Then and there the Biblical phrases of democrat-mongering kings, under the Holy Alliance, ceased in the high courts of Russia and Prussia. Metternich got hold of Fr: Wilhelm, also the other political tools of the Frankfort Diet, and at Carlsbad decrees were issued sounding the doom of Liberalism and the return to power of the old-line kings.
By gag-law and intimidation Metternich rushed the decrees through the Diet;—and for a generation “Carlsbad” signified the suppression of Democratic sentiments throughout Germany.
¶ Metternich fought free speech, free parliaments and a free press. His iron laws were aimed to stifle democratic mutterings. Austrian spies were everywhere, searching out revolutionary societies.
¶ The hope that Prussia might be the leader in the new German spirit of nationality now vanished. William III definitely withdrew his promise of a written Constitution, made in 1813, and reiterated in 1815.
Persecutions continued north and south; Prussia hounded Jahn for five long years, this Jahn whose gymnastic societies had been so helpful in hardening young men to Prussian army services; and the poet Arndt, whose impassioned verse intensified the National spirit of Germany, was shamefully treated, his papers scattered and the man driven from his university.
¶ For many a long year the gloomy spirit of “Carlsbad” decrees hung over Germany.
¶ However, the Germans have an intensely practical side as well as a dreamy poetical side. It is not surprising, therefore, that the earliest steps in the direction of German unity (1818) came through Prussian customs house reforms under the patriot, Maassen.
¶ There had been, as we explained heretofore, no freedom of trade throughout Germany; each of the petty thirty-nine states was surrounded by Chinese walls; for example, to send goods from Hamburg to Vienna, the shipper had to pay ten separate tolls.
¶ Under the old Prussian system there were in vogue at one and the same time no less than sixty-seven conflicting tariff systems. All this tax oppression meant a harvest for smugglers. But Maassen, at a stroke, established a common tariff in Prussia; made the tax so low that smuggling became unprofitable. The other states protested vehemently at first, but one by one entered this new customs union.