"Neue Rheinische Zeitung" – The Ministerial Crisis

The Ministerial Crisis

["Neue Rheinische Zeitung" No. 40 of July 10, 1848]

*
Cologne
, July 9. The

Hansemann
ministry is putting off its dissolution for a few days with great tenacity. The Minister of Finance in particular appears too patriotic to want to leave the administration of the state treasury to inexperienced hands. Parliamentarily speaking, the ministry was dissolved, and yet it continues to exist de facto. At Sanssouci the attempt to prolong its life seems to have been resolved once more. The Assembly of Agreement itself, at every moment on the point of inflicting the death-wound on the ministry, recoils the next, alarmed at its own desires, and the majority seems to sense that, if the Hansemann ministry is still not the ministry after its own heart, a ministry after its own heart is at the same time the ministry of crisis and decision. Hence its vacillations, its inconsistencies, its wanton sallies, its sudden turnaround into repentance. And the
ministry of action
accepts a life thus borrowed, every moment called into question, humiliated, feeding on the alms of weakness with unshakeable, almost cynical equanimity.

Duchâtel! Duchâtel! The inevitable downfall of this ministry, only laboriously delayed for a few days, will be as inglorious as its existence. A further contribution to the assessment of this existence will be brought to the reader by the Berlin correspondence of our today’s issue. In one word we can describe the Assembly session of July 7 <See
"Vereinbarungsdebatten vom 7.
Juli"
and
"Vereinbarungsdebatte"
>. The Assembly taunts the Hansemann ministry, it takes pleasure in inflicting semi-defeats upon it, it bows its head, half smiling and half grumbling, but at parting the high Assembly calls after it:
"No offence meant!"
and the stoic
triumvirate
Hansemann-Kühlwetter-Milde
murmurs back. Pas si bête! Pas
si bête! <Not so stupid!>