Will you deny that the time has come when a solution of this question must be arrived at, a question, the reply to which embodies all that which, at the present moment, excites human sympathies down to their lowest depths? Do you mean to say that you do not recognize the hour as inspired by God, that all this had been said and attempted before, and would again pass off like a fit of inebriation, and would fall back into its old place? Well, then, it would seem as though the heavens had stricken you with blindness. No; at the present moment we clearly perceive the necessity of distinguishing between truth and falsehood, and monarchy as the embodiment of autocracy is a falsehood—our constitution has proved it to be so.
All who despair of a reconciliation throw yourselves boldly into the arms of the republic; those still willing to hope, lift their eyes for the last time to the points of existing circumstances to find a solution. The latter see that if the contest be against monarchy, it is only in isolated cases against the person of the prince, whilst everywhere war is being waged against the party that lifts the monarch on a shield, under the cover of which they fight for their own selfish ends. This is the party that has to be thrown down and conquered, however bloody the fight. And if all reconciliation fail, party and prince will simultaneously be hit. But the means of peace are in the hands of the prince; if he be the genuine father of his people, and by one single noble resolution he can plant the standard of peace, there where war seems otherwise inevitable peace will reign. Let us then cast our glance around, and seek among the European monarchs those said to be the chosen instruments of heaven for the great work of paternal government, and what do we see? A degenerated race, unfit for any noble calling! What a sight we find in Spain, Portugal, or Naples. What heartache fills us when we look in Germany, on Hanover, Hesse, Bavaria. Let us look away from these! God has judged the weak and wicked; their evils extend from branch to branch. Let us turn our eyes towards home. There we meet a prince beloved by his people, not in the old traditional sense, but from a genuine acknowledgment of his real self, his pure virtues, his honourable, just, and gentle character; therefore, we cry aloud, “This is the man Providence has chosen!”
A SELF-DEPOSING KING.
If Prussia insists on monarchy, it is to suit its notion of Prussian destiny, a vain idea that cannot fail to pale soon. If Austria is of the same mind, it is because she sees in her dynasty the only means of keeping together a conglomeration of people and lands thrown into an unnatural whole and which cannot by any possibility hold together much longer. But if a Saxon chooses monarchy, it is because he loves his king, is happy in calling such a prince his own, not from a cold, calculating spirit of advantage, but from genuine affection. This pure affection shall be our beacon-light, our guide not only during this troubled state of things, but for the future and forever. Filled with this unspeakably grand and important thought, we with inspired conviction courageously exclaim, “We are republicans!”
By what we have achieved we are rapidly nearing our goal,—the republic,—and although much anger and deception attach themselves still to the name, all doubts can be dispelled by one word from our sovereign. It is not we who shall proclaim the republic; it will be our king, the noblest of sovereigns; he shall say:—
“I declare Saxony to be a free state, and the first of this free state shall give to every one the fullest security of his station, and we further proclaim that the highest power in the land of Saxony is invested in the royal house of Wettin to descend from branch to branch by the right of the firstborn. And we swear to keep the oath that the law shall never be broken, not that our taking it will be the safeguard of its being kept, for how many oaths are continually broken to such covenants! No; its safeguard will be the conviction we had before we took the oath, that the law will be the beginning of a new era of unchangeable happiness, not only for Saxony, but the whole of Germany, aye, to all Europe will it carry the beneficent message.”
He who speaks this to-day, emboldened by inspired hope, is most firmly convinced that he never proved his fidelity to the oath of allegiance he took to the king on accepting office more than on the day he penned this address. Does it appear to you that by this proposition, monarchy would be altogether abolished? Yes, so it would! But the kingdom would thereby be emancipated. Do not deceive yourselves, ye who clamour for “a constitutional monarchy on the broadest basis.”
You are either not honest in reference to that basis, or if you are in real earnest, you will torture your artificial monarchy to death, for every step you take in advancing on that democratic basis will be an encroachment on the power of the monarch, viz.: his autocracy; and in this light only can a monarchy be understood, therefore every step you take in a democratic direction will be a humiliation to the monarch, since it will bespeak a distrust of his rule. How can love and confidence prosper in a continual conflict between totally opposed principles? A monarch cannot fail to be thwarted and annoyed in a contest in which very often undignified measures are employed that cannot but produce an unhealthy state of things. Let us save the monarch from such an unhappy half-life. Therefore, let us abolish monarchy altogether, as autocracy, i.e. sole-reigning, becomes impossible by the strong opposition of democracy,—the reign of the many,—but, on the other hand, let us set against this the complete emancipation of royalty.
At the head of the free state—the republic, the king by lineal descent, will be what he in the noblest sense should be, viz. the first of the people, the freest of the free!
Would this not be the grandest realization of Christ’s teaching, “the highest among you shall be the servant of all,” for in serving and upholding the liberty of all, he raises in himself the conception of liberty to the highest pinnacle, the divine. The more earnestly we dive into the annals of German history, the more we become convinced that the signification of sovereignty, as we have given it, is but a resuscitated one. The circle of historical development will be closed when we have adopted it, and its greatest aberration will be found in the present un-German conception of monarchy.