The eclectic and motley character of the new cabinet, with which I have already dealt in an earlier article, has been commented on by the *Kreuz-Zeitung* in the following mocking words:

“A change of system is to take place. If we may venture the question: what change of system? Which system is being given up, and what are the principles of the new system that are to be adopted? Does the Catholic prince at the head of the ministry represent its guiding idea, or the minister of public worship, the man of the Evangelical Alliance? How is one expected to see the finance minister, formerly a deputy of the democrats, harmonise with the above-named persons? And can the veteran of the old Prussian bureaucracy bring his conceptions to the same level as those of Herr von Patow?”

On 2 November the primary elections (Urwahlen) were held throughout the kingdom. The electors (Wahlmänner) thus chosen will in turn elect the deputies on the 23rd of this month. No one loves moderate chastity in his wife or moderate solvency in his debtor; and yet moderate liberty was the watchword which was spread in a moderate way among the primary electors (Urwähler). That section of the Prussian population which alone still holds the movement in its hands and whose political creed may be described as vulgar liberalism (*platter Liberalismus*) is anything but heroic. In 1848 they did not dare to stir before the movement had broken out in Naples, Paris and Vienna. Owing to a strange concatenation of circumstances, they are at present in the position of having to give the signal for the political reawakening on the continent. With a large army in their own rear, the France of the December *coup d’état* on one side, a recently centralised Austria on another, and an eternally lurking Russia on a third, they present far too convenient an object for a concentric attack not to feel rather uncomfortable. Furthermore, the memory of the revolution is still alive before their eyes and in their hearts; and finally the Prince Regent must not be startled out of his freshly-baked constitutionalism. Thus one liberal hero begs another to do him the good turn for which a husband once asked his wife when she had been insulted by an officer in the open street: “Hold me back,” cried the brave fellow, “or I shall avenge myself, and then blood will flow.” In this respect, indeed, one ought to harbour no illusions. A Prussian movement in the local sense of the word is possible only within very narrow limits; once they are overstepped, it must either retreat or turn into a general continental movement. The fear of the latter is shared equally by the big bourgeoisie and the Prince Regent. A fact which you will hardly find in any newspaper report, but for which I can vouch, is that during his last visit to Breslau, in an audience granted to the notabilities of that town, the Prince declared in a most solemn tone that the revolutionary fire was still burning, that a new European eruption was threatening, and that it was therefore both the duty and the interest of the middle class to rally round the throne and above all, by maintaining the strictest moderation in its political activity, to stop up every hole through which conscienceless demagogues (Gesinnungslose Demagogen) might slip. This tallies completely with what a highly educated Prussian nobleman recently said to me:

“Do you know what drove the King mad? The spectre of the red republic; and his brother, though a sober, mediocre and insipid gaiters-button, is pursued by the same spectre.”

By and large, the liberal electors (Wahlmänner) have carried the day in the larger towns, and the decided reactionaries in the countryside. The manner in which the elections were conducted in the countryside can be inferred from the fact that the Landräte (Landräte), each in his own district, caused circulars to be circulated privately, in which the primary electors (Urwähler) were urged to vote for such and such persons. Now the Landrat (Landrat) occupies a quite special position in Prussia. In all provinces, the Rhine Province alone excepted, he is a Junker with extensive landed property, which, like that of the English justice of the peace, lies within his official area. He is at the same time a link in the chain of the bureaucracy; he is elected by his district, appointed by the crown, and subordinated to the government (a collegium) which has its seat in one of the centres of the larger administrative departments; but in his Kreis (or Ressort, as the Prussians call it) he is the highest representative of the government. These Landräte thus combine in their person the qualities of the cabbage-Junker with those of the bureaucrat. In contrast to the majority of state officials, they are not completely dependent on their official salary; at worst, as younger sons of the landed aristocracy, they are forced to supplement the allowance granted them by their father, uncle, or elder brother with a state salary of 1,200 taler a year. Hence their interest is, on the whole, more closely linked with the class and party interests of the landed aristocracy than with the caste interests of the bureaucracy. These people were the mainstay of the cabinet just overthrown. They regarded the central government far more as the instrument of their own social interests than they regarded themselves as its instrument. At present they are opposing the new cabinet; the latter has not dared to dismiss them, partly because such a radical procedure would whip up all revolutionary tendencies and would run counter to the routine of the Prussian administration, partly because the activity of the Landräte is to a certain extent needed to muzzle the rural population and thus to form a counterweight against the liberalism of the towns. The only Landrat dismissed so far is Count von Krassow in Pomerania, who, in his circular to the primary electors, permitted himself the joke of insulting the cabinet.

No new census has been taken since 1852, but the last one fully suffices to convey an idea of the numerical ratio of the rural to the urban population. Of seventeen million inhabitants, twelve million were scattered over the countryside, while five million lived in towns, a large part of which are only market towns. Of the 984 towns in the kingdom, only the 12 most important could boast a total population of 1,000,000, while more than 500 had fewer than 2,500 inhabitants. In the province of Prussia the industrial population amounts to 11 per cent, in Pomerania to 15 per cent, in Posen to 18 per cent, in Silesia to 23 per cent, in Westphalia to 26 per cent, in Saxony to 28 per cent, in the Rhine Province to 25 per cent, and in Brandenburg to 37 per cent. To be sure, almost the entire industrial population of Brandenburg is concentrated in Berlin. Sixty per cent of the total population of the kingdom belong exclusively to agriculture; on average, one nobleman falls to every 263 persons.