THE WESTMINSTER REVIE W. JULY TO DECEMBER (INCLUSIVE) 1903. "Truth can never be confirmed enough, SHAKSPEARE. Wahrheitsliebe zeigt sich darin, daß man überall das Gute zu finden und zu schäßen weiß. VOL. CLX. GOTHE. NEW YORK: THE LEONARD SCOTT PUBLICATION COMPANY. 7 & 9 WARREN STREET. MDCCCCIII. THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW. VOL. CLX. No. 1.-JULY 1903. MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE ZOLLVEREIN. THE ambitious Minister who recklessly brought about the ruinous war against the two Free States of South Africa has had to acknowledge, since his return from there, that the serious charges he had made against the Boers as regards their treatment of the natives have turned out false. A man of that kind is a strange guide. Let those who discuss his new-fangled economic notions, by which he unsays again all that he had said before, look closely at the satchel of knowledge of this precious charmer. A great deal of amusement has been created in Germany by the excursion he recently made, in one of his great "Zollverein "speeches, into the political geography of the German Empire. The amusement amounted to Homeric laughter. So odd was one of Mr. Chamberlain's blunders that a schoolboy would have been " ploughed" for it. After having stated that the British Empire is "one and indivisible ❞—a phrase taken from the vocabulary of the first French Revolution-the would-be founder of the Imperial British Zollverein went on: "The German Empire is divided into States-Bavaria, and, let us say, Hanover, Saxony, and Würtemberg. They may deal between themselves in any way they please. As a matter of fact, they have entire Free Trade among themselves. We do not consider them separate entities. We treat the German Empire as a whole. We do not complain because one State gives an advantage to another State in that Empire, and does not give it to all the rest of the world." It is very kind of the Colonial Secretary that he will not treat the VOL. 160.-No. 1. A various States and Free Towns of the German Empire as separa political entities. Perhaps some people abroad might think that does not depend upon him or anybody else. But what Rip v Winkle sleep has he slept that he should declare Hanover to be o of the States of the German Empire? It is thirty-seven years ago that Hanover, in consequence the internal war of 1866 between the States of the German Co federation, was abolished as a State and Kingdom and became province of Prussia ! Has Mr. Chamberlain never heard of th little event? Why, unless his education in political geography sadly in arrears, he might be suspected of being a Guelphic partisa of the dynastic Pretender to the Kingdom of Hanover. Which wa are we to read him? Such is the extraordinary ignorance of the man who, with th magic word "Zollverein," tries to lure children in political econom into the hill cleft, like another Rat-catcher of Hamelin. He not aware that, for more than a generation, Hanover-of whic Englishmen might suppose to have some special knowledge—is longer in existence as a State! And yet that man comes forwa to enlighten both the masses and the House of Commons on th institutions of a country whose Customs Union he continually mak use of as a kind of spell wherewith to obtain, his own object. sorry teacher, who lacks the very rudiments of information! He may really be said, in regard to his knowledge of th political history of Germany, to be behind the times in a tenfol degree, as compared with Rip van Winkle. This apparently up-t date politician imagines that, before the establishment of the Zol verein in last century, there was no national organisation or unit whatever in Germany. He asserts it was the Zollverein that did i Now the simple fact is, which he might gather even from som ordinary Encyclopædia, that must be in his library, that German was an Empire or Kingdom already more than a thousand year ago, and that that Empire lasted from 843 to 1806. Though man Principalities and a vast number of free Republican cities gradual arose within it-of which only Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck a left now-it had, even in its worst days, a common Reichstag, Parliament, as well as a supreme head. Has Mr. Chamberla never heard of the great part that Empire played during man centuries, and that it was then in reality the only existing "Empire and its monarchs, chosen for life, the only Kaisers? After the dread events of the Napoleonic wars, Germany form herself once more into a national whole-that is, into a federati Union, called the Deutsche Bund. Austria, whose rulers had f hundreds of years been successively Emperors of Germany, not inheritance but by election (even as Presidents are in the Unit States of America), acted in that new Confederation as permane head at the Diet of Frankfort. From North to South, from the German Ocean and the Baltic to the Adriatic, from the river Memel on the Russian frontier to the Vosges Mountains and the Rhine, this Confederation, though loosely organised, even as Switzerland and the great Transatlantic Republic were, represented at any rate a political unit. It was owing to this existence of Germany as a whole that in 1848-49 there came together, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, a National Assembly, which elected a "Regent of the Empire" in the person of Archduke John of Austria, The representatives of the people in that Parliament came from the Austrian federal provinces (that is, exclusive of Hungary, Galicia, Lombardy, and Venice, which had never been within the German Empire and "Bund "), from Prussia and all the minor kingdoms and principalities. Some of the members were from parts of Germany that were not even included yet at that time in the Zollverein. And yet Mr. Chamberlain tries to make out that the Zollverein was the means of founding German unity. In the place of the German Confederation, which continued until 1866, there is now again an Empire-without, however, the former federal provinces of Austria. But in what a topsy-turvy fashion does Mr. Chamberlain produce, or rather pervert, before a gaping meeting at Birmingham, the plainest historical facts! His very use of the word "Zollverein "-instead of Customs Union in plain English, which everybody would understand—is to serve him as a mysterious means of enchantment. Made in Germany, "Zollverein' is a blessed word like Mesopotamia. Simple people who wonderingly hear it, are to be taken in by it as by an all-healing nostrum. It is a pity that a statesman and Cabinet Minister of the Colonial Secretary's rank should expose this country to ridicule by showing a lack of information on a subject on which he sets himself up as an authority or patent medicine-man, who has it in his power to cure the industrial shortcomings and sufferings of the nation as by witchcraft. How if some foreign Cabinet Minister were to assert that the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster are States separate from England proper; or that the establishment of Free-trade in 1846 had brought about the foundation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland? Again, how belated and utterly false is Mr. Chamberlain's declaration that the various States of Germany "may deal between themselves as they please," and that, "as a matter of fact, they have entire Free-trade among themselves." This is almost on a par with the startling news, given by the Times in the 'sixties of last century, in leaded type, that Prussia had just "joined the Zollverein." a matter of fact, it was Prussia that had begun the negotiations with As |