"Neue Rheinische Zeitung" - The Ministry of Action

The Ministry of Action

["Neue Rheinische Zeitung" No. 39, July 9, 1848]

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Cologne, July 7. We have a new ministerial crisis. The Camphausen ministry is overthrown, the Hansemann ministry has stumbled. The Ministry of Action had a life of eight days, despite all domestic remedies, sticking-plasters, press prosecutions, arrests, despite the arrogant pertness with which the bureaucracy again raised its dust-covered head and brooded petty-brutal revenge for its dethronement. The "Ministry of Action", composed of nothing but mediocrities, was still so befuddled as to believe in its unshakeability at the beginning of the last sitting of the Agreement Assembly.

By the close of the sitting it was completely shattered. This momentous sitting convinced the Prime Minister von Auerswald that he must tender his resignation; the Minister von Schreckenstein, too, did not wish to remain Hansemann's train-bearer any longer, and so yesterday the entire ministry betook itself to the King at Sanssouci. We shall learn by tomorrow what was settled there.

Our Berlin +-correspondent writes by postscript:

"A rumour is just now current that Vincke, Pinder, Mevissen have been summoned in haste to help form a new ministry."

If this rumour is confirmed, we should at last have arrived, via the Ministry of Action, from the Ministry of Mediation to a Ministry of Counter-Revolution. At last! The very short life-span of this ministerial counter-revolution would suffice to show the people in their full stature the dwarfs who at the slightest breath of reaction again raise their little heads.