STATE OF GERMANY.
The condition of Germany much interested the English government and people. The contests between the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark threatened to call for the interference of Germany on the one hand and Russia on the other, and to involve England in embarrassing questions. The attempt of the German democracies, triumphant in 1848, to fuse the powers of Germany into a whole, a new Germanic empire, also involved questions of great intricacy, and which, however England might desire to keep aloof, tended to affect treaties in which she was concerned. The union of all Germany as one authority would introduce a new element into European relations, disturbing the balance of power. Russia and France had much to apprehend from such a union; England but little, so long as the united German power abstained from invading the territory or independence of the Scandinavian nations. United Germany, possessing popular liberty, would be a natural ally of England, and a counterpoise to France, whose ambitions England had had so often to check, and a counterpoise to Russia also, whose aggrandising policy was so menacing to England and to Europe.
The disagreements of the German people as to the respective merits of monarchy and republicanism, but more especially on social questions, rendered the union of Germany politically impossible. The jealousies of Austria and Prussia were equally fatal to such a project. The houses of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern were competitors for the prize of German empire; and this, rather than the welfare or union of Germany, engaged their subtlety and energy. An Austrian archduke became vicar of the German unity, and, unless so far as there appeared any probability of his securing the supreme authority for the royal family of Austria, his object was to humour the German parliament at Frankfort, and gradually to wear it out, restoring things to their original condition. When the royal houses of Austria and Prussia found that neither could obtain a permanent supremacy, they concerted together for the purpose of breaking up the parliament, and in the meantime, of practically preventing any invasion of the independence or separate prerogative of the individual states and their governments by the central representative power which the revolution had set up. Accordingly, on the last day of September a convention was signed at Vienna, by Austria and Prussia, for the establishment of a provisional central power for Germany. This was shortly after ratified by both courts. The first article was for the purpose of giving the archduke vicar an opportunity of resigning his authority to the provisional central power.
“1. The government of the Germanic confederation, in concert with the vicar, agree on a provisional form or interim, during which time Austria and Prussia assume the administration of the central power for the German confederation, in the name of all the governments of the confederation, until the 1st of May, 1850, unless this power cannot be transferred to a definite power before that period.
“2. The object of the interim is to maintain the German confederation as a union founded on the right of the states appertaining to the German princes and of the free cities, to having preserved the independence and the integrity of their states comprised in the confederation, and to having maintained the internal and external security of Germany.
“3. So long as the interim lasts, the affair of the German constitution is left to the free concertation of the individual states.
“It is the same with those affairs which by art. 6 of the federative act, belong to the full assembly of the diet.
“4. If, at the expiration of the interim, the German constitutional question should be not yet settled, the German government will come to an understanding with respect to the prolongation of the present treaty.
“5. The affairs hitherto carried on by the provisional central power, in so far as, according to the legislation of the confederation, they came within the competency of the late assembly, are transmitted for the entire duration of the interim to a dietary committee, to which Prussia and Austria appoint each two members, to sit at Frankfort. The other governments can be represented by plenipotentiaries accredited to the said committee, either by each individual state or by several states conjointly.
“6. The committee of the confederation carries on affairs in an independent manner, but are responsible to the powers that respectively nominate them. It forms its resolutions after deliberation in common. If the members cannot agree, the decision takes place by means of negotiation between the governments of Prussia and Austria, and which latter, in case of need, will refer to a judgment of arbitration. This judgment is pronounced by three governments of the confederation. In such case, Austria will nominate each time one of the arbiters, and Prussia the other. The two governments thus designed have to decide upon a third arbiter for completing the tribunal of arbitration. The members of the committee of the confederation divide the affairs assigned to them in this mode, that according to the legislation of the existing confederation, and especially according to the military constitution of the confederation, they either personally carry them on, or else direct and superintend the carrying of them on.
“7. As soon as the ratification by the governments aforesaid of the great proposition shall have taken place, the archduke vicar will renounce his dignity and depose the rights and duties of the confederation that have been confided to him into the hands of the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia.”