THE CONFESSIONS OF A REFORMING GERMAN DUKE.
THE Duke of Saxe Coburg Gotha has just published a pamphlet for which all European politicians who wish for a little insight into the petty difficulties of German society and politics should feel truly grateful. An excellent transla- tion has appeared in our contemporary, the Daily Telegraph; it is the most graphic account of the obstacles to German union, and of the evils of attending minute political atoms which we have seen of late days, and the only one which bears the personal authority of one of these petty rulers themselves. The moral of the Duke's political autobiography is simply an emphatic illustration of one which all thinking men have long deduced from the course of events in Germany—namely, that in political as in physical bodies, when you subdivide beyond a certain point, you arrive at atoms where the repulsive mole- cular forces are stronger than the gravitating attractions—at a point where it requires some overwhelming external influ- ence to fuse the various repelling atoms into a single mass, —where there are no inherent attractions at work nearly powerful enough to overcome the inherent repulsions. This is the most important generalization to be drawn from the Duke's striking account of his political experience, but per- haps the most impressive fact which his narrative illustrates is this, that even strictly within the area of those petty po- litical atoms the Conservative forces preponderate indefi- nitely over the Liberal—that it requires a considerable breadth of national life in order to generate a true popular enthusiasm at all—that Liberalism is a political faith which can scarcely be said to exist in very small societies, so much does it depend on a circle of various interests wide enough to eliminate selfish individual wants and give a certain breadth and range to patriotic zeal. No doubt free-thinking latitudi- narian politicians who see the evil of what is established, exist as generally in such political coteries as in great States, but this is something very different indeed from the true spirit of Liberal politics—from the hatred of unjust irre- sponsible privileges, the faith in liberty and self-government, which are the germs of all that is noble in Liberal faith. These seem to require a wide sweep of disinterested popular sympathy in order to take their true form at all, and strikingly indeed is this illustrated by the Duke of Saxe Coburg's po- litical confessions, to which we now turn.
The composite duchy of Saxe Coburg Gotha is about as large as Leicestershire, with a population of about three- fifths of that county, but contains no town of anything like the magnitude of Leicester. It is, in fact, a county with a few small country towns, and a sprinkling of manufactories, the most important town (Gotha) being probably not so populous as Ridhmond-on-Thames. Before the union between Saxe Coburg and Gotha, in 1826, the present reigning family belonged to the former and least populous of the two duchies. It is with the history of his father's reign that the Duke begins his amusing and instructive history of political diffi- culties. His narrative, though it does not go farther back than 1821, introduces us to a political condition of the two duchies so primitive that he calls it patriarchal. The Duke's relation to his people was, in fact, the relation between a large landowner and his tenants, only that the landowner was also nearly an absolute ruler, except in so far as the Estates General of the duchy (not elective, but constituted 'by ancient custom) kept a check upon the exercise of his au- thority. The late Duke, or patriarch, of Saxe Coburg was, his son tells us, a practical man of the military school, who was little inclined to trust in paper constitutions. Still, thinking that the signs of the times required a gradual en- largement of popular privilege, he conferred, in 1821, a charter upon the duchy of Coburg, exchanging the old Estates General for an elective assembly, the eflect of which neither lie nor his subjects had calculated. Both parties had supposed that it was rather a formal than a substantial modi- fication of the old Estates General, and when it began to work quite differently, both the people in general, and their Duke were disgusted. Quarrels arose about the crown lands between the parliament and the reigning family ; a " crude democracy," greedy of spoil, arose on the one band ; the patriarchal sentiments of the Duke were undermined on the other ; and political affairs in Coburg grew turbid and un- pleasant. Warned by what he thought his mistake in Coburg —his real mistake was, perhaps, in not going farther in this constitutional path—the old Duke took care to keep in the old track in Gotha, and his patriarchal government there was exceedingly popular. But the present Duke Ernest had im- bibed liberal, and even democratic, principles. He had studied at Bonn, where " reactionary and aristocratic professors" suc- ceeded in inspiring the German student-population with vehement democratic sympathies. His friendships had been formed in London and Paris, as well as Germany, and generally with extreme Liberals. Amongst these (at that time) were to be reckoned "the two brothers Bulwer," the Ger- lachs, Arrivabene, &c. His liberalism was, and is, apparently rather of the doctrinaire, enlightened, ultra-rational type. Consequently, the heir to the duchy was by no means popular in Gotha. Before his father's death, his society was, he tells us, avoided. And when, in 1844, lie succeeded to the govern- ment, he found a cold reception in the little coterie which was called the Court.
" I have never acted in my life," he says, " without a pur- pose in view, and immediately upon my accession began to lay down my course. Above all, it behoved me to make peace with the Duchy of Coburg, to put a stop to the fruit- less dissension of Government and Estates, and to render the continued existence of constitutional arrangements possible. It was necessary to extinguish the greedy desire for the pri- vate domains of the reigning family, and to arrive at a final and lasting agreement with the Parliament of the duchy. The time then enauing was one of difficulty and trial forme. However, I ultimately succeeded in effecting my purpose ; and, upon the basis of my political opinions, managed to erect a constitutional structure which has outlived the stormy period of 1848, and shows promising symptoms of vitality to this day. But the result was not obtained without violent convulsions. I had to dismiss an entire Cabinet, and broke entirely with the aristocratic and bureaucratic portion of society. ' Thus the reforming Duke had carried out his father's half-intended reforms in Coburg to a logical issue, but he was himself apparently aware that, in a very minute state like Coburg, the benefits of constitutionalism are pro- portionately so much less than in a great nation, that to some 'classes the good is fully balanced by the evil. The agricultural population, he says, had really no cause to rejoice. Under the previous semi-constitutional regime, a considerable part of the revenue was at the disposal of the Grand-Duke, and being a beneficent Grand-Duke, many of the poorer farmers bad been assisted with charitable grants of corn, wood, &c., which were very much prized. Now all the public revenues were under the control of Parliament—no margin was left for this kind of semi-charitable grant—and the patriarchal relations between Duke and people necessarily therefore ceased. Apart from certain ideal advantages the lower classes did not derive anything tangible from the new institutions. " I may as well take this occasion for stating my opinion," says the Duke, " that, generally speak- ing, and provided the sovereign be an active and well- intentioned man, the lower classes are better off under a patriarchal dispensation." Even amongst the other classes of Coburg the reforming Duke got no praise, the aristocrats were discontented, the middle-class reformers reaped less personal advantage than they expected, the lower radi- cals thought reform meant freedom from the law instead of freedom through the law, and were not very grateful to their sovereign. Indeed, the Confessions give us the impres- sion that the Duke is rather a didactic and doctrinal reformer, without the broad popular elements to excite public enthu- siasm—bad there been any public to be enthusiastic—and with all the correcting instincts of a political schoolmaster. But if the Duke's task was uneasy in Coburg where his father had incurred the responsibility'of the first step, it was far harder in Gotha, where he bad to do all himself. When he had made up his mind that it was " impossible to govern one duchy in accordance with modern ideas, while the other retained the system of an antiquated past," and announced to the Estates in 1846 his wish to assimilate the institutions of the two duchies, he found that he had brought a hornets'- nest about his ears. The nobles said that " the Duke was the only democrat in the duchy ;" the middle classes were indifferent; the Duke was, in fact, generally snubbed. He could effect nothing then ; and with the true enthusiasm of a devotee of " useful knowledge" began to promote intellectual culture by lecturing on psychology and anthropology to his own subjects. This step gradually lowered his dignity. The Duke was no doubt dull. German lecturers on anthropology and psychology are generally dull ; but then a sovereign should take care not to run so great a risk. A sense of ex- citement should always attach to the presence of the sovereign in the minds of ordinary subjects. But this is a sheer im- possibility if sovereigns are to lecture on the human frame. Even the Queen—we say it with all respect—could scarcely afford to lecture at Athenaeums on dry subjects—say normal schools or cellular tissue—without giving a shock to English loyalty. However, perhaps the Duke of Saxe Coburg Gotha wished to give a shock to Saxe Coburg Gotha loyalty, since he tells us that be took pains to make people feel that his " Court" was simply his house, and that anybody with a love of truth in his mind was welcome to come there. His delight, there- fore, in the revolutionary tendencies of 1848 was profound. He had made no way with his Gotha reforms, and when the revolution of February broke out he was in London, but has- tened back to his little state in time to prevent the mob grasp- ing by violence the reforms which he had been pressing on apathetic minds for two years. Now, for a time, the Duke was happy. He had to negotiate with the popular party all alone, but this was what he liked best. He was courageous, he says, in resisting all Socialist tendencies with regard to property, not a few of which manifested themselves ; but he surrendered to the communes lands which were in dispute between the Crown and the localities, and in return was in- vited to shoot on his late property by the hospitality of the newly-invested owners.
The aristocratic party was now quite in abeyance, and in great disgust with the Duke. The population of the city of Gotha seem to have been not less angry. The Duke divides them into three classes: the nobles, who had had the monopoly of Court appointments ; the wealthy citizens, including the mass of officials ; the poorer artisans. By all, he says, he was disliked. By the ci.devant courtiers he was regarded as the representative of the principles of 1848, as the rene- gade who had abolished the formula " by the grace of God" because he thought it a remnant of the divine right of kings, in fact, as a political incendiary on the throne. By the official class of Liberals he was less liked and cultivated than before, because he had put the patronage out of his own hands into that of responsible ministers. By the lowest class he is disliked as representing the principle of a strict enforcement of the law " against the transgressions of a quiet yet aspiring democracy." They had, he says, "a han- kering after a sort of liberty which would permit them to at- tack their neighbours with impunity," both by words and acts. The Duke has steadily opposed himself, he says, to that " libel- lous tittle-tattle" which corrupts public opinion. When it was within the reach of the laws he has punished it; and, there- fore, when it was not within that seope, he has suffered from it. On the whole the Duke has not found his life an easy one. His great trial has been that indifference to public affairs, that preponderating regard for selfish interests, which mark the moral atmosphere of a petty State. There is no current of public thought to clear the atmosphere, and to merge the lrivate passions of individual self-love. The Duke says he ooks upon " unceasing inquiry after truth as the sole foundation of an earnest and judicious life :" but "inquiry," however brisk, will not create a national mind. There must be masses of conviction strong enough to give the sense of national personality, or the atomic forces overpower the social and political. These " sorrows of the young Saxe Coburg" will long be one of the most instructive documents for all German politicians, who wish to see how an enlightened reformer, even with ducal prestige, is lost upon these little independent states, or rather estates. The Duke says ex- pressly that all his efforts to inspire his little duchy with an interest in general German politics have been met with per- fect apathy. His enthusiasm is spent in vain ; no political artillery can penetrate the soft mud embankments of these petty political organizations.
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