GERMANY.
A TWOFOLD political movement has been going on during the last half century among the Teutonic races who inhabit that central part of Europe generally designated as Germany : a movement for greater liberty, and a movement for greater unity of government. From the days of old, Germany, as every student of continental history knows, was a kind of federative republic, with an elected Kaiser at its head, a thousand feudal Princes and Lords as an in- termediate aristocracy, having as the broad base of the body po- litic many millions of free and independent buryhers,—most of them dwelling in well-secured and liberally chartered boroughs, free,—or Hanse towns. This old political fabric, dating back almost to the beginning of our era, stood tolerably well as long as its constituents remained the same ; but when in progress of time the dignity of chief magistrate became de facto if not de jure hereditary in one family, which had acquired large possessions in the State ; and when, at the side of this family, there grew up others nearly equally important, all striving after a defined sovereignty of their own ; then the substance as well as form of government gradually changed its nature, until the republic had been broken into, first, an oligarchy, and, next, a number of absolute monarchies. This was the spectacle which Germany pre- sented in the eighteenth century. At the end of that period the process of dissolution had arrived at such a point, that only a slight impulse was required to overthrow the last remaining forms of the old edifice. This occasion arrived but too soon. Invited from within, and pressed from without, the victorious ruler of France, some two years after he had put the imperial crown on his head, stepped across the Rhine, and destroying Kaiser and Reich with one stroke of the pen, bid fifty new States grow out of the ruins of the ancient German Empire. The Act of the Con- federation of the Rhine, embodying the resolutions of Napoleon and of the most influential princes of Germany, was signed at Paris on the 12th of July 1806 ; and Europe was astounded by the formal announcement to the Diet, on the 1st of August, that the Germanic Constitution had ceased to exist.
The first consequence of this Act of the Confederation of the Rhine, with the annihilation of the old constitution, was that Germany became split up into three distinct political parties—par- ties which still exist and still divide the country. First of all there is the Austrian party, composed of all the adherents, per- sonal as well as political, of the house of Hapsburg, the represen- tative for many hundred years, of the dignity, the power and glory of the " Holy Roman Empire." As might have been ex- pected, this party was the most numerous from the beginning ; but it was closely approached by the second or Prussian party,— the adherents, not of the dynasty of Hohenzollern, but of the policy of reform inaugurated by Frederick the Great, and con- tinued, with more or less perseverance, by his successors. In the eyes of the followers of this party, was the representative of civil and religious liberty ; and to extend that charter over the empire, it was necessary that Prussia should absorb Germany, or, in other words, Germany Prussia. Finally, the last of the three parties, and the smallest, was that of the minor States, bound together chiefly by the negative principle of dissent, and by jealousy both of Austria and of Prussia. During the first few years of the Con- federation of the Rhine, this last party was even fond of calling itself Imperialistic, speaking loudly of its dreams of annexing Germany to France and so restoring the ancient empire of Charle- magne. The League, uniting its Princes, consisted originally of sixteen members, including Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Baden ; but, after the victories of Napoleon, it grew rapidly in extent, and before the end of 1807 included many other princely houses of Germany, among them the Electors and Dukes of Saxony.
From 1806 until 1814 these three parties kept up a strong po- litical ferment in Germany, which at last found its vent when the downfall of Napoleon became evident. No sooner had the dis- asters of Moscow announced the ebbing of the tide which had borne the French eagles from victory to victory, than the rising of the Prussian party commenced. Prussia now came to be the great hotbed of patriotic feeling. Here arose statesmen, poets and phi- losophers, who roused the spirit of Germany by glowing pictures of Teutonic freedom and Teutonic nationality. The result, in Leipzig and Waterloo, is known well enough. Still, though free- ing Europe from the incubus of French preponderance, these vic- tories very little advanced the object of the German national, or as so-called Prussian party. The adherents of this party con- templated a popular representation in a future Federal Assembly, which was to watch over the relations of the several States in the new Confederation, as well as those between the different Princes and their subjects. Of all this the Treaty of Vienna gave little or nothing. The general principle upon which was grounded the Act of the Germanic Confederation, signed at Vienna on the 8th was June 1815, was that it should be a " volker- rechtlicher Verein," an infernational league. Its object was. specifically described in the second article of the Aot,—to main- tain the external and internal security of Germany, with the in- dependence and inviolability of the several German States ; and as far as this went, the League was far from conferring what was
above all desired by the patriotic, unity. Still there were some principles admitted into the Federal Act, which were at variance with the idea that the members of the Confederation were to be sovereign and independent. Certain rights of inter- ference were recognised, and a Federal Diet was established by which measures might from time to time be carried, which would knit together the various German interests. On the whole, the Act of Confederation of 1815 was a compromise between the three great political parties of Germany, dividing as it did into three pretty equal parts the respective influence of Austria, Prussia, and the smaller German States in the new Teutonic Bund.
So things went on till 1848, when once more political excite- ment rose to a high pitch, and the different parties came to measure each other in the council chamber as well as on the battle-field. The German revolution of 1848, at first a cry for liberty, soon came to be essentially and almost entirely a move- ment for national unity. Before long all the population of Ger- many, through the mouth of their representatives, assembled at Frankfort, expressed their wish that national unity should be made the great object, to be attained above and before all things. " Duroh Einheit zur Freiheit,"—through Unity to Liberty,—be- came the watchword proclaimed everywhere ; and after some hesitation, it was taken up even by the Austrian party, who had secret hopes of bringing a Hapsburg agin into the seat of the ancient Kaisers. This movement of the German high-conserva- tives—for such and no other were and are the partisans of Austria —was tolerably successful at first, inasmuch as the Frankfort national Parliament decided on electing Archduke Johann to the important post of Reich's Verweser, or Protector of the Empire. His incapacity, however, and that of Austrian statesmanship in general, soon became painfully apparent ; and the tide of public opinion was completely brought round in favour of the measures advocated by the Prussian party. After lengthened debates at Frankfort, in which the moat distinguished of German statesmen and orators took part, it was decided to offer the crown of the newly-restored German empire to Frederick William IV., King of Prussia. As is well known, the offer was refused by the irre- solute monarch, to the great delight of the Austrian and the
Small-German party, and the great distress of the friends of na- tional unity. Henceforth, the three parties stood again at the
point where they had been left by the Act of Confederation under the Treaty of Vienna, and they were very nearly equal to each other in power. As this is still the state of things at the present time, it may not be uninteresting here to describe this political position by a few statistical facts. The several States constituting the German Bund have, accord- ing to the latest census, a population approaching nearly to forty- four millions of inhabitants. Of these, nearly thirteen millions belong to States included in the Austrian monarchy, somewhat more than thirteen millions to Prussia, and the rest to the smaller kingdoms and principalities of Germany. The troops of the Con- federation amount to very nearly half a million of men, divided into ten corps d'armee, of which Austria and Prussia furnish each three, and the rest is divided among the thirty-three remaining States. It will thus be seen that numerically, in population as well as in troops, the smaller States of the Confederation are in the aggregate more powerful than either Austria or Prussia, and that therefore, if this influence were represented to the same degree in public opinion, they would carry with them the whole of Germany. This, however, is far from being the case ; for, in- deed, the Small-German party, or as it is sometimes called, the Small-State party, is scarcely made up of ten per cent of the population of the country, and these even are mostly inhabitants of the larger secondary States, such as Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Hanover, and Saxony. As regards the citizens of principalities, such as Reuss-Greiz, or Lichtenstein, countries comprising four or five geographical square miles, and from seven to fifteen thou- sand inhabitants, they are well known to be the greatest patriots, devoutly wishing for a united Germany. They indeed have ex- cellent reasons for doing so, since they have but too much cause of suffering from the misery occasioned by dwarf Governments and Courts in miniature. The poor little principality of Lich- tenstein, for example, which can boast of no more than seven thousand inhabitants, is blessed with a princely family consisting of no less than forty-one individuals, all duly registered in the "Almanach de Gotha," and possessed with full and unbroken notions of their princely dignities and prerogatives. This, it is true, is the extreme of petty sovereignty in Germany, Lich- tenstein being in the German Confederation what Monaco is in Italy. Yet, on the other side, the number of petty Princes is ex- ceedingly large, amounting to more than two-thirds of all the
sovereigns of Germany ; and the fact that each of them has an independent -vote in the Plenum of the Diet gives them a po- litical importance not otherwise justified. The fact, too, of their respective countries being so small, leaves them comparatively free and unfettered by public opinion ; and they are, therefore, all more or less swayed merely by dynastic interests, and by the force of family alliances and ties of relationship.
These family alliances, indeed, play so important a rale in Ger- man politics, that it is impossible to understand the latter with- out knowing something of the former. But in these again, the same as in the larger world of state policy and of public opinion, the threefold division of parties becomes clearly visible. There is a distinct range of Austrian alliances, of Prussian alliances, and of Small-State alliances ; and although, as is natural enough, these unions merge here and there into each other, a distinct line of demarcation may, nevertheless, be very easily drawn between them. Thus, the Austrian alliances extend chiefly over Bavaria, the kingdomof Saxony, Nassau, and some minor States in the south ; the Prussian alliances over Wurtemberg, Electoral Hesse, the two Duchies of Mecklenburg, and the Principalities of An- halt ; and, finally, the Small-State alliances knit together Hanover, the Saxon Duchies, Baden, Oldenburg, Brunswick, and the rest of the smaller princely houses of Germany. This, again, divides the country pretty equally in its dynastic influences, as far at least as they are at work within the boundaries of the Con- federation ; for if we begin to look without, Prussia enjoys a de- cided advantage over the other parties by its intimate connexion with England, as well as with the mighty sovereigns of Russia. The House of Hapsburg has in this respect not been very lucky in latter times, it having allied itself merely to a number of evi- dently decaying branches of the Bourbon family, in Italy and elsewhere—needy relations, always asking and never giving help ; and the Small-State Princes of Germany have likewise gained but little by throwing forward their interests into Sweden, Belgium, and Portugal. The Prussian party in Germany, on the whole, bids fair to be the gainer in the strife of interests now going on in the Confederation, as far as dynastic interests are concerned, as well as in the higher tribunal of public opinion. There is no doubt that should a German Parliament be once more assembled at Frankfort, the Imperial purple would be again offered to a Hohenzollern, under conditions, probably, not to be refused a se- cond time.
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