Nr. 23, 23. Juni 1848
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

Fall of the Camphausen Ministry

“Shine the sun e’er so fair,
Yet at last it must go down”
and the sun of the 30th of March, stained with hot Polish blood, has also gone down.

The Camphausen ministry had thrown the liberal-bourgeois robe of the counter-revolution around itself. The counter-revolution feels strong enough to cast off the irksome mask.

A random, untenable ministry of the left centre may possibly follow the ministry of the 30th of March for a few days. Its real successor is the ministry of the Prince of Prussia. Camphausen has the honour of having given the absolutist-feudal party this, its natural chief, and itself its successor.

Why coddle the bourgeois guardians any longer?

Are not the Russians on the eastern frontier and the Prussian troops on the western? Have the Poles not been won over to Russian propaganda by shrapnel and hellstone?

Have not all measures been taken to repeat the bombardment of Prague in almost all the Rhenish towns?

Has the Army not had all the time, in the Danish war, in the Polish war, in the many minor conflicts between military and people, to train itself into a brutal soldiery?

Is the bourgeoisie not weary of the revolution? And does there not rise up, in the midst of the sea, the rock upon which the counter-revolution will build its church – England?

The Camphausen ministry still seeks to snatch a few pence of popularity, to arouse public pity with the assurance that it steps down from the stage of state as a dupe. And indeed it is a deceived deceiver. In the service of the big bourgeoisie it had to seek to swindle the revolution out of its democratic fruits; in the struggle with democracy it had to ally itself with the aristocratic party and become the instrument of its counter-revolutionary appetites. It has grown strong enough to be able to throw its protector overboard. Mr Camphausen sowed reaction in the sense of the big bourgeoisie, he reaped it in the sense of the feudal party. That was the man’s good intention, that his evil fate. A penny of popularity for the disappointed man.

A penny of popularity!

Shine the sun e’er so fair,
Yet at last it must go down!
But in the east it rises again.