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of our countrymen, and it is possible some ❘ ART. IX. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF GERactive measures may ere long be proposed for setting at rest their apprehensions on this score. Precautions, political and military, may be adopted. Alliances with Affghans, Khorhasanees, Oosbegs, Turcomans, and Tartars may be formed. Forts may be thrown up, and lines of communication may be opened out. Each and all of these expedients may prove excellent aids to the efforts which we may reckon on our soldiers to make in defence of British territory.

But we must not shut our eyes to the truth, that, after all, the bravery of our troops or the goodness of our strategy would avail us little if, in addition to facing an enemy from without, we had to keep at bay a rebellious population of many millions in rear.

India can best be defended by enlisting on our side the interests and sympathies of its people. That we have as yet very imperfectly attained this result is apparent to any Englishman who has had opportunity and inclination to ascertain the sentiments of his fellow-subjects in the East. Let us trust that from this time forward our administration of India may be rendered more adapted to convince its inhabitants that their welfare is bound up with that of England. Let a fair share of the offices and honours of the State be allotted to the people who furnish its revenues. Let the condition of these people be made better and happier in every possible way.

To effect this end many means are open to us. Let us begin by making use of those which are at once simple and efficacious, which shall cheapen the food and increase the comfort of all classes alike: let us make roads, canals, and wayside resthouses. In India more than in any country, are these works highly valued. In addition to being useful, they are vested in the eyes of the inhabitants with a sacred regard. The man who constructs them is considered to have established a claim to eternal happiness. The duty of providing them is inculcated by every religion in the land.

In fulfilling this duty England will carry with her the good wishes of every creed of Hindustan of Brahman and of Buddhistof the followers of Mohammed, Govind Gūrū, and Zoroaster.

1. Einleitung in das deutsche Staatsrecht mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Krisis des Jahres 1866, und der Gründung des Norddeutschen Bundes. Von Dr. HERMANN SCHULZE. Leipzig, 1867. Das Staatsarchiv. Sammlung der officiellen Actenstücke zur Geschichte der Gegenwart. Herausgegeben von LUDWIG KARL EGIDI und ALFRED Klauhold. Hamburg.

2.

3. Preussen's Deutsche Politik. Von A. SCHMIDT. Leipzig, 1867.

SCARCELY three years have elapsed since the "Seven Days' War," as it has been somewhat sensationally christened, was virtually concluded by the battle of Sadowa. We are still standing too much in the light, or the shadow, according as we view it, of that great event, accurately to gauge its proportions in regard to the past, or to conjecture otherwise than hesitatingly as to its influence upon the future. It will not be labour lost, however, to estimate the political changes actually effected by the war of 1866, and to examine more curiously than has yet been done what were the institutions destroyed upon the battlefields of Bohemia, what were the causes of their so suddenly collapsing, and what is the nature of the political edifice in the course of construction upon the ruins of the former fabric.

From the first dawn of her history, Ger many has occupied an abnormal and exceptional position amongst her neighbours. Elsewhere the members of the European family have settled down into independent sovereignties, in which the international and political spheres have exactly coincided. In Germany, and Switzerland the German microcosm, these spheres have failed to coincide, the international units having in some form or other come to be made up of separate, though more or less interdependent, political units.

The ultimate causes of this dissimilarity of development are of a nature too organic to be discussed here. Nothing short of a scientific inquiry into the political physiology of the Teutonic race would suffice to explain why one fraction of the monarchy of Charlemagne culminated in the "l'État c'est moi" of Louis XIV., and another in the " monstrum informe" of the Empire,* *"Germaniam esse irregulare aliquod corpus, cujus simile puto in toto terrarum orbe non exstat, quod lapsu temporum, e regno regulari in tam male concinnatam formam est provolutum, ut neque reg

national tendency was nowhere so strongly exhibited as in Germany, and that, strangely enough, at the very moment when, by a gigantic effort, the national genius had in the realms of philosophy and literature triumphantly emancipated itself from the for eign yoke to which for generations it had bowed, and founded a national empire, the denizens of which, bound by the links of an ideal citizenship, were from thenceforth secure alike against the dangers of foreign aggression and of internal disruption. Far, however, from calling forth an echo in the political world, this intellectual revival ig nored the very existence of such a world. The systematic stamping out of all political life in their respective territories by the

as constituted by the treaties of Westphalia. It must suffice for us to note that the work of German consolidation rests upon a basis altogether different from that of mere nationality. It was as a kingdom, i. e., under the form especially consecrated by the Teutonic races to express their notion of the State, that Germany began her political career. The idea of national unity thus rooted in the concrete relations of an historical past, though dimmed, was never extinguished, by the lustre of the Roman diadem, with its anti-national claim to universal dominion, and has at no time ceased to influence her political development. It is with her efforts to recover this unity after it had been disintegrated that we are concerned, and we must therefore leave to oth-rulers whom the treaties of Westphalia had ers the task of accounting for the structural malformation, if so we may term it, of the German Kingdom, as it lay embedded in the folds of the Imperial purple.

made into despots without making into sovereigns, had restricted the class of profes sional politicians to diplomatists and legists, and it thus came to pass that those mighty seers who moulded the intellect and trained the heart of the generation destined to fight the Napoleonic wars, and to assist at the consequent reconstruction of Europe, lived, moved, and had their being in regions altogether removed from the world of political

It is clear that only one of two forces could have stopped the process of disintegration inaugurated by the treaties of Westphalia and consummated by the treaty of Prague; either a movement proceeding from below, and urging the nation to assert its right to national representation and to sub-reality with which their disciples were to stitute a living organism for the diplomatic petrifactions of the Diet, or one proceeding from above, and leading the Crown to repossess itself of the sovereign prerogatives delegated to the territories. Neither of these forces, however, was at work in the European convulsion which broke up the Empire.

be brought into such rude contact, and despised that world in proportion to their ignorance of it. Like the Birds of Aristophanes, they seemed intent upon founding an empire in mid air, nigh to the gods, from which they could look down with ironical compassion upon the vexed citizens of the Agora and the Dikastery.

The Revolution of 1789 not only was If we turn from the nation to the two not a national movement, but was in its great rivals who alone could have attempted essence anti-national and cosmopolitan. The by an effort from above to restore the monabstract rights of man, not the concrete re-archical unity of Germany, we see that ideas lations of Frenchmen, or Germans, or Italians, had to be ascertained, and, when ascertained, to be asserted; the position of the individual in the humam family, not the position of the race in the international family, was what had to be determined. Individual freedom, the substitution of equal citizenship for the multiform hierarchies of feudalism, universal brotherhood, were the ideas upon which were concentrated the thoughts of the few, and which kindled the passions of the many, at the close of the fast and during the early years of the present century. This cosmopolitan and anti

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of this kind were wholly outside the sphere of political combinations both at Vienna and Berlin. It is true that the one ruling po litical passion of the day was territorial aggrandizement, but it was aggrandizement of the piecemeal kind, not based upon the idea of concentrating the national forces and adding to the national power, but, on the contrary, upon the idea of increasing the dynastic power of the reigning House, the "Haus Macht" of German political phraseology, not only irrespectively of, but, as the partition of Poland proved, in direct opposition to, the national interests.

of

The real policy of the two Courts comes out in its true colours in the efforts made by Austria, all through the early years the first coalition against France, to secure Bavaria in exchange for the Low Countries, and, later on, by Prussia to secure the pos

session of Hanover.

H

Between the policy of a Thugut and that of a Haugwitz there is nothing to choose. The modern standard of political morality, which unhesitatingly condemns mere dynastic aggrandizement, has long since passed its verdict upon both.

It was amidst this profound indifference on the part of the nation and its rulers in regard to the ancient kingdom of Henry the Fowler, that the Diet sitting at Regensburg learnt first from the newspapers, and afterwards, in a more formal and official manner, from the French chargé d'affaires, that the Holy Roman Empire had ceased to exist, and that eighteen of its princes had constituted themselves into a separate confederation under the protection of the French Cæsar.

towards unity, and specifically, against any attempt on the part of Austria or Prussia, either in the name of the nation or on their own account, to extend themselves territorially at the expense of the confederates. The contract entered into with France was, that French bayonets should assist the confederates against their own subjects, and that confederate bayonets should assist the French Emperor in his plans against the rest of Germany.

The Confederation of the Rhine, as at first constituted, still left several of the smaller States of Northern Germany unprovided with any political centre, and it clearly became the policy of Prussia to endeavour to bring these States into union with herself, and thus to counterbalance The history of the Confederation of the the union formed under French protection. Rhine is not a pleasant one to dwell upon.. We consequently find, that during the inThat an individual here and there should terval between the dissolution of the Emhave been found ready to betray his coun- pire and the renewal of hostilities between try, and to compound with the conqueror France and Prussia, negotiations were acat the expense of his own flesh and blood, tively carried on by the latter with Saxony was no more than what might have been ex- and Hesse-Cassel, for the purpose of foundpected. Taking humanity all round, one Is-ing a confederacy under the title of an Emcariot out of twelve apostles is perhaps no pire of Northern Germany. The selfish unfair average; but that an entire class, and unpatriotic conduct of the Saxon and like that of the smaller vassals of the Em- Hessian Cabinets, who hoped to get more pire, should have been found vying with out of Napoleon than out of Prussia, fruseach other in every art of sycophancy and trated the scheme. intrigue, in order to obtain from a French Emperor a maximum of German booty, was a phenomenon without many precedents in history.

This disgraceful origin of the title-deeds by which, in a majority of cases, the new sovereign dignity has come to be held, should not be lost sight of when we consider the state of the score between the German nation and its rulers.

The details of this negotiation, which, with the draft constitution of the proposed confederation, have only lately come to light,* are interesting, as showing that for a long time past the idea of a Northern Confederation under the sole management of Prussia has lived amongst the traditions of the Berlin Foreign Office. An additional interest, moreover, attaches to them, from the fact they disclose that the idea of a North German empire appears to have been first suggested to Prussia by Napoleon, as far back as 1804, and that the original idée Napoléonienne with reference to the reconstitution of Germany, was a triad formation, in which Prussia should have been made powerful enough to be evenly pitted against Austria, and a third body under the direct influence of France should have held both in check. That for generations this has been, mutatis mutandis, the policy of France in regard to Germany, and that it has not yet ceased to be her policy, need not here be dwelt upon.

How impotent the newly-created sovereigns were to keep their crowns upon their heads alone and unaided, was made sufficiently manifest by the promulgation of the Act of the Rhine Confederacy simultaneously with their assumption of sovereignty. It is true that the new Federal constitution never came into active operation, as the will of the French Emperor supplied all that was necessary in the way of internal security and external policy; but the ideas underlying the Confederation are palpable enough. Viewed in regard to its internal functions, the Confederation was a mutual insurance society, securing the confederates in the possession of their spoils, and guaranteeing each in the full exercise of his newly acquired absolute rights over his former peers. Viewed from without, it was an offensive and defensive alliance, *Consult Adolph Schmidt's Preussen's Deutsche generally, against any national aspirations Politik. Leipzig, 1867.

By the year 1806, Napoleon had enlarged the sphere of his ideas, and the battle of Jena laid Prussia prostrate in the dust.

The history of Prussia between the peace

bore stamped upon it a national German character. For the first time in her history, Prussia, consciously and ex preposito, plunged into a war of the very first mag nitude, and in which she staked her very existence, not with a specific Prussian, but with the largest and most comprehensive national objects in view. As matters then stood there was a large field open for diplo

of Tilsit and the battle of Leipzig is the turning-point in the history of Germany. For many preceding generations the stage had been exclusively occupied by rival dynasties or rival religions,-by emperors, kings, theologians, statesmen, generals, diplomatists. Now, for the first time, we perceive the distinct outlines of a people, i.e., using the term in a sense analogous to that of the old Roman word populus-a politi-macy of the Haugwitz kind, and by a suffical community endowed with an organic life and a strongly-marked individuality of its own, and with a consciousness of its collective existence pervading all the individuals who composed it. For those who had eyes to see, Germany had now at length, after her thousand years of national existence, given birth to a State, as something different in kind from a race, or a territory, or an agglomeration of parishes, or a mercantile alliance, or a school of philosophy, or a gymnastic society, or a choral club; a respublica, or commonwealth, the raison d'être of whose existence is the public or collective well-being as a concrete entity to be laboured for with the hands, and not a mere abstract Fatherland to be dreamt about, had, by the incisive operation of foreign conquest, been plucked alive, though mutilated, out of the loins of the dead Empire.

We have no space to describe the marvellous process of regeneration by which, during the dark period of Prussia's deepest humiliation, the nation of mercenaries and serfs, who had looked on with cynical indifference at the catastrophe of Jena, became transmuted into a nation of citizens burning with patriotic fire, and able by a spontaneous effort to organize themselves into those terrible battalions who fought at the Katzbach, at Grossbeeren, at Dennewitz, and at Leipzig. Still less can we trace the predisposing causes and the antecedent Hohenzollern education which had rendered it possible for the soldiers who had fought for pay, and the tillers who had tilled that others might reap, to be thus in a few short years transformed.

It is however important for the purposes of this essay accurately to note the political effect, in regard to Germany, of the Prussian levée de bouchers, and all that it implied.

cient display of force combined with a po litic reserve and a spirit of accommodation, Prussia might probably, without drawing the sword, have not only rid her soil of the presence of French troops, but have made territorial acquisitions of no mean kind. But this was not the temper in which the Prussian people took up arms and dictated the conduct of the war. It was to liberate not Prussia only, but Germany, and not to liberate Germany only, but to regenerate her, and set her up free and united upon a pinnacle of glory such as she had never before attained, that beardless boys and white-haired men enlisted in the Landwehr-that brides despoiled themselves of their ornaments, and matrons contributed their wedding-rings. The spirit that stirred and animated and inspired was a German spirit, but the body that was stirred and animated was a Prussian body. For let us not forget that what is usually termed the German War of Liberation was essentially a Prussian war for the liberation of Germany. It is true that when, by the most stupendous efforts ever made by a people, Prussia had in the early months of 1813 placed her formidable army on foot,* individual Germans from all parts of Ger many flocked to her standard, but it was her organization that gave consistence and direction to these isolated efforts. It was round her battalions that the German Free Corps rallied. On the other hand, in those early months, and even up to the battle of Leipzig, the non-Prussian States of Germany, and that honourable corporation, the Confederation of the Rhine, were, with few exceptions, fighting in the ranks of the enemy, and it was in many cases Würtemburg, or Saxon, or Hessian veterans that most obstinately contested the day with the raw levies of the Prussian Landwehr. When Austria at last joined in the fray,

When, in January 1813, the Provincial States of Eastern Prussia, without autho*By the month of May 1818, i.e., in four months, rity from the King, and at the risk of his Prussia, then numbering five millions of inhabitants, displeasure, boldly set to work to organize had added 95,000 men to the 46,000 men of line the " people's" war against the still por-out 120,000 Landwehr men; the Free Corps made regiments allowed her by Napoleon, and had called tentous power of Napoleon, they inaugu- up an additional 10,000 men; together, 271,000 men rated a movement which, from first to last, under arms, or one man in eighteen of the populaand during every phase of its development, tion.

she did so slowly, circumspectly, and after | either by German patriots or Prussian long previous negotiation with Napoleon, statesmen. At many an important crisis who was too blind and too obstinate to the former have acted as if Germany could avail himself of the golden bridge which do without Prussia, and the latter as if his father-in-law was anxious to build for Prussia could do without Germany. him. The patriotic enthusiasm which in the year 1809 had animated many of the Austrian provinces, had died out with the retirement of Count Stadion, and the cold, polished, calculating courtier who succeeded him was not the man, even in the worst extremities, to invoke the alliance, or even to tolerate the companionship, of popular or national elements. A war entered into by Metternich against Napoleon, probably the only man for whom he ever felt a sincere respect, not to say an affectionate regard, was certain not to be other than a political war, entered into for political objects.

The German question was not destined to be simplified by the single-handed success of Prussia. Great as were the efforts made by her, they were not sufficient, even with the assistance of Russia, to effect the desired object. The gain of one more battle would have perhaps sufficed, but at Lützen the French arms were once more victorious, and the co-operation of Austria became a matter of vital importance. Thus the work of German liberation, not taking foreign allies into account, came to be effected by the co-operation of two forces-the national power of Germany acting through the brain, the heart, and the hands of Prussia, and the political power of the House of

Austria.

It was clear that this new distribution of parts could not but leave its mark upon the history of Germany, and that a new element had been imported into the German question. The fact had become patent to all that a German people had crystallized into a State of first-rate magnitude, conscious of its German mission, and that henceforth the work of German unity would have to take this fact, whether welcome or not, into account. In a word, the question of the hegemony of Germany had ceased to be a question as between two rival dynasties, and had become one as between a dynasty whose power was mainly based on non-German elements, and a consolidated German State whose interests were so interwoven with those of the rest of Germany, that, like the much-quoted Siamese twins, nothing could affect the one for good or evil without in an equal degree affecting the other. Unfortunately these new conditions, which force themselves irresistibly upon the conviction of any impartial student of the history of that time, were not realized as quickly as they might have been

The part which Prussia was called upon to play at the great settlement for which the Vienna Congress was convened was plainly marked out for her. She had in an assembly of princes to vindicate the rights of a people. How lamentably she failed in this task, how meagre was her conception of it, how she allowed herself to be driven, almost without resistance, from one advanced position after another, and how at the last she accepted tel quel the Austrian draft of constitution for the new German Confederation, are matters of history.

But in thus condemning the action of Prussia at Vienna, the difficulties of the task assigned to her should not be underrated. The European "climate of opinion," to borrow a phrase from an old writer, was in the year 1814 absolutely hostile to any great organic reconstructions. The masses yearned for rest, the upper classes for amusement. For the better part of an entire generation, good society on the Continent had fasted from all its accustomed pleasures. The terrible earnestness of the times had weighed upon all classes, and long arrears on the score of enjoyment had to be made up. The fall of Napoleon gave the signal for the splendid orgies of the Vienna Congress.* Never had business or such transcendental importance been transacted by men in such a carnival humour. Even at the present day we cannot read the driest records of the work actually done without catching an echo of the festive sounds amidst which each detail was elaborated. There is not a paragraph in the Act of Congress, not a protocol of its sittings, for which a corresponding masquerade, or carrousel, or sledging-party, each outdoing the splendour of the last, could not be found.

It was the régime of the "Man of the World" that had succeeded to the régime of the "Man of the Sword." For some two decades the latter had in the mere wantonness of conquest warred for the sake of warring; at last an entire people turned to bay, and closing with the professional conqueror threw him. Whilst still "Dry with rage and extreme toil, Breathless and faint, and leaning on their sword."

*It is calculated that three millions sterling were spent by the Austrian Court alone in the feasts given to the Allied Sovereigns, and this immediately after a State bankruptcy, and at a time when famine raged

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