"Neue Rheinische Zeitung" – The Address Question

The Address Question

["Neue Rheinische Zeitung" No. 8, June 8, 1848]

Cologne, June 7. The Berlin Assembly has thus resolved to address the King, in order to afford the ministry an opportunity to express its views and to justify its administration hitherto. This is not to be an address of thanks in the old Diet style, not even a demonstration of respect: His Majesty, by the admission of His Majesty’s “responsible” ministers, merely offers the “most suitable”, the “best” occasion to bring the principles of the majority into “accord” with those of the ministry.

If, in substance, the person of the King is thus a mere medium of exchange – we refer once more to the Minister-President’s own words –, a token of value that merely mediates the actual business, it is by no means a matter of indifference for the form of the proceedings. In the first place, the representatives of the popular will are thereby placed in direct relation with the Crown, and from this, even in the address debate itself, a recognition of the theory of agreement, a renunciation of popular sovereignty, can very easily be deduced. In the second place, however, people will not be inclined to speak to the head of state who requires respect in the same manner as if they were directly addressing the ministers. They will express themselves with greater reserve, hinting at things rather than saying them outright, and it will then still depend on the decision of the ministry whether it considers a quiet reproof compatible with its continuance in office. But the difficult points, where the contrasts emerge most sharply, will possibly not be touched upon at all, or only superficially. The fear of a premature break with the Crown, which might perhaps be attended by grave consequences, will easily be aroused here and find a cloak in the protestation that one does not wish to anticipate the later, more thoroughgoing discussion of the individual questions.

Thus, genuine reverence, whether for the person of the monarch or for the monarchical principle in general, then the concern about going too far, the fear of anarchic tendencies, will offer the ministry invaluable advantages in the address debate, and Herr Camphausen could rightly call the occasion the “most suitable”, the “best” for winning a strong majority.

The question now is whether the people’s representatives are inclined to assume this obediently dependent posture. The Constituent Assembly has already compromised itself greatly by not having, on its own initiative, called the ministers to account for their provisional government hitherto; that should have been its first task; after all, it was supposedly summoned so early in order to base the government’s measures on the indirect popular will. Admittedly, now that it has convened, it seems destined only “to agree with the Crown upon a constitution that will, it is to be hoped, be a lasting one”.

But instead of proclaiming its true mission from the outset by taking such a stand, the Assembly has submitted to the humiliation of having to be compelled by the ministers to accept a report on their accountability. Strikingly, not a single one of its members countered the motion to form an address committee with the demand that the ministry, without any special “occasion”, appear before the Chamber for the sole purpose of answering for its official conduct hitherto. And yet, this was the only decisive argument against an address; on all other grounds, the ministers were entirely in the right.