They provided that there should be a special official in each university to watch the professors. Should any of them be found "abusing their legitimate influence over the youthful mind and propagating harmful doctrines hostile to the public order or subversive of the existing governmental institutions," the offenders were to lose their positions. The general students' union, which was suspected of being too revolutionary, was to be suppressed. Moreover, no newspaper, magazine, or pamphlet was to go to press without the previous approval of government officials, who were to determine whether it contained anything tending to foster discontent with the government. Lastly, a special commission was appointed to investigate the revolutionary conspiracies which Metternich and his sympathizers supposed to exist throughout Germany.[441]
The attack upon the freedom of the press, and especially the interference with the liberty of teaching in the great institutions of learning, which were already becoming the home of the highest scholarship in the world, scandalized all the progressive spirits in Germany. Yet no successful protest was raised, and Germany as a whole, acquiesced for a generation in Metternich's system of discouraging reform of all kinds.
The southern German states receive constitutions, 1818–1820.
Formation of a customs union—zollverein—with Prussia at its head.
Nevertheless, important progress was made in southern Germany. As early as 1818 the king of Bavaria granted his people a constitution in which he stated their rights and admitted them to a share in the government by establishing a parliament. His example was followed within two years by the rulers of Baden, Würtemberg, and Hesse. Another change for the better was the gradual formation of a customs union, which permitted goods to be sent freely from one German state to another without the payment of duties at each boundary line. This yielded some of the advantages of a political union. This economic union, of which Prussia was the head, and from which Austria was excluded, was a harbinger of the future German empire.[442]
Metternich opposes revolutionary movements in Spain and Italy.
261. Metternich had met with signal success in his efforts to keep Germany at a standstill. When, in 1820, the kings of Spain and Naples were compelled by popular uprisings to accept constitutions, and so surrender their ancient right to rule their subjects despotically, it was but natural that Metternich should urge the European powers to unite for the purpose of suppressing such manifestations. He urged that revolts of this kind set a dangerous example and threatened the tranquillity and security of all the other absolute monarchs.
Italy only 'a geographical expression' in 1820.
Italy was at this time what Metternich called only "a geographical expression"; it had no political unity whatever. Lombardy and Venetia, in the northern part, were in the hands of Austria, and Parma, Modena, and Tuscany belonged to members of the Austrian family. In the south, the considerable kingdom of the Two Sicilies was ruled over by a branch of the Spanish Bourbons. In the center, cutting the peninsula in twain, were the Papal States, which extended north to the Po. The presence of Austria, and the apparent impossibility of inducing the pope to submit to any government but his own, seemed to preclude all hope of making Italy into a true nation. Yet fifty years later the kingdom of Italy, as it now appears on the map of Europe, came into existence through the final exclusion of Austria from the peninsula and the extinction of the political power of the pope.
Reforms introduced in Italy during the Napoleonic occupation.