Let us wend our way a little farther. Without attempting to take any precise survey of Prussia and Austria, the continued fermenting and agitated state of which countries is the topic of every-day newspaper notice, and consequently without venturing upon any description of the poisonous and ulcerating sores continually breaking out upon the face of the fair and once healthy cities of Berlin and Vienna, the ignorant tumult of the parliamentary meetings assembled in them, the noisy fermentation of the ultra-revolutionary and republican clubs, the symbolical but dangerous demonstrations of hot-headed students and other unripe and unquiet spirits, the continual struggle and clash of parties accusing each other reciprocally of utterly subversive or counter-revolutionary and reactionary tendencies, and the constantly threatened danger of fresh convulsions, with further ruin to trade, and consequently to the well-being of the country at large—without, then, painting to ourselves a well-known and notorious picture, let us cast our eyes over the outward aspect of some of the smaller states.
Nothing, in the first place, can be more uneasy and disquieting than the appearance of the Duchy of Baden. In Heidelberg, ultra-revolutionary students have come to a total schism with their moderately and vaguely revolutionary professors; and it is at present difficult to see how any understanding is to be effected between teacher and scholar, so as to render the university a seat of learning of any other kind than that of subversive principles. In this part of Germany the revolutionary fermentation appears far more active, and is far more visible in the manner, attitude, and language of the lower classes, than even in those hotbeds of revolutionary movement, Austria and Prussia. To this state of things the confinity with agitated France, and consequently a more active affinity with its ideas, caught like a fever from a next-door neighbour’s house, the agency of the emissaries from the ultra-republican Parisian clubs, who find an easier access across the frontiers—not without the cognisance, and, it would now seem, as was long suspected, with the aid also of certain influential members of the Provisional Government of France—and the fact also that the unhappy duchy has been, if not the native country, at least the scene of action of the republican insurgents Hecker and Struve—have all combined to contribute. It is impossible to enter the duchy and converse with the peasant population, formerly and proverbially so peacefully disposed in patriarchal Germany, without finding the poison of these various influences gathering and festering in all their ideas, words, and actions. The prostration of spirit, generally speaking, among the middle and trading classes, the discouragement, the uncertain fear, are even still more apparent here than on the lower Rhine; and the gloom appears the greater, from all we see and hear, the higher we mount upon the social ladder. The proud and exclusive German nobility, who have so long slept cradled in the pride and exclusiveness of their courtly prerogatives and privileges, now waken to see an abyss before and behind them, a precipice at every step. How far they may have merited the terrors of utter ruin to their fortunes as well as their position, by their long contemptuous exclusion from their intercourse and society of all who had not the magic key to secure admission to them, in the shape of the privileged particle denoting nobility, whatever was the talent and the worth of the despised unprivileged—and to this state of things, even up to the present day, there have been very few exceptions at German courts, and much less in German high society—how far they have themselves prepared the way for their present position, by their wilful blindness to the progress of ideas in the world, are not questions to be discussed here. Their present apprehension and consternation are very apparent in every word and action, however much the younger generation, and especially those of it who may be military men, may bluster and talk big, and defy: they fly away to their country houses, if they have them, economise, retrench, and pinch, in preparation for that change in circumstances and position which seems to be approaching them like a spectre. The little capitals of Carlsruhe and Stuttgardt, with their small ducal and royal courts, certainly never exhibited any picture of great animation or bustle even in their most flourishing times; but the gloom that now hangs over them is assuredly very different from the peaceful, although somewhat torpid quietude in which they heretofore reposed: their dulness has become utter dreariness; their lady-like old-maidish decent listlessness a sort of melancholy bordering upon despair. Princes and people look askance at one another: people suffer; and princes think right to retrench. The theatres of these little capitals are about to be closed, because they are considered to be too expensive popular luxuries in the present state of things, and onerous appendages to court charges. Sovereigns cut down their households and their studs; and queens shut themselves close up in their summer residences, declaring themselves too poor to visit German watering-places, and support the expenses of regal toilette. In Stuttgardt these symptoms are all peculiarly visible. Spite of the long-acquired popularity of the King of Wurtemberg, as a liberal, well-judging, and rightly-minded monarch towards his subjects, the wind of revolution, that has blown in such heavy gusts in other parts of Germany, has not wholly spared that kingdom; and before accomplishing the intention attributed to him of retiring, in order to avoid those revolutionary demands which, in spite of his best intentions, he declares himself unable conscientiously to meet, the present king puts in practice those measures of retrenching economy, which add to the gloom of his capital and the disconsolate look of the court-attached and commercial portion of his subjects. It is scarcely possible, however, to suppose that the King of Wurtemberg can seriously think of abdicating in favour of a son whose youthful actions have always rendered him highly unpopular, all the more so as he is married to a Russian archduchess, whose birth must render her suspecte to the liberals of the day. Another cause, which contributes to the melancholy and deserted air of these capitals of the smaller German courts, is the retirement of the ambassadors and diplomatic agents of the other German courts, who, if not already recalled from their posts, will probably shortly be so, to meet the views of German unity, which needs but one representative in common. This unhappy look of the little German capitals is one of the most melancholy signs of the times in these smaller states. In Hanover and Brunswick the apparent resolution of their present rulers, to resist the power of the new Central Government of would-be united Germany, occasions agitation, uncertainty, and fear, which make themselves as fully apparent in outward symptoms as elsewhere. Bavaria alone appears to preserve an exceptional position. Bavaria also has had her revolution, to be sure; but, strange to say, the revolution was occasioned by the manœuvres of the anti-liberal, or, in that country, Jesuitical party, against the liberal tendencies of a wild woman’s influence over the mind of the king; and, singular as was the nature and cause of this revolution, singular has remained the situation of Bavaria, quiet, unagitated, and seemingly contented, in the midst of the convulsive hurly-burly passing every where around it.
After this cursory survey of the outward aspect of a great part of Germany, let us turn our eyes to Frankfort, the present central point of all interest and attention; for there sits the General National Assembly; there is to be brewed, by whatever recipe, or in whatever manner it may be, that fancied panacea for all evils, the Union of Germany: there, then, we may probably best learn what revolutionising Germany would be at, or, at all events, best see the means employed to arrive at something like a consummation. Let us first look at the cooks at their work; and then taste the nature of the brew, as far as their political culinary efforts have gone to “make the medley slab and good.”
Let us enter, then, that plain, dry, and harsh-looking circular building, which is the Lutheran Church of St Paul; it is there the Assembly holds its sittings. The interior arrangement has been fashioned entirely upon the plan of the French Chambers. The President’s tribune, the lower tribune of the orator before it, the gradually rising and diverging amphitheatre of seats for the members, are all entirely French in their plan. Completely French also, and with similar designation, is the political shading of the members according to their seats; the Droit, the Centre in its variety of progressing nuances, and the Gauche and Extreme Gauche have the same signification in the German Assembly as in the French. Nor does the resemblance cease here; the constitution of the Assembly, in its various elements, has a strong affinity to that of the present French National Assembly. The majority of the members are evidently concentrated in the different shades of the Centre. The old conservatives of the right have but little influence, except as a make-weight against the ultra-liberals. The centre consists chiefly of the old liberals, and opposition leaders in the different chambers of such of the German states as possessed constitutions of one modification or another—men who have now, in turn, in their position towards the ultra-revolutionary spirits, that tendency which may be called liberal conservative: they are the men of progress, who, in the present hurricane of revolutionary ideas, endeavour to guide the helm so as to avoid the very rocks they have had so great a hand in raising, and to restrain the very waves which their own breath has so greatly contributed to lash into fury! They are the Odillon Barrots, and suchlike old liberals of Germany. They find that the task before them is one of far ruder difficulty than in their theoretical fancies they had first imagined; and many of them there may be, who cannot but acknowledge to themselves, however little they may be inclined to acknowledge it to the world, that the business of a vast nation is not to be conducted by inexperienced heads, however talented, however well they may have conducted the business of a counting-house, or taught theories from a professor’s chair—in fact, that theory and practice will not walk hand in hand without a long process of amalgamating experience. The left is occupied by the men of revolutionary utopics and crude subversive opinions; and in its extreme by the ardent republicans and tribunes of the people, whom the revolution has caused to spring out of the political soil like mushrooms. These are the men who complain, in speech or in journal, that the Assembly is wasting its time in vain vapid disputations—an accusation, by the way, by no means unfounded—and yet themselves, when ever they mount into the tribune, indulge, more than any others, in declamatory would-be poetical phrases, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” and containing not one practical idea, or feasible proposal. They seem to think that, by ringing the changes upon certain pet words, such as “patriotism” and “nationality,” they have said great things and done great deeds for the good of the country; and, as far as such clap-trap efforts to gain popular applause go, they may fairly be said to obtain their ends. In this again they have a strong “cousin-german” resemblance with the French ultras in a similar position—and no less so in their endeavours to overawe and browbeat the majority of the Assembly by noisy exclamations, and even uproarious riot. The German ultras, however, have succeeded, to a great extent, in a manœuvre in which their French brethren have failed, although supported in it, at first, by a certain reckless member of the Provisional Government—that is to say, in packing the public galleries with acolytes, said to be paid, who, while they applaud all ultra-revolutionary speeches “to the echo,” endeavour to put down the conservative orators by tumult, or violent hissings, and are of course vaunted forth in the ultra-liberal journals as “the expression of the will of the nation.” Be it said, at the same time, en passant, that this manner of applauding by the clapping of hands, and expressing disapproval by hissing, has been borrowed from a habit of the members of the Assembly themselves, which has certainly a very unparliamentary appearance and sound to English eyes and ears. This use of the public galleries, which, in spite of the regulations of the Assembly, it has been found impossible altogether to put down, has assuredly a certain influence in overawing and intimidating some of the members of the majority. Two causes, however, have contributed to preserve the Assembly from utter anarchy and confusion. The first of these, a negative one, consists in the fact that Frankfort is not a great noisy stirring capital of a great country, where a mob is always at hand to be used as a tyrannical influence by the leaders of the people, and that there are no suburbs filled with a working population, whence, as in Paris, an insurgent army may be suddenly recruited to work mischief, when it may have no other work to do. The second, a direct and active one, arises from the personality of the President of the Assembly; and certainly it is in the personal qualities and physical advantages of the Herr von Gagern, as much as in his position, and from the esteem in which he is held, that his power to dominate, control, and will to order, very greatly consists.
The President Gagern, long known as the most talented and leading opposition member of the Darmstadt Chamber, has passed his life in his energetic attempts to further those constitutional liberties, which he would now check with powerful hand, that they may not go too far. Disappointed and disgusted with his fruitless efforts to promote what he considered the interests of his country, the Herr von Gagern had retired, for some time past, into private life, when, upon the breaking forth of the revolutionary storm, he was called upon by his prince to take the helm of affairs, and, as minister, to steer the bark along the current by which he might avoid the Scylla of ultra-democracy as much as the Charybdis of resistance to the progress of the age. In this new character he again appeared upon the stage of the political world; and he has only retired from his post, as he has since refused to accept office as minister of the new central executive power of all Germany, in order to maintain the position, to which he was raised by acclamation, as the controlling head of that Assembly which was to decide the destinies of the country, and from the councils of which he himself had fondly hoped to see emanate the welfare of united Germany.
Tall and stout, with a face which possesses a decision and firmness of character, much aided by a pair of very broad black brows, Herr von Gagern has, at the same time, a bold dignity of manner and gesture, which is well calculated to rule an Assembly, and a powerful voice, which knows how to make itself heard in a storm: a ready and simple eloquence, and a clear good sense, which fastens upon the right point at the right moment, are combined with these advantages of exterior appearance; and as he rises, in cases of emergency, to display a vigour of energy, rather than that system of conciliation so fatally used in France, and so impracticable amidst all the clashing party opinions of a revolutionary Assembly, he shows himself to be the man of the moment, and of the place. He may be said to be the saviour of the German National Assembly, inasmuch as his personal influence may be considered to have rescued it from that state of anarchy and confusion which now disgraces the French chamber, and into which the German Assembly, with its conflicting elements, and its still greater inexperience, seemed at first about to fall.
As it is, the German National Assembly can by no means be looked upon as a model of parliamentary order: it is still noisy, ill-regulated, and uncertain in its movements. It cannot be denied, at the same time, that sufficient individual talent may be found among its members. Among the rising men of the day, the orators of Prussia and the smaller northern states, (for Southern Germany has as yet produced but little striking talent,)—along with those young, ardent, and energetic men who, the conspirators and insurgents of a few months ago, have gone over to the liberal conservative majority, and the people’s orators, who aim at being the O’Connells of Germany, as their phraseology goes, and who, in spite of the impracticable nature of their tenets, and the frequently vapid nature of their declamation, have a certain, rude ready eloquence, that strives to be poetical—there are also a few practised statesmen, a few wary old men of action, and several well-known authors and poets, such as old Uhland, whose democratic ardour still keeps, him upon the benches of the left, and the Count Auersperg, well known under the name of Anastatius Grün, whom disappointments in his position, in society are supposed also to have driven into the ultra-democratic ranks. But there seems to be an utter want of purpose in most of the speeches which emanate from the lips of these men of talent. Proverbially vague in their philosophical theories, even when they make most pretensions to clearness, the Germans show themselves still more so in their political views. The speeches not only of the ultra-liberals, but of the would-be statesmen of the centre, appear mere compilations of “words, words, words,” without any tangible argument or practical proposal: it is rarely that it is possible to sift from the readily flowing, but generally most muddy stream, a sand of gold, that may be used as one of sterling worth in the crown of unity which the hands of the Assembly would be forging. In all that emanates from the Assembly, either in debate or in decree, there is generally a lamentable want of correctly defined purpose: and, in fact, to return to the point from which we have started, it is as difficult to discover from the vague, wavering, boggling proceedings of the Assembly, as from any other quarter, or from any other movement, precisely what revolutionising Germany would be at. Up to the present time, like the Provisional Government of France, it has rather attempted to rule aristocratically itself, than to prepare the way, as was its object, for the future definitive constitution of Germany. The only definite step it has yet taken towards that vague desideratum, a “United Germany,” has been in the appointment of a Provisional Executive Head, and of a cabinet of ministers at its direction.
Except in as far as regards the jealousy of Prussia, disappointed in its hopes of itself giving the head to the Imperial government, and inclined in consequence to quarrel with the dictates of that central power, for which it clamoured, and which it at least accepted not ungraciously, as long as it thought, with true Prussian conceit, that the head must necessarily emanate from itself—a jealousy to which reference will be made further on—the choice of the Austrian Archduke John, as Administrator or Protector of the Government of United Germany, whatever his charge may be called, (for the German term “Reichs Verweser” expresses in itself both these attributive designations,) cannot be looked upon as one of any political weight. As a prince, enjoying for many years past a certain popularity, more perhaps from a feeling of opposition, because he was considered as living upon ill terms with the Imperial court of Austria, than from any personal attachment to himself, the Archduke John may be considered to be well selected as a popular and generally accepted head of Germany: whether he possesses either the talent or the energy to fill so strange and awfully responsible a post in the present disturbed state of Germany is another question, which only those who have known him in the retirement of private life can answer. The political writer who designated him as the Duke of Sussex of Austria, made a happy hit in thus classifying him. The Archduke John has rendered himself popular by his patronage and furtherance of scientific institutions: but he has been too little known, otherwise than as the discarded and disgraced of the Imperial family, to be called in any way “the man of the people.” The marriage, which was the cause of his disgrace, was thus, likewise, the cause of his popularity, such as it was: the union of an Imperial prince with a girl of comparatively humble birth—a union about the origin of which so many absurdly fabulous tales have been told—flattered the instincts of the middle and lower classes. The Archduchess, however, who now finds herself elevated still more, to a pinnacle to which her wildest dreams could scarcely have led her, and who is now flattered, caressed, and done homage to, as she was before set aside, is said to reveal nothing of any humble origin, and to be as lady-like as sensible in manner. Upon the whole, then, it is not in the wholly provisional and most unstable appointment of the Archduke John as “Reichs Verweser” that we shall find any solution to the inquiry as to the more certain revolutionary tendencies of Germany.
Assuredly more ought to be gathered from the appointment of the new central cabinet, and more especially of its Minister for Foreign Affairs and leading member, Prince Leiningen: and naturally we look to the recent manifesto of the prince as a document from which we may best learn “what revolutionising Germany would be at.” Sensible and clear, or at all events as little confused as is possible in the present confused state of all theories, plans, and reasonings in Germany, the manifesto, in doing no more than pointing out two methods towards effecting the reconstruction of Germany, leaves every thing as regards the future in as vague and uncertain a state as before. It only states a dilemma—it does not attempt to resolve it. It puts Germany in a cleft stick, or rather, at the division of two paths, the greater merit or practicability of either of which it does not attempt to show very decisively, by its concluding words, “Entweder, Oder! choose!” In fact, it does no more than ask with ourselves, “What would revolutionising Germany be at?”
It may be surmised, certainly, from the manifesto of Prince Leiningen, that he himself is really inclined towards the going forward in the uncertain course of doing something towards the effectuation of the desired union, although he by no means pretends to recommend how this is to be done. He seems—and his acceptation of office would in itself appear to confirm the fact—a partisan of what he defines somewhat confusedly as “an actual union of all the component parts of the whole, in such a manner as to avert the possibility of any dispute between the whole and the parts;” for he adds, “If any other course be pursued, not singleness or unity, but discord and separation will be established.” But in the alternative which he places before Germany, of either returning to the past, or of realising the uncertain and as yet undefined desideratum of a great union for the future, it would seem, whatever be the prince’s own meaning, or whatever may be supposed to be the means used by the Assembly to produce a united whole, that he only places before it at the same time the alternative of a civil war, at which he himself hints, or a republican constitution, which must appear to be the result of the progress in its present sense, of revolutionising Germany.