Written in August 1851-September 1852 

Tribune on October 25 and 28, November 
6, 7, 12 and 28, 1851; February 27, March 
5, 15, 18 and 19, April 9, 17 and 24, July 
27, August 19, September 18, and October 
2 and 23, 1852 

Signed: Karl Marx 

I 
GERMANY AT THE OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION 

[New-York Daily Tribune, No.3282, October 25, 1851] 

The first act of the revolutionary drama on the Continent of 
Europe has closed. The “powers that were” before the hurricane of 
1848, are again “the powers that be,” and the more or less popular 
rulers of a day, provisional governors, triumvirs, dictators, with their 
tail of representatives, civil commissioners, military commissioners, 
prefects, judges, generals, officers and soldiers, are thrown upon 
foreign shores, and “transported beyond the seas” to England or 
America, there to form new governments “in partibus infideloum,” * 
European committees, central committees, national committees, and 
to announce their advent with proclamations quite as solemn as those 
of any less imaginary potentates. 

A more signal defeat than that undergone by the continental 
revolutionary party—or rather parties—upon all points of the line 
of battle, cannot be imagined. But what of that? Has not the struggle 
of the British middle classes for their social and political supremacy 
embraced forty-eight, that of the French middle classes forty years of 
unexampled struggles? And was their triumph ever nearer than at 
the very moment when restored monarchy thought itself more 
firmly settled than ever? The times of that superstition which 
attributed revolutions to the ill-will of a few agitators, have long 
passed away. Everyone knows nowadays, that wherever there is a 
revolutionary convulsion, there must be some social want in the 
background, which is prevented by outworn institutions from 
satisfying itself. The want may not yet be felt as strongly, as 

* In partibus infidelium—literally: in parts inhabited by infidels. The words are 
added to the title of Roman Catholic bishops appointed to purely nominal dioceses in 
non-Christian countries. In the figurative sense, they mean “not really existing” — Ed. 

generally, as might insure immediate success, but every attempt at 
forcible repression will only bring it forth stronger and stronger, 
until it bursts its fetters. If, then, we have been beaten, we have 
nothing else to do but to begin again from the beginning. And, 
fortunately, the probably very short interval of rest which is allowed 
us between the close of the first and the beginning of the second act 
of the movement, gives us time for a very necessary piece of work: 
the study of the causes that necessitated both the late outbreak, and 
its defeat; causes that are not to be sought for in the accidental 
efforts, talents, faults, errors or treacheries of some of the leaders, 
but in the general social state and conditions of existence of each of 
the convulsed nations. That the sudden movements of February and 
March, 1848, were not the work of single individuals, but 
spontaneous, irresistible manifestations of national wants and 
necessities, more or less clearly understood, but very distinctly felt by 
numerous classes in every country, is a fact recognised everywhere; 
but when you inquire into the causes of the counter-revolutionary 
successes, there you are met on every hand with the ready reply that 
it was Mr. This or Citizen That, who “betrayed” the people. Which 
reply may be very true, or not, according to circumstances, but under 
no circumstances does it explain anything—not even show how it 
came to pass that the “people” allowed themselves to be thus 
betrayed. And what a poor charice stands a political party whose 
entire stock-in-trade consists in a knowledge of the solitary fact, that 
Citizen So-and-so is not to be trusted. 

The inquiry into, and the exposition of, the causes both of the 
revolutionary convulsion and its suppression, are, besides, of 
paramount importance in a historical point of view. All these petty 
personal quarrels and recriminations—all these contradictory asser- 
tions, that it was Marrast, or Ledru-Rollin, or Louis Blanc, or any 
other member of the Provisional Government, or the whole of them, 
that steered the revolution amidst the rocks upon which it 
foundered —of what interest can they be, what light can they afford 
to the American or Englishman, who observed all these various 
movements from a distance too great to allow of his distinguishing 
any of the details of operations? No man in his senses will ever 
believe that eleven men,’ mostly of very indifferent capacity, either 
for good or evil, were able in three months to ruin a nation of 
thirty-six millions, unless those thirty-six millions saw as little of their 
way before them as the eleven did. But how it came to pass, that these 
thirty-six millions were at once called upon to decide for themselves 

* Members of the French Provisional Government.— Ed. 

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 7 

which way to go, although partly groping in dim twilight, and how 
then they got lost and their old leaders were for a moment allowed to 
return to their leadership, that is just the question. 

If then, we try to lay before the readers of The Tribune? the causes 
which, while they necessitated the German Revolution of 1848, led 
quite as inevitably to its momentary repression in 1849 and 50, we 
shall not be expected to give a complete history of the events as they 
passed in that country. Later events, and the judgment of coming 
generations, will decide what portion of that confused mass of 
seemingly accidental, incoherent and incongruous facts is to form a 
part of the world’s history. The time for such a task has not yet 
arrived; we must confine ourselves to the limits of the possible, and 
be satisfied, if we can find rational causes, based upon undeniable 
facts, to explain the chief events, the principal vicissitudes of that 
movement, and to give us a clue as to the direction which the next 
and perhaps not very distant outbreak will impart to the German 
people. 

And firstly, what was the state of Germany at the outbreak of the 
revolution? 

The composition of the different classes of the people which form 
the groundwork of every political organization was, in Germany, 
more complicated than in any other country. While in England and 
France feudalism was entirely destroyed, or at least reduced, as in 
the former country, to a few insignificant forms, by a powerful and 
wealthy middle class, concentrated in large towns, and particularly in 
the Capital, the feudal nobility in Germany had retained a great 
portion of their ancient privileges. The feudal system of tenure was 
prevalent almost everywhere. The Lords of the Land had even 
retained the jurisdiction over their tenants. Deprived of their 
political privileges, of the right to control the Princes, they had 
preserved almost all their medieval supremacy over the peasantry of 
their demesnes, as well as their exemption from taxes. Feudalism was 
more flourishing in some localities than in others, but nowhere 
except on the left bank of the Rhine was it entirely destroyed.* This 
feudal nobility, then extremely numerous and partly very wealthy, 
was considered, officially, the first “Order” in the country. It 
furnished the higher Government officials, it almost exclusively 
officered the army. 

The bourgeoisie of Germany was by far not as wealthy and 
concentrated as that of France or England. The ancient manufac- 
tures of Germany had been destroyed by the introduction of steam, 
and by the rapidly extending supremacy of English manufactures; 
the more modern manufactures, started under the Napoleonic 

O* 

continental system,* established in other parts of the country, did not 
compensate for the loss of the old ones, nor suffice to create a 
manufacturing interest strong enough to force its wants upon the 
notice of Governments jealous of every extension of non-noble 
wealth and power. If France carried her silk manufactures victorious 
through fifty years of revolutions and wars, Germany, during the 
same time, all but lost her ancient linen trade. The manufacturing 
districts, besides, were few and far between; situated far inland, and 
using, mostly, foreign, Dutch or Belgian, ports for their imports and 
exports, they had little or no interest in common with the large 
seaport towns on the North Sea and the Baltic; they were, above all, 
unable to create large manufacturing and trading centers, such as 
Paris and Lyons, London and Manchester. The causes of this 
backwardness of German manufactures were manifold, but, two will 
suffice to account for it: the unfavorable geographical situation of 
the country, at a distance from the Atlantic, which had become the 
great highway for the world’s trade, and the continuous wars in 
which Germany was involved, and which were fought on her soil, 
from the sixteenth century to the present day. It was this want of 
numbers, and particularly of anything like concentrated numbers, 
which prevented the German Middle Classes from attaining that 
political supremacy which the English bourgeois has enjoyed ever 
since 1688, and which the French conquered in 1789. And yet, ever 
since 1815, the wealth, and with the wealth, the political importance 
of the middle class in Germany, was continually growing. Govern- 
ments were, although reluctantly, compelled to bow at least to its 
more immediate material interests. It may everf be truly said, that 
from 1815 to 1830, and from 1832 to 1840, every particle of political 
influence, which, having been allowed to the middle class in the 
Constitutions of the smaller States, was again wrested from them 
during the above two periods of political reaction—that every such 
particle was compensated for by some more practical advantage 
allowed to them. Every political defeat of the middle class drew after 
it a victory on the field of commercial legislation. And, certainly, the 
Prussian Protective Tariff of 1818, and the formation of the 
Zollverein,” were worth a good deal more to the traders and 
manufacturers of Germany than the equivocal right of expressing, in 
the chambers of some diminutive dukedom, their want of confidence 
in ministers who laughed at their votes. Thus, with growing wealth 
and extending trade, the bourgeoisie soon arrived at a stage where it 
found the development of its most important interests checked by 
the political constitution of the country—by its random division 
among thirty-six princes with conflicting tendencies and caprices; by 

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 9 

the feudal fetters upon agriculture and the trade connected with it; 
by the prying superintendence to which an ignorant and presumptu- 
ous bureaucracy subjected all its transactions. At the same time, the 
extension and consolidation of the Zollverein, the general introduc- 
tion of steam communication, the growing competition in the home 
trade, brought the commercial classes of the different States and 
Provinces closer together, equalized their interests, centralized their 
strength. The natural consequence was the passing of the whole mass 
of them into the camp of the Liberal Opposition, and the gaining of 
the first serious struggle of the German middle class for political 
power. This change may be dated from 1840, from the moment 
when the bourgeoisie of Prussia assumed the lead of the middle-class 
movement of Germany. We shall hereafter revert to this Liberal 
Opposition movement of 1840-47. 

The great mass of the nation, which neither belonged to the 
nobility nor to the bourgeoisie, consisted, in the towns, of the small 
trading and shopkeeping class and the working people, and in 
the country, of the peasantry. 

The small trading and shopkeeping class is exceedingly numerous 
in Germany, in consequence of the stunted development which the 
large capitalists and manufacturers, as a class, have had in that 
country. In the larger towns it forms almost the majority of the 
inhabitants; in the smaller ones it entirely predominates, from the 
absence of wealthier competitors for influence. This class, a most 
important one in every modern body politic, and in all modern 
revolutions, is still more important in Germany, where during the 
recent struggles it generally played the decisive part. Its intermediate 
position between the class of larger capitalists, traders and manufac- 
turers, the bourgeoisie, properly so called, and the proletarian or 
industrial class, determines its character. Aspiring to the position of 
the first, the least adverse turn of fortune hurls the individuals of this 
class down into the ranks of the second. In monarchical and feudal 
countries the custom of the court and aristocracy becomes necessary 
to its existence; the loss of this custom might ruin a great part of it. In 
the smaller towns, a military garrison, a county government, a court 
of law with its followers, form very often the base of its prosperity; 
withdraw these and down go the shopkeepers, the tailors, the 
shoemakers, the joiners. Thus, eternally tossed about between the 
hope of entering the ranks of the wealthier class, and the fear of 
being reduced to the state of proletarians or even paupers; between 
the hope of promoting their interests by conquering a share in the 
direction of public affairs, and the dread of rousing, by ill-timed 
opposition, the ire of a Government which disposes of their very 

existence, because it has the power of removing their best customers; 
possessed of small means, the insecurity of the possession of which is 
in the inverse ratio of the amount; this class is extremely vacillating in 
its views. Humble and crouchingly submissive under a powerful 
feudal or monarchical government, it turns to the side of Liberalism 
when the middle class is in the ascendent; it becomes seized with 
violent Democratic fits as soon as the middle class has secured its own 
supremacy, but falls back into the abject despondency of fear as soon 
as the class below itself, the proletarians, attempt an independent 
movement. We shall, by and by, see this class, in Germany, pass 
alternately from one of these stages to the other. 

The working class in Germany is, in its social and _ political 
development, as far behind that of England and France as the 
German bourgeoisie is behind the bourgeoisie of those countries. 
Like master, like man. The evolution of the conditions of existence 
for a numerous, strong, concentrated and intelligent proletarian 
class, goes hand in hand with the development of the conditions of 
existence for a numerous, wealthy, concentrated and powerful 
middle class. The working-class movement itself never is indepen- 
dent, never is of an exclusively proletarian character, until all the 
different factions of the middle class, and particularly its most 
progressive faction, the large manufacturers, have conquered 
political power and remodelled the State according to their wants. It 
is then that the inevitable conflict between the employer and the 
employed becomes imminent and cannot be adjourned any longer; 
that the working class can no longer be put off with delusive hopes 
and promises never to be realized; that the great problem of the 
nineteenth century, the abolition of the proletariat, is at last brought 
forward fairly and in its proper light. Now, in Germany, the mass of 
the working class were employed, not by those modern manufactur- 
ing lords of which Great Britain furnishes such splendid specimens, 
but by small tradesmen whose entire manufacturing system is a mere 
relic of the Middle Ages. And as there is an enormous difference 
between the great cotton lord and the petty cobbler or master tailor, 
so there is a corresponding distance from the wide-awake factory 
operative of modern manufacturing Babylons to the bashful 
journeyman tailor or cabinet-maker of a small country town, who 
lives in circumstances and works after a plan very little different 
from those of the like sort of men some five hundred years ago. This 
general absence of modern conditions of life, of modern modes of 
industrial production, of course was accompanied by a pretty equally 
general absence of modern ideas, and it is therefore not to be 
wondered at if, at the outbreak of the revolution, a large part of the 

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 1] 

working classes should cry out for the immediate re-establishment of 
guilds and medieval privileged trades’ corporations. Yet, from the 
manufacturing districts, where the modern system of production 
predominated, and in consequence of the facilities of intercommuni- 
cation and mental development afforded by the migratory life of a 
large number of the working men, a strong nucleus formed itself 
whose ideas about the emancipation of their class were far clearer 
and more in accordance with existing facts and historical necessities; 
but they were a mere minority. If the active movement of the middle 
classes may be dated from 1840, that of the working class commences 
its advent by the insurrections of the Silesian and Bohemian* 
factory operatives in 1844,° and we shall soon have occasion to 
pass in review the different stages through which this movement 
passed. 

Lastly, there was the great class of the small farmers, the 
peasantry, which, with its appendix of farm-laborers, constitutes a 
considerable majority of the entire nation. But this class again 
subdivided itself into different fractions. There were, firstly, the 
more wealthy farmers, what is called in Germany Gross and 
Mittel-Bauern, proprietors of more or less extensive farms, and each 
of them commanding the services of several agricultural laborers. 
This class, placed between the large untaxed feudal landowners and 
the smaller peasantry and farm-laborers, for obvious reasons found 
in an alliance with the anti-feudal middle class of the towns its most 
natural political course. Then there were, secondly, the small 
freeholders, predominating in the Rhine country, where feudalism 
had succumbed before the mighty strokes of the great French 
Revolution. Similar independent small freeholders also existed here 
and there in other provinces, where they had succeeded in buying 
off the feudal charges formerly due upon their lands. This class, 
however, was a class of freeholders by name only, their property 
being generally mortgaged to such an extent, and under such 
onerous conditions, that not the peasant, but the usurer who had 
advanced the money, was the real landowner. Thirdly, the feudal 
tenants, who could not be easily turned out of their holdings, but 
who had to pay a perpetual rent, or to perform in perpetuity a 
certain amount of labor in favor of the lord of the manor. Lastly, the 
agricultural laborers, whose condition, in many large farming 
concerns, was exactly that of the same class in England, and who, in 
all cases, lived and died poor, ill-fed, and the slaves of their 
employers. These three latter classes of the agricultural population, 

* Czech.— Ed. 

the small freeholders, the feudal tenants, and the agricultural 
laborers, never troubled their heads much about politics before the 
revolution, but it is evident that this event must have opened to them 
a new career, full of brilliant prospects. To every one of them the 
revolution offered advantages, and the movement once fairly 
engaged in, it was to be expected that, each in their turn, they would 
join it. But at the same time it is quite as evident, and equally borne 
out by the history of all modern countries, that the agricultural 
population, in consequence of its dispersion over a great space, and 
of the difficulty of bringing about an agreement among any 
considerable portion of it, never can attempt a successful indepen- 
dent movement; they require the initiatory impulse of the more 
concentrated, more enlightened, more easily moved people of the 
towns. 

The preceding short sketch of the most important of the classes, 
which in their aggregate formed the German nation at the outbreak 
of the recent movements, will already be sufficient to explain a great 
part of the incoherence, incongruence and apparent contradiction 
which prevailed in that movement. When interests so varied, so 
conflicting, so strangely crossing each other, are brought into violent 
collision; when these contending interests in every district, every 
province are mixed in different proportions; when, above all, there 
is no great center in the country, no London, no Paris, the decisions 
of which, by their weight, may supersede the necessity of fighting out 
the same quarrel over and over again in every single locality; what 
else is to be expected but that the contest will dissolve itself into a 
mass of unconnected struggles, in which an enormous quantity of 
blood, energy and capital is spent, but which for all that remain 
without any decisive results? 

The political dismemberment of Germany into three dozen of 
more or less important principalities is equally explained by this 
confusion and multiplicity of the elements which compose the 
nation, and which again vary in every locality. Where there are no 
common interests there can be no unity of purpose, much less of 
action. The German Confederation, it is true, was declared 
everlastingly indissoluble; yet the Confederation and its organ, the 
Diet, never represented German unity.’ The very highest pitch to 
which centralization was ever carried in Germany was the establish- 
ment of the Zollverein; by this the States on the North Sea were also 
forced into a Customs Union of their own, Austria remaining 
wrapped up in her separate prohibitive tariff. Germany had the 
satisfaction to be, for all practical purposes, divided between three 
independent powers only, instead of between thirty-six. Of course, 

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 13 

the paramount supremacy of the Russian Czar, as established in 
1814, underwent no change on this account. 

Having drawn these preliminary conclusions from our premises, 
we Shall see, in our next, how the aforesaid various classes of the 
German people were set into movement one after the other, and 
what character this movement assumed on the outbreak of the 
French Revolution of 1848. 

London, September, 1851 

II 
THE PRUSSIAN STATE 

[New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3284, October 28, 1851] 

The political movement of the middle class, or bourgeoisie, in 
Germany, may be dated from 1840. It had been preceded by 
symptoms showing that the moneyed and industrial class of that 
country was ripening into a state which would no longer allow it to 
continue apathetic and passive under the pressure of a half-feudal, 
half-bureaucratic monarchism. The smaller Princes of Germany, 
partly to insure to themselves a greater independence against the 
supremacy of Austria and Prussia, or against the influence of the 
nobility in their own States, partly in order to consolidate into a 
whole the disconnected provinces united under their rule by the 
Congress of Vienna,’ one after the other granted constitutions of a 
more or less liberal character. They could do so without any danger 
to themselves; for if the Diet of the Confederation, this mere puppet 
of Austria and Prussia, was to encroach upon their independence as 
sovereigns, they knew that in resisting its dictates they would be 
backed by public opinion and the Chambers; and if, on the contrary, 
these Chambers grew too strong, they could readily command the 
power of the Diet to break down all opposition. The Bavarian, 
Wiurttemberg, Baden, or Hanoverian constitutional institutions 
could not, under such circumstances, give rise to any serious struggle 
for political power, and therefore the great bulk of the German 
middle class kept very generally aloof from the petty squabbles 
raised in the legislatures of the small States, well knowing that 
without a fundamental change in the policy and constitution of the 
two great powers of Germany, no secondary efforts and victories 
would be of any avail. But, at the same time, a race of liberal lawyers, 
professional oppositionists, sprung up in these small assemblies: the 
Rottecks, the Welckers, the Roemers, the Jordans, the Stuves, the 

Eisenmanns, those great “popular men” (Volksmanner), who after a 
more or less noisy, but always unsuccessful, opposition of twenty 
years, were carried to the summit of power by the revolutionary 
spring tide of 1848, and who, after having there shown their utter 
impotency and insignificance, were hurled down again in a moment. 
These first specimens, upon German soil, of the trader in politics 
and opposition, by their speeches and writings made familiar to the 
German ear the language of constitutionalism, and by their very 
existence, foreboded the approach of a time when the middle class 
would seize upon and restore to their proper meaning the political 
phrases which these talkative attorneys and professors were in the 
habit of using without knowing much about the sense originally 
attached to them. 

German literature, too, labored under the influence of the political 
excitement into which all Europe had been thrown by the events of 
1830.’° A crude constitutionalism, or a still cruder republicanism, 
were preached by almost all writers of the time. It became more and 
more the habit, particularly of the inferior sorts of literati, to make 
up for the want of cleverness in their productions by political 
allusions which were sure to attract attention. Poetry, novels, reviews, 
the drama, every literary production teemed with what was called 
“tendency,” that is, with more or less timid exhibitions of an 
anti-governmental spirit. In order to complete the confusion of ideas 
reigning after 1830 in Germany, with these elements of political 
opposition there were mixed up ill-digested university-recollections 
of German philosophy, and misunderstood gleanings from French 
socialism, particularly Saint-Simonism; and the clique of writers who 
expatiated upon this heterogeneous conglomerate of ideas, pre- 
sumptuously called themselves “Young Germany,” or “the Modern 
School.” '' They have since repented their youthful sins, but not 
improved their style of writing. 

Lastly, German philosophy, that most complicated, but at the same 
time most sure thermometer of the development of the German 
mind, had declared for the middle class, when Hegel pronounced, in 
his Philosophy of Law,? Constitutional Monarchy to be the final and 
most perfect form of Government. In other words, he proclaimed 
the approaching advent of the middle classes of the country to 
political power. His school, after his death, did not stop here. While 
the more advanced section of his followers, on one hand, subjected 
every religious belief to the ordeal of a rigorous criticism, and shook 
to its foundation the ancient fabric of Christianity, they at the same 

* G.W.F. Hegel. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, § 273.— Ed. 

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 15 

time brought forward bolder political principles than hitherto it had 
been the fate of German ears to hear expounded, and attempted to 
restore to glory the memory of the heroes of the first French 
Revolution. The abstruse philosophical language in which these 
ideas were clothed, if it obscured the mind of both the writer and the 
reader, equally blinded the eyes of the censor, and thus it was that 
the “Young Hegelian” writers enjoyed a liberty of the press un- 
known in every other branch of literature. 

Thus it was evident that public opinion was undergoing a great 
change in Germany. By degrees, the vast majority of those classes 
whose education or position in life enabled them, under an absolute 
monarchy, to gain some political information, and to form anything 
like an independent political opinion, united into one mighty 
phalanx of opposition against the existing system. And in passing 
judgment upon the slowness of political development in Germany, 
no one ought to omit taking into account the difficulty of obtaining 
correct information upon any subject in a country, where all sources 
of information were under control of the Government; where from 
the Ragged School and Sunday School, to the Newspaper and the 
University, nothing was said, taught, printed or published, but what 
had previously obtained its approbation. Look at Vienna, for 
instance. The people of Vienna, in industry and manufactures, 
second perhaps to none in Germany, in spirit, courage, and 
revolutionary energy, proving themselves far superior to all, were 
yet more ignorant as to their real interests, and committed more 
blunders during the revolution than any others, and this was due, in 
a very great measure, to the almost absolute ignorance with regard to 
the very commonest political subjects in which Metternich’s Govern- 
ment had succeeded in keeping them. 

It needs no further explanation why, under such a system, political 
information was an almost exclusive monopoly of such classes of 
society as could afford to pay for its being smuggled into the country, 
and more particularly of those whose interests were most seriously 
attacked by the existing state of things—namely, the manufacturing 
and commercial classes. They, therefore, were the first to unite in a 
mass against the continuance of a more or less disguised absolutism, 
and from their passing into the ranks of the opposition must be 
dated the beginning of the real revolutionary movement in 
Germany. 

The oppositional pronunciamento of the German bourgeoisie may 
be dated from 1840, from the death of the late King of Prussia,* the 

* Frederick William III.— Ed. 

last surviving founder of the Holy Alliance of 1815.'? The new King 
was known to be no supporter of the predominantly bureaucratic 
and military monarchy of his father. What the French middle classes 
had expected from the advent of Louis XVI, the German 
bourgeoisie hoped, in some measure, from Frederick William IV of 
Prussia. It was agreed upon all hands that the old system was 
exploded, worn out, and must be given up; and what had been borne 
in silence under the old King, now was loudly proclaimed to be 
intolerable. 

But if Louis XVI, “Louis-le-Désiré,” had been a plain, unpretend- 
ing simpleton, half-conscious of his own nullity, without any fixed 
opinions, ruled principally by the habits contracted during his 
education, ‘Frederick William-le-Désiré” was something quite 
different. While he certainly surpassed his French original in 
weakness of character, he was neither without pretensions nor 
without opinions. He had made himself acquainted, in an amateur 
sort of way, with the rudiments of most sciences, and thought 
himself, therefore, learned enough to consider final his judgment 
upon every subject. He made sure he was a first-rate orator, and 
there was certainly no commercial traveller in Berlin who could beat 
him either in prolixity of pretended wit or in fluency of elocution. 
And above all, he had his opinions. He hated and despised the 
bureaucratic element of the Prussian Monarchy, but only because all 
his sympathies were with the feudal element. Himself one of the 
founders of and chief contributors to the “Berlin political weekly 
paper,” * the so-called Historical School (a school living upon the 
ideas of Bonald, De Maistre, and other writers of the first generation 
of French Legitimists),!° he aimed at a restoration, as complete as 
possible, of the predominant social position of the nobility. The 
King, first nobleman of his realm, surrounded in the first instance by 
a splendid court of mighty vassals, princes, dukes and counts; in the 
second instance, by a numerous and wealthy lower nobility; ruling 
according to his discretion over his loyal burgesses and peasants, and 
thus being himself the chief of a complete hierarchy of social ranks 
or castes, each of which was to enjoy its particular privileges, and to 
be separated from the others by the almost insurmountable barrier 
of birth or of a fixed, inalterable social position; the whole of these 
castes or “estates of the realm” balancing each other, at the same 
time, so nicely in power and influence, that a complete independence 
of action should remain to the King—such was the beau idéal which 

* Berliner politisches Wochenblatt.— Ed. 

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 17 

Frederick William IV undertook to realize, and which he is again 
trying to realize at the present moment. 

It took some time before the Prussian bourgeoisie, not very well 
versed in theoretical questions, found out the real purport of their 
King’s tendency. But what they very soon found out, was the fact that 
he was bent upon things quite the reverse of what they wanted. 
Hardly did the new King find his “gift of the gab” unfettered by his 
father’s death when he set about proclaiming his intentions in 
speeches without number; and every speech, every act of his went far 
to estrange from him the sympathies of the middle class. He would 
not have cared much for that, if it had not been for some stern and 
startling realities which interrupted his poetic dreams. Alas, that 
romanticism is not very quick at accounts, and that feudalism, ever 
since Don Quixote, reckons without its host! Frederick William IV 
partook too much of that contempt for ready cash whichever has 
been the noblest inheritance of the sons of the Crusaders. He found, 
at his accession, a costly, although parsimoniously arranged system 
of Government, and a moderately filled State Treasury. In two years 
every trace of a surplus was spent in court festivals, royal progresses, 
largesses, subventions to needy, seedy and greedy noblemen, &c., 
and the regular taxes were no longer sufficient for the exigencies of 
either court or government. And thus, his Majesty found himself 
very soon placed between a glaring deficit on one side, and a law of 
1820 on the other, by which any new loan, or any increase of the then 
existing taxation, was made illegal without the assent of “the future 
Representation of the People.” * This representation did not exist; 
the new King was less inclined than even his father to create it; and if 
he had been, he knew that public opinion had wonderfully changed 
since his accession. 

Indeed the middle classes, who had partly expected that the new 
King would at once grant a Constitution, proclaim the Liberty of the 
Press, Trial by Jury, &c., &c.—in short, himself take the lead of that 
peaceful revolution which they wanted in order to obtain political 
supremacy—the middle classes had found out their error and had 
turned ferociously against the King. In the Rhine Province, and 
more or less generally, all over Prussia, they were so exasperated that 
they, being short themselves of men able to represent them in the 
Press, went to the length of an alliance with the extreme 
philosophical party, of which we have spoken above. The fruit of this 

* A reference to the law of January 17, 1820: ‘““Verordnung wegen der künftigen 
Behandlung des gesammten Staatsschulden-Wesens” .— Ed. 

alliance was the Rhenish Gazette,” of Cologne, a paper which was 
suppressed after fifteen months’ existence, but from which may be 
dated the existence of the Newspaper Press in Germany. This was in 
1842. 

The poor King, whose commercial difficulties were the keenest 
satire upon his medieval propensities, very soon found out that he 
could not continue to reign without making some slight concession to 
the popular outcry for that “Representation of the People,” which, 
as the last remnant of the long-forgotten promises of 1813 and 1815, 
had been embodied in the law of 1820.'* He found the least 
objectionable mode of satisfying this untoward law in calling 
together the Standing Committees of the Provincial Diets.'” The 
Provincial Diets had been instituted in 1823. They consisted, for 
every one of the eight provinces of the kingdom, of: 1. The higher 
nobility, the formerly sovereign families of the German Empire, the 
heads of which were members of the Diet by birthright. 2. Of the 
representatives of the knights or lower nobility. 3. Of representatives 
of towns; and 4. Of deputies of the peasantry or small farming class. 
The whole was arranged in such a manner that in every province the 
two scctions of the nobility always had a majority of the Diet. Every 
one of these eight Provincial Diets elected a Committee, and these 
eight Committees were now called to Berlin, in order to form a 
Representative Assembly for the purpose of voting the much-desired 
loan. It was stated that the Treasury was full, and that the loan was 
required, not for current wants, but for the construction of a State 
Railway. But the united Committees gave the King a flat refusal, 
declaring themselves incompetent to act as the Representatives of the 
People, and called upon his majesty to fulfill the promise of a 
Representative Constitution which his father had given when he 
wanted the aid of the people against Napoleon. 

The sitting of the united Committees proved that the spirit of 
opposition was no longer confined to the bourgeoisie. A part of the 
peasantry had joined them, and many nobles, being themselves large 
farmers on their own property, and dealers in corn, wool, spirits and 
flax, requiring the same guaranties against absolutism, bureaucracy 
and feudal restoration, had equally pronounced against the Govern- 
ment and for a Representative Constitution. The King’s plan had 
signally failed; he had got no money, and had increased the power of 
the opposition. The subsequent sitting of the Provincial Diets 
themselves was still more unfortunate for the King. All of them 
asked for reforms, for the fulfillment of the promises of 1813 and 

* Rheinische Zeitung. Ed. 

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 19 

15, for a Constitution and a Free Press; the resolutions, to this effect, 
of some of them, were rather disrespectfully worded, and the 
ill-humored replies of the exasperated King made the evil still 
greater. 

In the meantime the financial difficulties of the Government went 
on increasing. For a time abatements made upon the moneys 
appropriated for the different public services, fraudulent transac- 
tions with the “Seehandlung,” a commercial establishment 
speculating and trading for account and risk of the State, and long 
since acting as its money-broker, had sufficed to keep up appear- 
ances; increased issues of State paper money had furnished some 
resources; and the secret, upon the whole, had been pretty well kept. 
But all these contrivances were soon exhausted. There was another 
plan tried: the establishment of a Bank, the capital of which was to be 
furnished partly by the State and partly by private shareholders; the 
chief direction to belong to the State, in such a manner as to enable 
the Government to draw upon the funds of this Bank to a large 
amount, and thus to repeat the same fraudulent transactions that 
would no longer do with the “Seehandlung.” But, as a matter of 
course, there were no capitalists to be found who would hand over 
their money upon such conditions; the statutes of the Bank had to be 
altered, and the property of the shareholders guarantied from the 
encroachments of the Treasury, before any shares were subscribed 
for. Thus, this plan having failed, there remained nothing but to try 
a loan—if capitalists could be found who would lend their cash 
without requiring the permission and guarantee of that mysterious 
“future Representation of the People.” Rothschild was applied to, 
and he declared that if the loan was to be guarantied by this 
‘Representation of the People,” he would undertake the thing at a 
moment’s notice—if not, he could not have anything to do with the 
transaction. 

Thus every hope of obtaining money had vanished, and there was 
no possibility of escaping the fatal ‘““Representation of the People.” 
Rothschild’s refusal was known in Autumn, 1846, and in February of 
the next year the King called together all the eight Provincial Diets to 
Berlin, forming them into one “United Diet.” '’ This Diet was to do 
the work required, in case of need, by the law of 1820; it was to vote 
loans and increased taxes, but beyond that it was to have no rights. 
Its voice upon general legislation was to be merely consultative; it was 
to assemble, not at fixed periods, but whenever it pleased the King; it 
was to discuss nothing but what the Government pleased to lay 
before it. Of course, the members were very little satisfied with the 
part they were expected to perform. They repeated the wishes they 

had enounced when they met in the provincial assemblies; the 
relations between them and the Government soon became acrimoni- 
ous, and when the loan, which was again stated to be required for 
railway constructions, was demanded from them, they again refused 
to grant it. 

This vote very soon brought their sitting to a close. The King, 
more and more exasperated, dismissed them with a reprimand, but 
still remained without money. And, indeed, he had every reason to 
be alarmed at his position, seeing that the Liberal league, headed by 
the middle classes, comprising a large part of the lower nobility and 
all the manifold discontents that had been accumulated in the 
different sections of the lower orders—that this Liberal league was 
determined to have what it wanted. In vain the King had declared, in 
the opening speech, that he would never, never grant a Constitution 
in the modern sense of the word '*; the Liberal league insisted upon 
such a modern, anti-feudal, Representative Constitution, with all its 
sequels, liberty of the press, trial by jury, &c.; and before they got it, 
not a farthing of money would they grant. There was one thing 
evident: that things could not go on long in this manner, and that 
either one of the parties must give way, or that a rupture, a bloody 
struggle, must ensue. And the middle classes knew that they were on 
the eve of a revolution, and they prepared themselves for it. They 
sought to obtain, by every possible means, the support of the 
working class of the towns, and of the peasantry in the agricultural 
districts, and it is well known that there was, in the latter end of 1847, 
hardly a single prominent political character among the bourgeoisie 
who did not proclaim himself a “Socialist,” in order to insure to 
himself the sympathy of the proletarian class. We shall see these 
“Socialists” at work by and by. 

This eagerness of the leading bourgeoisie to adopt at least the 
outward show of Socialism, was caused by a great change that had 
come over the working classes of Germany. There had been, ever 
since 1840, a fraction of German workmen who, travelling in France 
and Switzerland, had more or less imbibed the crude Socialist and 
Communist notions then current among the French workmen. The 
increasing attention paid to similar ideas in France, ever since 1840, 
made Socialism and Communism fashionable in Germany also, and 
as far back as 1843, all newspapers teemed with discussions of social 
questions. A school of Socialists very soon formed itself in Germany, 
distinguished more for the obscurity than for the novelty of its 
ideas; its principal efforts consisted in the translation of French 
Fourierist, Saint-Simonian and other doctrines into the abstruse 
language of German philosophy.'? The German Communist 

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 21 

School, entirely different from this sect, was formed about the 
same time. 

In 1844 there occurred the Silesian weavers’ riots, followed by the 
insurrection of the calico printers in Prague. These riots, cruelly 
suppressed, riots of working men, not against the Government, but 
against their employers, created a deep sensation, and gave a new 
stimulus to Socialist and Communist propaganda amongst the 
working people. So did the bread riots during the year of famine, 
1847.*° In short, in the same manner as Constitutional opposition 
rallied around its banner the great bulk of the propertied classes 
(with the exception of the large feudal land-holders), so the working 
classes of the larger towns looked for their emancipation to the 
Socialist and Communist doctrines, although, under the then 
existing press laws, they could be made to know only very little about 
them. They could not be expected to have any very definite ideas as 
to what they wanted—they only knew that the programme of the 
Constitutional bourgeoisie did not contain all they wanted, and that 
their wants were in no wise contained in the Constitutional circle of 
ideas. 

There was then no separate republican party in Germany. People 
were either Constitutional monarchists, or more or less clearly 
defined Socialists or Communists. 

With such elements, the slightest collision must have brought 
about a great revolution. While the higher nobility, and the older 
civil and military officers, were the only safe supports of the existing 
system; while the lower nobility, the trading middle classes, the 
universities, the school-masters of every degree, and even part of the 
lower ranks of the bureaucracy and military officers, were all 
leagued against the Government; while, behind these, there stood 
the dissatisfied masses of the peasantry, and of the proletarians of 
the large towns, supporting, for the time being, the liberal 
opposition, but already muttering strange words about taking things 
into their own hands; while the Bourgeoisie was ready to hurl down 
the Government, and the Proletarians were preparing to hurl down 
the Bourgeoisie in its turn; —this Government went on obstinately in 
a course which must bring about a collision. Germany was, in the 
beginning of 1848, on the eve of a revolution, and this revolution was 
sure to come, even had the French revolution of February not 
hastened it. 

What the effects of this Parisian Revolution were upon Germany, 
we shall see in our next. 

London, September, 1851 

IIl