* Cologne, February 3. We learn from a most reliable source that before the opening of the Chamber the Brandenburg ministry will resign and Herr Camphausen will confront the Chambers at their opening as the new prime minister.

We were certain that something of the kind was in the offing when a few days ago the local friends of the seasoned statesman spread the rumour that he was weary of political activity:

Ah, I am weary of this driving;
What means all the pain, all the joy?
Sweet peace,
Come, oh come into my breast!

and that he therefore wished to withdraw once more into his quiet domestic life, in order to confine his meditations to the less exciting sphere of speculation in tallow.

Every discerning person must have seen it clearly: Herr Camphausen felt the need to let himself be called upon once again to save the Crown, and, “moved by his own magnanimity,” to play for the second time the role of “midwife to the constitutional throne” with well-known decorum.

The bourgeois Chamber opposition will exult over this parliamentary “victory.” The Germans are forgetful and easy to forgive. The same Left that opposed Herr Camphausen last year will gratefully welcome his assumption of office as a great concession by the Crown.

In order, however, that the people may not once again allow itself to be deceived, let us briefly recapitulate the principal great deeds of the thoughtful statesman.

Herr Camphausen resurrected the United Diet, which had been buried on 18 March, and agreed certain foundations of the future constitution with it.

Herr Camphausen thereby established the legal basis, i.e. the indirect denial of the revolution.

Herr Camphausen further blessed us with indirect elections.

Herr Camphausen once more disavowed the revolution in one of its main results by turning the flight of the Prince of Prussia into a study trip and recalling him from London.

Herr Camphausen organised the civic guard from the outset in such a way that it became, instead of an arming of the people, a class armament, and placed people and civic guard in mutual hostility.

Herr Camphausen at the same time tolerated the reconstitution of the old Prussian bureaucracy and army, which grew daily more capable of preparing counter-revolutionary coups d’état.

Herr Camphausen allowed the memorable shrapnel massacres to be perpetrated against Polish peasants who were practically unarmed.

Herr Camphausen began the Danish war in order to get rid of patriotic superabundant strength and to make the Prussian Guard popular again. Once this purpose was achieved, he helped to the best of his ability to push through the filthy Armistice of Malmö in Frankfurt, which was necessary for Wrangel’s march on Berlin.

Herr Camphausen confined himself to abolishing a few reactionary old Prussian laws in the Rhine Province, but left the entire police-state legislation of the General Land Law in force in all the old provinces.

Herr Camphausen was the first to intrigue against the unity of Germany—at that time still decidedly revolutionary—firstly by summoning his Berlin Agreement Parliament alongside the Frankfurt National Assembly, and later by working by every means against the decisions and the influence of the Frankfurt Assembly.

Herr Camphausen demanded of his assembly that it restrict its constituent mandate to a purely “agreeing” one.

Herr Camphausen further demanded of it the issuing of an address to the Crown in which it acknowledged this—as though it were a constitutional chamber that could be adjourned and dissolved at pleasure.

Herr Camphausen further demanded of it the disavowal of the revolution and even turned this into a cabinet question.

Herr Camphausen laid before his assembly that draft constitution which stands approximately on a level with the imposed constitution and which at the time provoked a general storm of indignation.

Herr Camphausen prided himself on having been the minister of mediation, which mediation was none other than that between the Crown and the bourgeoisie for the joint betrayal of the people.

Herr Camphausen finally resigned when this betrayal was fully mediated and ripe to be put into practice by the ministry of action and its constables.

Herr Camphausen became envoy to the so-called Central Authority, and remained so under all ministries. He remained envoy while Croatian, Ruthenian and Wallachian troops violated German territory in Vienna, shot the foremost city of Germany in flames and treated it more outrageously than any Tilly treated Magdeburg. He remained envoy and lifted not a finger.

Herr Camphausen remained envoy under Brandenburg, thus took his share in the Prussian counter-revolution, and lent his name to the latest Prussian circular note, which openly and undisguisedly demands the restoration of the old Federal Diet.

Finally, Herr Camphausen now takes over the ministry in order to cover the retreat of the counter-revolutionaries and to secure for us for a longer period the achievements of November and December.

Such are some of Camphausen’s great deeds. If he now becomes minister, he will hasten to enlarge the list. We, for our part, shall keep book and account of it as precisely as possible.