Cologne, Jan. 20th, 1850 

The day after I sent you my last, news reached here of the 
“settlement of the question” who was to rule over all Germany. The 
“Interim”, consisting of two Austrian and two Prussian delegates, 
have at last prevailed upon old Archduke John to retire from 
business. They have consequently taken the reins of a power which, 
however, will not be of long duration. It expires in the month of May 
next, and there is good reason to expect that even before that term 
certain “untoward events” will sweep away these four provisional 
rulers of Germany. The names of these four satellites of military 
despotism are very significant. Austria has sent M. Kiibeck, minister 
of finance under Metternich, and General Schénhals, the right hand of 
the butcher Radetzki. Prussia is represented by General Radowitz, 
member of the Jesuit order, favourite of the king, and principal 
inventor of all those plots by which Prussia has succeeded, for the 
moment, in putting down the German revolution; and by 
M. Botticher, governor, before the revolution, of the province of 
Eastern Prussia, where he is fondly (?) remembered as a “putter 
down” of public meetings and organiser of the spy system. What the 
doings of such a lot of rogues will be you will not need to be told. I 
will name one instance only. The Wurtemberg government, forced 
by the revolution, had contracted with the Prince of Thurn and 
Taxis—who, you know, has the monopoly of forwarding letters by 
post and conveying of passengers in a large part of Germany, to the 
exclusion of the governments—the Wurtemberg government, I say, 
had contracted with this robber on a national scale to part, for a 
handsome sum, with his monopoly in favour of the said government. 
Times having got better for those who live upon national plunder, 
Prince Thurn and Taxis values his monopoly higher than the sum 

contracted for, and won’t part with it. The Wurtemberg govern- 
ment, freed from the pressure from without, find this change of 
opinion quite reasonable; and both parties apply—the prince 
publicly, the government aforesaid secretly—to the “Interim”, 
which, taking for pretext an article of the old act of 1815, declares 
the contract void and unlawful. This is all right. It is far better that 
M. Thurn and Taxis keeps his privilege a few months longer; the 
people, when they finish with the whole lot of privileges, will take it 
not only from him without giving him anything, but will, on the 
contrary, make him give up even the money he has robbed them of 
up to this time. 

The military despotism in Austria 1s getting more intolerable every 
day. The press almost reduced to annihilation, all public liberties 
destroyed, the whole country swarming with spies—imprisonments, 
courts-martial, floggings in every part of the country—this is the 
practical meaning of those provincial constitutions which the 
government publish from time to time, and which they do not care a 
straw about breaking in the very moment of publication. There is, 
however, an end to everything, even to states of siege and the rule of 
the sword. Armies cost money, and money is a thing which even the 
mightiest emperor cannot create at his will. The Austrian govern- 
ment have, up to this time, managed to keep their finances afloat by 
tremendous issues of paper money. But there is an end to this, too; 
and, in spite of that Prussian lieutenant who once would challenge 
me to a duel, because I told him a king or emperor could not make as 
many paper dollars* as he liked—in spite of that proteund political 
economist, the Emperor of Austria? sees his paper money, though 
inconvertible, at the discount of from twenty to thirty per cent 
against silver, and almost fifty per cent against gold. The foreign 
loan he intended has dropped to the ground through the exertions 
of Mr. Cobden. Foreign capitalists have subscribed to the amount of 
£500,000 only, and he wants fifteen times that sum; while his 
exhausted country cannot afford to lend him anything. The deficit, 
fifteen millions and a half at the end of September last, will, by this 
time, have reached from twenty to twenty-four millions—the greater 
part of the Hungarian war expenses being payable in the last quarter 
of 1849. Thus there is only one alternative for Austria: either 
bankruptcy, or a foreign war to make the army pay itself, and to 
reconquer commercial credit by battles gained, provinces conquered, 
and war contributions imposed. Thus Mr. Cobden, in opposing the 

Austrian and Russian loans? on the plea of the preservation of peace, 
has more than any one else contributed—for Russia is in the same 
awkward state as Austria—to hasten that coalesced campaign against 
the French Republic which cannot, under any circumstances, be long 
delayed. 

In Prussia, we assist at another act of “royal conscientiousness”’. 
You know that Frederick William IV, the man who never broke his 
word, in November, 1848, dispersed by force the national represen- 
tation, and forced upon his people a constitution after his own 
heart; that he agreed that this beautiful piece of workmanship was to 
be revised by the first parliament to be assembled; that in this 
parliament the Second Chamber (House of Commons) was, even 
before they got to the revising business, dissolved, another electoral 
reform forced upon the people, by which universal suffrage was very 
nicely done away with, and a majority of landed nobility, of 
government officials, and of bourgeois, was secured. This Chamber, 
to vote for the election of which every democrat refused, so that it 
has been elected by one-fifth or one-sixth of the whole number of 
voters—this Chamber, in conjunction with the old First Chamber, 
set about revising the Constitution, and made it, of course, even 
more agreeable to the king than he himself had made it originally. 
They have now almost done with it. Now, you think, his Majesty will 
please to accept this amended Constitution, and take the oath 
prescribed in it? Not he, indeed. He sends his faithful parliament a 
royal message, stating that he is very much pleased with what his two 
Chambers have made of his Constitution, but that, before his “royal 
conscientiousness” permits him to take the oath aforesaid, his own 
Constitution must be altered in about a dozen points.'” And what are 
these points? Why, his Majesty is modest enough not to require any 
more than the following trifles. 1. The First Chamber, now elected 
by the large landed proprietors and capitalists, to be a complete 
House of Lords, containing the royal princes, about one hundred 
hereditary peers chosen by his Majesty, sixty peers elected by the 
large landed proprietors, thirty by the large monied interest, six by 
the universities. 2. Ministers to be responsible to the king and 
country, not to the parliament. 3. All taxes now upon the budget to 
be levied for ever, without power of parliament to refuse. 4. A “Star 
Chamber’’, or High Court of Justice, to try political offences—no 
mention being made of juries. 5. A special law to define and restrain 
the powers of the Second Chamber of parliament, &c. Now what do 

January 19, 1850.)— Ed. 

you think of this? His Majesty forces upon the good Prussians a new 
Constitution, to be amended by parliament. His parliament amends 
it by striking out everything like a remnant of popular rights. And 
the king, not content with that, declares that his “royal conscientious- 
ness” forbids him to accept his own Constitution, amended in his 
own interest, without the above further modifications. Verily this is a 
truly “royal” sort of conscientiousness! There is little chance of even 
this present mock parliament bowing to such impudence. The 
consequence will be dissolution, and the end of all parliaments for 
the moment in Prussia. The secret of all this is the anticipation of the 
great coalition war, mentioned above. The “conscientious” gentle- 
man on the throne of Prussia expects to have his rebellious country 
overrun by the month of March or April, by a million of Asiatic 
barbarians, to march, along with “his own glorious army”’,'? against 
Paris, to conquer that fair country which produces his heart- 
cherished champagne. And the Republic once done away with, the 
scion of Saint Louis* restored to the throne of France, what then 
would be the use of constitutions and parliaments at home? 

In the meantime the revolutionary spirit is rapidly reviving all over 
Germany. The most inveterate ex-Liberal who, after March, 1848, 
joined the king to combat the people, now sees that—as the saying is 
in Germany—although he gave to the devil only the end of his little 
finger, that gentleman has since seized the whole hand. The incessant 
acquittals by juries in political trials are the best proofs of this. Every 
day brings a new fact in this way. Thus, a few days ago, the Mulheim 
workpeople—who, in May, 1849, tore up the railway, in order to 
stop the sending of troops to insurged Elberfeld—have been 
acquitted here at Cologne. In the south of Germany, financial 
difficulties and increased taxation show to every bourgeois that this 
present state cannot last. In Baden the very same bourgeois who 
betrayed the last insurrection, and hailed the arrival of the Prussians, 
are punished and driven to madness by these very same Prussians 
and by the government, which under their protection drives them to 
ruin and despair. And the working people and peasantry every- 
where are on the qui vive, waiting for the signal of an insurrection 
which, this time, will not subside until the political dominion and 
social progress of the proletarians shall have been secured. And this 
revolution is drawing nigh. 

Ill