the rules. We cannot be expected to guide our readers through this labyrinth; we can only open up to them some of the most delightful prospects in this confusion.

1. Deputy Waldeck instructs us: The address cannot be referred back to the committee, for the committee no longer exists.

2. Deputy Hüffer develops: The address is a reply not to the Crown, but to the ministers. The ministers who made the speech from the throne no longer exist; how then are we to reply to someone who no longer exists?

3. Deputy d’Ester draws the following conclusion from this in the form of an amendment: The Assembly desires to drop the address.

4. This amendment is disposed of by the Chairman, Esser, as follows: This proposal appears to be a new motion and not an amendment.

That is the whole skeleton of the debate. Around this thin skeleton, however, a mass of spongy flesh clusters in the shape of speeches by the honourable ministers Rodbertus and Kühlwetter, the honourable deputies Zachariä, Reichensperger II, etc.

The situation is in the highest degree bizarre. As Herr Rodbertus himself says, it is “unheard of in the history of parliaments that a ministry resigned while the draft address lay before the House and the debate on it was about to begin”! Prussia has the good fortune that in its first six parliamentary weeks almost nothing but “unheard of in the history of parliaments” things have occurred.

Herr Hansemann is in the same plight as the Chamber. The address, ostensibly a reply to the Camphausen-Hansemann speech from the throne, is to be in substance a reply to the Hansemann-Auerswald programme. The committee that was obliging towards Camphausen is therefore to show the same obligingness towards Herr Hansemann. The only difficulty is to get the people to accept this demand, which is “unheard of in the history of parliaments”. Every means is brought to bear. Rodbertus, that Aeolian harp of the Left Centre, murmurs his softest tones. Kühlwetter seeks to soothe on all sides; it was indeed possible that upon re-examination of the draft address one “might arrive at the conviction that even now no change needs to be made (!), but in order to gain this conviction” (!!) the draft must be referred back to the committee once more!

Finally Herr Hansemann, who is, as always, bored by this long debate, cuts the knot by stating outright why the draft is to go back to the committee: He does not want the new changes to slip in through the back door as ministerial amendments; they are to strut into the hall through the great double door with wings flung wide as committee proposals.

The Prime Minister declares it is necessary that “the ministry should participate in the draft address in a constitutional manner”. What this is supposed to mean and what constitutions Herr Auerswald has in mind thereby, we are unable to say even after long reflection. All the less so as Prussia at this moment has no constitution at all.

Only two speeches from the opposite side deserve mention: those of Herren d’Ester and Hüffer. Herr d’Ester has most successfully parodied Herr Hansemann’s programme by applying his earlier disparaging remarks about abstractions, useless principle disputes, etc., to the very abstract programme. D’Ester called on the ministry of action “finally to proceed to action and put aside questions of principle”. His motion, the only sensible one of the day, we have already mentioned above.

Herr Hüffer, who had stated the correct standpoint with regard to the address with the greatest sharpness, also formulated it with the greatest sharpness with regard to Herr Hansemann’s demand: The ministry demands that we, out of confidence in it, refer the address back to the committee, and makes its existence dependent on this decision. But the ministry can claim a vote of confidence only for actions it itself performs, not for actions it demands of the Assembly.

In short: Herr Hansemann demanded a confidence vote, and the Assembly, to spare Herr Hansemann an unpleasantness, voted its address committee an indirect censure. The honourable deputies will soon learn under the ministry of action what the famous Treasury Whip (ministerial whip) is.