The Continuation of the Ministerial Crisis

Extra Supplement  
No. 39, July 9, 1848.  
Neue Rheinische Zeitung.  
* Cologne, July 8. The Hansemann ministry is with great tenacity postponing its dissolution for a few days. The Minister of Finance especially seems too patriotic to want to leave the administration of the state treasury to unpractised hands. Parliamentarily speaking, the ministry was dissolved, and yet it still continues to exist in fact. At Sanssouci the attempt at a prolongation of its life seems to have been decided upon once again. The Agreement Assembly itself, on the point at every moment of dealing the ministry the death blow, the next moment starts back in alarm, takes fright at its own desires, and the majority seems to suspect that, if the Hansemann ministry is not yet the ministry after its own heart, a ministry after its own heart is at the same time the ministry of the crisis and of the decision. Hence its vacillations, its inconsistencies, its wanton outbursts, its sudden lapses into repentance. And the Ministry of Action accepts a life that is so borrowed, called into question at every moment, humbled, feeding on the alms of weakness, with unshakeable, almost cynical equanimity.

Duchâtel! Duchâtel! The inevitable downfall of your ministry, only laboriously dragged out for a few days, will be as inglorious as its existence. The Berlin correspondence of our next issue will bring the reader a further contribution to the assessment of this existence. In a word we can describe the sitting of the Agreement Assembly of July 7. The Assembly makes fun of the Hansemann ministry, it amuses itself by inflicting half-defeats upon it, it bends its head half smirking, half snarling, but at parting the high Assembly calls after it: “No offence meant!”, and the stoic triumvirate of Hansemann, Kühlwetter, and Milde murmurs back: Pas si bête! Pas si bête!