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 magnitude, and in which she staked her very

with the largest and most comprehensive national objects in view. As matters then stood there was a large field open for diplo macy of the Haugwitz kind, and by a sufficient display of force combined with a politic 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.

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, dip-existence, not with a specific Prussian, but lomatists. 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 political 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.

When, in January 1813, the Provincial States of Eastern Prussia, without authority from the King, and at the risk of his displeasure, boldly set to work to organize the "people's tentous power of Napoleon, they inaugurated a movement which, from first to last, and during every phase of its development,

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 Germany 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,

*By the month of May 1813, i.e., in four months, Prussia, then numbering five millions of inhabitants, had added 95,000 men to the 46,000 men of line regiments allowed her by Napoleon, and had called war against the still por-out 120,000 Landwehr men; the Free Corps made up an additional 10,000 men; together, 271,000 men under arms, or one man in eighteen of the popula 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 ex-
tremities, 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 "Man of the World" gracefully stepped | radical reform of the status of the German in, "neat and trimly dressed," and appro- within the Fatherland-a radical reform of priated the prizes of victory. the status of the Fatherland within the European family.

Now, it was undoubtedly owing to the indifference of the King, and to the weakness of his Ministers, that the first of these objects was not attained, and that the Fede ral Act, as finally agreed to, contained none of the guarantees for the civil rights of Germans, such as abolition of personal servitude, habeas corpus, right of free settlement, liberty of the press, liberty of education, removal of religious disabilities,

the constitutional rights of the individual States, for which the Prussian draft of constitution originally submitted to the Congress made ample provisions.

This was plainly not a congenial atmosphere for men of the stamp of Stein and Humboldt, or, even though he was a man of pleasure, for a statesman like Hardenberg, whose really large and liberal views were out of harmony with the brilliant frivolities of the day. Still less was it congenial to the work they were called upon to perform. King Frederick-William III. might perhaps have effected something, but neither his head nor his heart was in the national movement. He had never under--and none of the effective safeguards for stood it, and was half afraid, half ashamed of it. The same false shame which in the French capital had made him shy of the tattered and somewhat grotesque uniforms of the Landwehr battalions, who had so recently covered themselves with glory, and insist upon only troops of the line taking part in the triumphal entry into Paris, clung to him at Vienna when the popular and national rights of Germany had to be taken under his protection It was part of the political programme that Prussia should act as the mouthpiece of the national aspirations, and it should be done pour acquit de conscience; but in his heart the King "cared for none of these things," he was essentially a Prussian monarch, who cared for Prussia, and Prussia only, and his whole interest was concentrated on the one queston of the acquisition of Saxony.

Hence from the first it was clear that the German programme of the Prussian Plenipotentiaries was doomed, and that the latter were playing a losing game. We cannot acquit them of having played that game weakly, but we can sympathize with the gène and malaise (we can find no English equivalents) which they must have experienced in playing such a game against the courtly adversaries assembled round the green table of the Vienna Chancery of State.

It would be a fallacy, however, to suppose that it was owing to the above causes that the Congress failed in devising any national scheme for the reconstruction of Germany. The collateral objects for which the nation had made such supreme efforts, and the demands that had never ceased to be formulated, were freedom and union: a

That nothing was done to fulfil the second object was owing to causes beyond the control of the ablest and the most zealous statesmen. statesmen. The more we study the history of the period the more we become convinced that the time had not arrived for a really organic reconstruction of Germany upon a national basis, and that many years, not to say generations, and much painful experience, would be required before any. thing like a clear appreciation could be ob tained of even the elementary conditions of so stupendous a problem. When we see a man of the calibre of Stein, whose whole life had been dedicated to the work of Germany's regeneration, hold, within a few years, and even a few months, of each other, such contradictory views as the following,

constitution of Germany into a monarchy, one and indivisible, all sovereigns but the ruling House to be swept away; division of Germany into two, Prussia to take one half, Austria the other; restoration of the empire under the House of Hohenzollern, because Prussia is the most German; resto ration of the empire under the House of Hapsburg-Lothringen, because Austria is the least German State, and must be bribed to remain in Germany, we feel that that consent of opinion in any one direction, which alone could have rendered the work possible, was absolutely wanting, and that men's minds were still too much under the influence of passing events to enable them to distinguish between abiding realities and ephemeral phenomena.

The only States besides Prussia who showed any patriotic feeling were the smaller States, who, to the number of thirty-two, agitated, under the inspiration of Stein, for a restoration of the Empire, and showed a readiness to make large sacrifices to effect that object; but their scheme, when exam

ined in detail, is seen to labour under the organic defect common to all attempts made to combine in a national unit two international bodies of such magnitude as Austria and Prussia.

The attitude of the Napoleonic kingdoms was logical. They simply declared them selves unable to see the necessity of giving a common constitution to Germany, and made it a condition of their adherence to any plan that might be proposed that it should not in any way, either externally or internally, hamper their perfect liberty of action, especially in the matter of foreign alliances. "Do not let us forget," observed the Bavarian Plenipotentiary on one occasion to his Würtemberg colleague, "that after all our natural ally is France." By this cynical plainness of speech they overshot their mark, and found themselves fighting for an untenable position against Austria, no less than Prussia and the remaining States of Germany.

the former that she elected to ally herself. The one force acted in a centripetal, the other in a centrifugal direction; but the development of centripetal force in Germany meant either the dismemberment of Austria by the attraction of her German provinces within the action of that force, or the secession of Austria out of Germany in order to withdraw those provinces from that action. That Prussia's natural ally was the national force Austria knew infinitely better than Prussia knew herself, and she could hardly reckon upon Prussian sovereigns for ever remaining blind to the fact. To maintain intact, therefore, the international character to be given to the new Confederation, to prevent any germs being deposited in it which might later fructify in a national sense, to establish this Constitution on the firm basis of European treaties, and under the guarantee of non-German Powers, and then in a Diplomatic Congress-that is, a Congress in which the Sovereigns only were represented, to trust to her ground of vantage as the natural patron of the Sovereigns, and to the conservative instincts which would find their natural home in such a body, for the purpose of paralysing the efforts of Prussia, should that Power ever wake to a sense of her national mission,such in brief outline, was the policy which dictated the Austrian reconstruction of Germany in 1815.

With the exception of these kingdoms, who cannot be accused of not knowing what they wanted, but whose attitude was purely negative, Austria alone appears from the first to have been clearly conscious of the ends which she desired to compass, and of the principles of reconstruction which it would suit her interests to see adopted. At a very early stage she had made up her mind to decline the Imperial crown, and to indemnify herself in Italy, and not in Ger- The distinctive character of the Germanic many, for her share in the toils and expendi- Confederation, constituted by the Act of ture of the Napoleonic overthrow. When 1815 and complemented by the Final Act the small States entreated her to resume of 1820, was that of an International Althe crown and purple of the Cæsars, she liance between equal and independent States, effectually damped their ardour by asking whose rights of external and internal sovwho was to pay Caesar's expenses. Through-ereignty remained intact except in so far as out the earlier portion of the negotiations she withheld her own scheme of reconstruction, and contented herself with eliminating from the Prussian scheme as many of the provisions respecting civil and constitutional rights as she decently could. It was only at the eleventh hour, when the Plenipotentiaries had been exhausted by constant differences, and when public attention was wholly absorbed by the events consequent on Napoleon's escape from Elba, that she produced her draft, which, with scarcely any discussion, and some very few amendments, was definitively accepted and signed on the 8th June 1815, as the Act of the Germanic Confederation.

they were practically limited by the objects for which the alliance was concluded. Those objects were of a strictly defensive kind, viz., as defined in section 2 of the Federal Act, "the maintenance of the external and internal security of Germany, and of the independence and inviolability of the individual German States." The sole organ of the Confederation, the Frankfort Diet, was nothing else than a Congress of Plenipotentiaries, in which none was theoretically before or after another. It only differed from similar congresses in being permanently assembled. The Austrian Plenipotentiary presided in this assembly, but no attributes attached to the office of President other than those necessary for the conduct and transaction of business. By means of a complicated 'machinery the thirty-eight Plenipotentiaries composing the Diet voted according to the subject-matter on which they were called upon to decide, either in a

Restricted Council (Engere Rath)-in which | circles as it had been during the latter period the thirty-eight States had seventeen votes between them, the larger States having each one, the smaller voting curiatim in groups, -or in a Plenary Assembly (Plenum), to which sixty-nine votes were allotted, the larger Powers having several votes according to their size, but the smallest Power having at least one. Any matter touching the fundamental institutions of the Confederation had to be decided by the "Plenum," and one vote sufficed to veto any measure tending to alter those institutions. It was the liberum veto of the old Polish Diets, placing the maintenance of the status quo in the keeping of such States as Lichtenstein or Reuss. For the purposes of military defence, a highly-complicated military organization was called into life, with regard to which it will suffice to say that long before the Confederation ceased to exist it had been adjudged by common consent to be absolutely worthless.

Necessary as it would be for the due appreciation of what followed to give some account of the period during which this Constitution was in force, our space does not admit of even the shortest summary of its sins of omission and commission, and compels us to hasten on to the next great epoch in the constitutional development of Germany, only premising what follows in the way of introduction to the events of 1848.

Above, we called special attention to the fact that the prophets and teachers of the people at the close of the last and the commencement of the present century had not busied themselves with the political education of the nation. The case was very different in the succeeding generation. A movement like that which resulted in the War of Liberation could not but be reflected in the intellectual activity of the nation. As was to be expected, the poets were the first to be inspired, and never was patriotic passion attuned to nobler rhyme than that of Arndt and Körner. When the sword was sheathed, the period of political speculation began. The singers went before, the professors followed after.

It is easy for us who come by our knowledge of politics empirically, and by the same sort of natural process by which we learn to ride or to play at cricket, to scoff at those whose lot it is painfully to evolve political systems and political principles. We must remember, however, that during the thirty years that preceded 1848, political activity in Germany, except in the case of the smaller and some of the middle States, was as much restricted to official

of the Empire. In the two great units of the Confederation, Austria and Prussia, the year 1820 gave the signal for the most absolute repression of all independent movement in the direction of political reform. But there was this radical difference be tween the Southern and the Northern Power. In Austria, thought was strangled in the cradle. "The system," as Metternich's policy was concisely termed, aimed at isolating Austria materially and intellectually from Germany and the rest of the world. Austria had alone escaped the contamination of the French Revolution, and a strict quarantine, permanently established, should for ever preclude all danger of contagion. A prohibitive tariff effectually prevented all material intercourse, a rigorous censorship dammed up all the channels through which a connexion might have been maintained between the German elements of Austria and the intellectual centres of the common Fatherland.

In Prussia, on the contrary, thought was free; it was only when it attempted to shape itself into acts that it came into col lision with the authorities. Newspapers and even pamphlets could be searched for political contraband, and their contents adjudged good prize; octavo volumes sailed under a neutral flag, and as long as the treatment remained objective the boldest speculation could be indulged in from the university rostrum. By the establishment of the Zollverein, Prussia identified her material interests with those of Germany,

by the free exchange of professors and teachers between Prussian and German universities a unity of intellectual and speculative development was secured.

That the one-sided growth of political speculation without a corresponding field of political practice was in itself undesirable and fraught with many evils, will readily be admitted. Doctrinaire is a term justly branded with an invidious meaning; not the "best possible" but the "possible" is cor rectly designated as the subject-matter of politics. Nevertheless, no one can have attentively considered the history of modern Germany without convincing himself of the debt which she owes to her political profes sors, or of the benefits she has derived from the patient concentration of the best intel lects of the nation on the problem of her political reconstruction during the generation when her citizens were excluded from all share in the management of their own affairs. If proof were wanted, we should require no other than a comparison between the professors' Constitution of 1849 and the