[New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3438, April 24, 1852] 

The first months of the year 1849 were employed by the 
Austrian and Prussian Governments in following up the advan- 
tages obtained in October and November last. The Austrian Diet, 
ever since the taking of Vienna, had carried on a merely nominal 
existence in a small Moravian country-town, named Kremsier.* 
Here the Slavonian Deputies, who, with their constituents, had 
been mainly instrumental in raising the Austrian Government 
from its prostration, were singularly punished for their treachery 
against the European Revolution; as soon as the Government had 
recovered its strength, it treated the Diet and its Slavonian 
majority with the utmost contempt, and when the first successes of 
the imperial arms foreboded a speedy termination of the 
Hungarian war, the Diet, on the 4th of March, was dissolved and 
the deputies dispersed by military force. Then at last the 
Slavonians saw that they were duped, and then they shouted: Let 
us go to Frankfort and carry on there the opposition which we 
cannot pursue here! But it was then too late, and the very fact that 
they had no other alternative than either to remain quiet or to 
join the impotent Frankfort Assembly — this fact alone was sufficient 
to show their utter helplessness. 

Thus ended, for the present and most likely for ever, the attempts 
of the Slavonians of Germany to recover an independent national 

existence. Scattered remnants of numerous nations, whose nationali- 
ty and political vitality had long been extinguished, and who in 
consequence had been obliged, for almost a thousand years, to follow 
in the wake of a mightier nation, their conqueror, the same as the 
Welsh in England, the Basques in Spain, the Bas-Bretons in France, 
and at a more recent period the Spanish and French Creoles in those 
portions of North America occupied of late by the Anglo-American 
race—these dying nationalities, the Bohemians, Carinthians, Dalma- 
tians, &c., had tried to profit by the universal confusion of 1848, in 
order to restore their political status quo of A.D. 800. The history of a 
thousand years ought to have shown them that such a retrogression 
was impossible; that if all the territory east of the Elbe and Saale had 
at one time been occupied by kindred Slavonians, this fact merely 
proved the historical tendency, and at the same time the physical and 
intellectual power of the German nation to subdue, absorb, and 
assimilate its ancient eastern neighbors; that this tendency of 
absorption on the part of the Germans had always been and still was 
one of the mightiest means by which the civilization of western 
Europe had been spread in the east of that Continent; that it could 
only cease whenever the process of Germanization had reached the 
frontier of large, compact, unbroken nations, capable of an 
independent national life, such as the Hungarians and in some 
degree the Poles; and that, therefore, the natural and inevitable fate 
of these dying nations was to allow this progress of dissolution and 
absorption by their stronger neighbors to complete itself. Certainly 
this is no very flattering prospect for the national ambition of the 
Panslavistic dreamers who succeeded in agitating a portion of the 
Bohemian and South-Slavonian people; but can they expect that 
history would retrograde a thousand years in order to please a few 
phthisical bodies of men, who in every part of the territory they 
occupy are interspersed and surrounded by Germans, who from 
times almost immemorial have had for all purposes of civilization no 
other language but the German, and who lack the very first 
conditions of national existence, numbers and compactness of 
territory? Thus, the Panslavistic rising, which everywhere in the 
German and Hungarian Slavonic territories was the cloak for the 
restoration to independence of all these numberless petty nations, 
everywhere clashed with the European revolutionary movements, 
and the Slavonians, although pretending to fight for liberty, were 
invariably (the democratic portion of the Poles excepted) found on 
the side of despotism and reaction. Thus it was in Germany, thus in 
Hungary, thus even here and there in Turkey. Traitors to the 
popular cause, supporters and chief props to the Austrian Govern- 

ment’s cabal, they placed themselves in the position of outlaws in the 
eyes of all revolutionary nations. And although nowhere the mass of 
the people had a part in the petty squabbles about nationality raised 
by the Panslavistic leaders, for the very reason that they were too 
ignorant, yet it -will never be forgotten that in Prague, in a 
half-German town, crowds of Slavonian fanatics cheered and 
repeated the cry: “Rather the Russian knout than German Liberty!” 
After their first evaporated effort in 1848, and after the lesson the 
Austrian Government gave them, it is not likely that another attempt 
at a later opportunity will be made. But if they should try again 
under similar pretexts to ally themselves to the counter- 
revolutionary force, the duty of Germany is clear. No country in a 
state of revolution and involved in external war can tolerate a 
Vendée™ in its very heart. 

As to the Constitution proclaimed by the Emperor? at the same 
time with the dissolution of the Diet, there is no need to revert to it, 
as it never had a practical existence and is now done away with 
altogether. Absolutism has been restored in Austria to all intents and 
purposes ever since the 4th of March, 1849. 

In Prussia, the Chambers met in February for the ratification and 
revision of the new Charter proclaimed by the King. They sat for 
about six weeks, humble and meek enough in their behavior toward 
the Government, yet not quite prepared to go the lengths the King 
and his ministers wished them to go. Therefore, as soon as a suitable 
occasion presented itself, they were dissolved.” 

Thus both Austria and Prussia had for the moment got rid of the 
shackles of parliamentary control. The Governments now concen- 
trated all power in themselves and could bring that power to bear 
wherever it was wanted: Austria upon Hungary and Italy, Prussia 
upon Germany. For Prussia, too, was preparing for a campaign by 
which “order” was to be restored in the smaller States. 

Counter-revolution being now paramount in the two great centers 
of action of Germany, in Vienna and Berlin, there remained only the 
lesser States in which the struggle was still undecided, although the 
balance there, too, was leaning more and more against the 
revolutionary interest. These smaller States, we have said, found a 
common center in the National Assembly at Frankfort. Now, this 
so-called National Assembly, although its reactionist spirit had long 
. been evident, so much so that the very people of Frankfort had risen 
in arms against it, yet its origin was of a more or less revolutionary 
nature; it occupied an abnormal, revolutionary position in January; 

its competence had never been defined, and it had at last come to the 
decision—which, however, was never recognized by the larger 
States—that its resolutions had the force of law. Under these 
circumstances, and when the constitutionalist-monarchical party saw 
their positions turned by the recovering absolutists, it is not to be 
wondered that the liberal, monarchical bourgeoisie of almost the 
whole of Germany should place their last hopes upon the majority of 
this Assembly, just as the petty shopkeeping interest, the nucleus of 
the Democratic party, gathered in their growing distress around the 
minority of that same body which indeed formed the last compact 
parliamentary phalanx of Democracy. On the other hand, the larger 
Governments, and particularly the Prussian Ministry, saw more and 
more the incompatibility of such an irregular elective body with the 
restored monarchical system of Germany, and if they did not at once 
force its dissolution, it was only because the time had not yet come 
and because Prussia hoped first to use it for the furthering of its own 
ambitious purposes. 

In the meantime, that poor Assembly itself fell into a greater and 
greater confusion. Its deputations and commissaries had been 
treated with the utmost contempt, both in Vienna and Berlin; one of 
its members,” in spite of his parliamentary inviolability, had been 
executed in Vienna as a common rebel. Its decrees were nowhere 
heeded; if they were noticed at all by the larger powers, it was merely 
by protesting notes which disputed the authority of the Assembly to 
pass laws and resolutions binding upon their governments. The 
Representative of the Assembly, the Central Executive Power, was 
involved in diplomatic squabbles with almost all the cabinets of 
Germany, and in spite of all their efforts neither Assembly nor 
Central Government could bring Austria or Prussia to state their 
ultimate views, plans, and demands. The Assembly, at last, 
commenced to see clearly, at least so far, that it had allowed all power 
to slip out of its hands, that it was at the mercy of Austria and Prussia, 
and that if it intended making a federal Constitution for Germany at 
all, it must set about the thing at once and in good earnest. And many 
of the vacillating members also saw clearly that they had been 
egregiously duped by the governments. But what were they, in their 
impotent position, able to do now? The only thing that could have 
saved them would have been promptly and decidedly to pass over 
into the popular camp; but the success, even of that step, was more 
than doubtful; and then, where in this helpless crowd of undecided, 
short-sighted, self-conceited beings who, when the eternal noise of 

contradictory rumors and diplomatic notes completely stunned 
them, sought their only consolation and support in the everlastingly 
repeated assurance that they were the best, the greatest, the wisest 
men of the country, and that they alone could save Ger- 
many—where, we say, among these poor creatures, whom a single 
year of parliamentary life had turned into complete idiots, where 
were the men for a prompt and decisive resolution, much less for 
energetic and consistent action? 

At last the Austrian Government threw off the mask. In its 
Constitution of the 4th of March it proclaimed Austria an indivisible 
monarchy, with common finances, system of customs-duties, of 
military establishments, thereby effacing every barrier and distinc- 
tion between the German and non-German provinces. This declara- 
tion was made in the face of resolutions and articles of the intended 
federal Constitution, which had been already passed by the 
Frankfort Assembly. It was the gauntlet of war thrown down to it by 
Austria, and the poor Assembly had no other choice but to take it up. 
This it did with a deal of blustering, but which Austria, in the 
consciousness of her power, and of the utter nothingness of the 
Assembly, could well afford to allow to pass. And this precious 
representation, as it styled itself, of the German people, in order to 
revenge itself for this insult on the part of Austria, saw nothing 
better before it than to throw itself, hands and feet tied, at the feet of 
the Prussian Government. Incredible as it would seem, it bent its 
knees before the very ministers whom it had condemned as 
unconstitutional and anti-popular, and whose dismissal it had in vain 
insisted upon. The details of this disgraceful transaction, and the 
tragicomical events that followed, will form the subject of our next. 

London, April, 1852 

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