For one whole month, burly Bismarck sits with his mouth shut, seemingly stricken dumb at the sacrilegious ideas of the Democrats.
¶ Now this giant dyke-captain, this lover of dogs, horses and cattle, sat for one whole month, stricken dumb it seemed by the political heresies that he heard. For one solid month, he never opened his mouth! Then he could stand it no longer. He pleaded vigorously for the Middle Ages feudal system, and for the right of his own aristocratic class! In truth, without knowing it, he was expressing the King’s sentiments, was a genuine King’s Man.
¶ The future prince’s first speech swept like a hurricane over a garden in June—withering, blasting, uprooting. He began by denying, absolutely, that the great victory of 1813 which expelled for Prussia the French invaders was based on so low a consideration as the promise of a paper Constitution. Not at all! It was an exhibition of pure patriotism. In his historical reference, Bismarck, in this instance, was in error. In no sense was “the people” to be credited with the great Prussian victory of 1813; it came about largely through military tactics, training and general preparedness, in which “the people” had no part except to do their plain duty.
¶ For his remarkable utterance, Bismarck was promptly hissed down by the Liberal side. Undaunted, Bismarck loaded his heaviest guns against this thing called “Liberalism,” with all its mock-heroics of liberty, fraternity and equality. Would it not endanger our King’s sacred throne? That was enough for Herr Bismarck.
¶ Thus the doughty Dyke-captain from the Elbe endeavored to perform a political miracle—new wine in old bottles—and as fast as the bottles popped, he put the wine in still other old bottles. Was there ever more folly? Did a young champion of the Crown ever make greater fool of himself?
¶ And with all Europe bawling for liberty, fraternity and equality; with thrones tottering in every direction; with 23 of the 39 German states already joyously exhibiting their new Constitutions? Here was a voice in the wilderness crying for monarchy and the Divine-right of kings! And what’s more, gentlemen, he has before him a 30-years’ fight, but in the end will ram it down your throats.
¶ His cry at this moment is that ancient Prussian slogan, “Mitt Gott fuer Koenig und Vaterland!” The question on the proposed Constitution—the right of petition and certain specified control over state finance by the people—simple as all this seems today, created a terrible storm! The nobility, led by the Dyke-captain, felt uneasy; a parliament of the people was indeed a needless concession. And were the people prepared by education for this great change? Was it not hasty?
¶ Meantime, the King was in truth a sort of broken reed, stirred by every blast that swept from the “White Saloon.”
¶ Fr: Wm. IV was a “Hamlet-hesitating monarch,” who had it not been for the burly giant Bismarck would have been swept into oblivion by the first whiff of gunpowder. A stickler for religious dogma, the pietists adored him, but the classes despised him; he was one of those men who discuss trifles with elegant ease, but who have no conception of what is behind this present widespread demand for a constitution. This King Fr.: Wm. IV lived in a mystic mediæval dreamland; he restored the cathedral of Cologne; sent a missionary band to spread his beloved Lutheran doctrines to the Chinese, and established a Protestant bishop at Jerusalem. The political literature of the time is overwhelmingly against William. He did not understand the drift of events. Without Bismarck, the King’s head would soon have rolled into the basket!