The war got up by the French autocrat is sure not only to be 
not “localized” in the sense of the political slang, according to 
which the term is understood to mean that the operations of war 
are not to be carried beyond the limits of the Italian Peninsula; 
the war, on the contrary, will not be confined even within the 
bounds of a simple war to be fought between arbitrary govern- 
ments and to be decided by the action of drilled armies. In its 
progress it will turn into a general revolutionary conflagration of 
continental Europe, out of which not many of the present rulers 
are likely to save their crowns and their dynasties. Germany may 
become the center of the revulsion, as it must become the center 
of military operations the very moment Russia has made ready to 
throw her sword into the balance. Not much reasoning 1s required 
in order to arrive at the conclusion that a serious defeat on the 
battle-field will lead to revolutionary convulsions in France or in 
Austria, but Berlin is perhaps the only place which affords the data 
indispensable for calculating the rude trials Germany is to pass 
through in no distant future. Day by day you may discern, almost 
with the naked eye, the growth of the conditions which, when 
developed to a certain degree of maturity, will produce a 
tremendous crisis hardly yet suspected by the vulgar of all ranks. I 
may sum up the symptoms of the coming storm in a few words: 
The jealous rivalry of the German Princes, which condemns them 
to inactivity during the first phase of the war; the social misery 
and disaffection, spreading like wild-fire from the Vistula to the 
Rhine, which will add civil commotions to foreign aggression 
during the second phase of the war; and lastly, the outbreak of 
the Slavonian populations incorporated with Germany, which will 

join an internal struggle of races to a foreign war and a 
revolutionary dislocation. 

Now, let us first consider the social basis the German Princes 
will stand upon, when at last the force of circumstances shall have 
compelled them to decide upon some common course of action. 
You are aware that the period from 1849 to 1859 marks an epoch 
unprecedented in the economical development of Germany. 
During that time it has, so to say, been converted from an 
agricultural into an industrial country. Take one single city, 
Berlin, for instance: In 1848, it mustered hardly 50,000 manufac- 
turing laborers, male and female, while at this moment their 
aggregate number has expanded to 180,000. Take one single 
branch of industry: Before 1848, the export of wool to England, 
France and other countries formed one of the principal German 
resources, while at the present moment the home-grown German 
wool hardly suffices for the consumption of the home manufac- 
tories. Simultaneously with the development of manufactories, 
railways, steam navigation, and exploration of mines, there has 
suddenly sprung up a credit system not only proportionate to the 
general progress of industry and commerce, but fostered beyond 
its legitimate bounds by the hot-house contrivances of the Crédit 
Mobilier imported from France. The peasantry and the small 
middle class, including, until lately, the immense majority of the 
nation, had, before the revolution of 1848, quietly taken to the old 
Asiatic method of hoarding hard money, but have now replaced it 
by paper securities of all sorts, all colors, and all denominations. 
The Hamburg crisis of 1857 had slightly shaken, but not seriously 
damaged this fabric of new-fangled prosperity, which now reels at 
the very first roar of the cannon on the banks of the Po and 
Ticino. You have doubtless already been informed of the reaction 
of the Austrian commercial crisis upon the rest of Germany, and 
of the bankruptcies following each other in rapid succession at 
Leipsic, Berlin, Munich, Augsburg, Magdeburg, Cassel, Frankfort 
and other commercial centers of Germany. These disasters, 
however, denote only transitory catastrophes in the higher 
commercial spheres. To give an idea of the real state of things, I 
think it best to call your attention to a proclamation of the 
Prussian Government just published, in which, referring to the 
dangerous disbandment of whole industrial armies in Silesia, 
Berlin, Saxony, and Rhenish Prussia, it states that it can not listen 
to the petitions of the Chambers of Commerce at Berlin, Breslau, 
Stettin, Danzig and Magdeburg, recommending the ambiguous 
experiment of issuing more inconvertible paper money, and 

declines still more positively to employ the laborers on _ public 
works solely for the purpose of affording them occupation and 
wages.* The latter demand certainly sounds strange at a moment 
when the Government, from want of means, was forced to 
suddenly stop the public works already in progress. The single fact 
that, at the very beginning of the war, the Prussian Government 
should be forced to issue such a proclamation speaks volumes. 
Add to this sudden interruption of industrial life, a general 
imposition of new taxes throughout the whole of Germany, a 
general rise in the price of first necessaries, and a general 
disorganization of all business concerns by the calling in of the 
reserves and the Landwehr, and you may realize a faint idea of 
the proportions which social misery will reach in some months. 
The times, however, are passed when the bulk of the German 
people used to consider worldly misfortunes as inevitable inflic- 
tions sent from heaven. There is a low, but audible popular voice 
murmuring already the words: “Responsibility! If the revolution of 
1848 had not been crushed by fraud and violence, France and 
Germany would not again be arrayed in arms against each other. 
If the brutal subduers of the German revolution had not lowered 
their crowned heads before a Bonaparte and an Alexander, there 
could have been no war, even now.” Such are the low grumblings 
of the popular voice, which, by and by, will speak in accents of 
thunder. 

I come now to the spectacle which the German Princes exhibit 
before the eyes of a rather impatient public. The Austrian 
Cabinet, since the beginning of January, had put in motion all 
resorts of diplomatic intrigue to induce the German States to 
concentrate a great federal army, into which Austrian forces were 
to enter to a large extent, on some point of Southern Germany, 
which concentration should expose France to an attack on its 
eastern frontiers. In this way the German Confederation was to be 
inveigled into an offensive war, while, at the same time, Austria 
reserved for herself the direction of that war. A resolution in that 
sense, proposed to the German Diet at Frankfort, on the 13th of 
May, by Hanover,” was met by Herr von Usedom, the Prussian 

Plenipotentiary, with a formal protest of his Government.* Hence 
a general outburst of patriotic indignation on the part of the 
Princes of Southern meray: The counterpart was now enacted 
by Prussia. 

The Prussian Government, on the prorogation of its Parliament, 
had secured itself a passing popularity by declaring that it was 
resolved on a line of “armed mediation.” ” Hardly were the 
Chambers dismissed when the “armed mediation” shrunk to- 
gether to the more modest dimensions of a refusal on the part of 
Prussia to declare itself neutral, as called upon to do by France 
and Russia. The negative prowess, although sufficient to arouse 
the wrath of the Court of St. Petersburg, was far from coming up 
to the expectations of the Prussian people. The armaments of the 
Western and Eastern fortresses, coupled as they were with the 
calling in of the reserves and the Landwehr, were intended to 
allay the popular clamor thus raised. On May 19, however, Herr 
von Usedom, in the name of his Government, asked the German 
Diet to put the Federal Army of Observation under the direct 
command of Prussia, and leave to her the whole initiative of the 
military measures to be taken. Now it was the turn of the minor 
German Princes, secretly backed by Austria, to verify their 
patriotic pretensions. Bavaria declared that the time was not yet 
come to subject the army of the Wittelsbachers to the commands 
of the Hohenzollerns. Hanover, with a rancorous “Tu quoque,” ‘ 
reminded Prussia of its protest against a Federal army of 
observation, to be concentrated on a point of Southern Germany. 
Saxony, on its part, saw no reason why its august ruler should not 
be intrusted himself with the supreme command, if it were only 
with a view to set aside the conflicting pretensions of the 
Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns. Wurttemberg almost preferred 
French invasion to Prussian supremacy; and in this way all the 
worst reminiscences of the Holy German Empire boasted an 
ignominious revival. The nullification of Germany for the moment 
is the sum total of these bickerings between its diminutive rulers. 
The cry for the restoration of the German National Parliament is 
only the first weak protest, not on the part of the revolutionary 

No. 118, May 22, 1859.— Ed. 

No. 113, May 15, 1859.— Ed. 

masses, but of the anxious, mediating middle classes, against those 
dynastic obstructives. 

I shall take another occasion to speak of the Slavonian troubles 
preparing in Germany. 

Written on May 24, 1859 Reproduced from the New-York