THE-Condition of Germany since the commencement of what has been appropriately termed the latest but not the last French Revolution, furnishes some instructive lessons to all those who identify national prosperity, tranquillity, or improvement, with the possession of representative governments; and anticipate oppression, suffering, discontent, stagnation of intellect, and degradation of national character, as the necessary consequences of every government from which the popular element is excluded, in the shape of a direct controlling power. It is fortunate that as yet the subject is interesting, rather in its philosophical aspect than in a picturesque point of view. The revolutionary tragedy has not yet been tried on so great a stage, or brought out with the same splendour of machinery, dresses, and decorations, in Germany, as in France and England. The streets of Munich and Dresden have not yet been illuminated by a three days' conflagra tion; and the tumultuous assemblages in Brunswick, Cassel, and Rhenish Bavaria, shew rather poorly beside the masses of the Marseillese and Lyonnese resisting the armed legions of Soult, or the hundred thousand Parisians contending with, and almost victorious over, the whole military force of Paris, aided by the National Guard, in the emeutes of June the natural pendant to the glories of July. But though the excitement arising from such exhibitions as these be wanting, there are peculiar features in the case of Germany, which render the action of revolutionary principles in that country a subject of more than ordinary interest. Among a population such as that of France, vain, irreligious, inconstant, incapable of appreciating the blessings of order and tranquil government, revolutions hardly excite surprise; nor does any one who has watched the progress of her former revolutionary movement, feel much difficulty in foreseeing the course, and ultimate termination of the present. Given-a Monarch, the creature of a revolution, and compelled to rest his authority on

that basis; a vacillating Ministry, dependent on popular favour for their political existence; an unprincipled and ambitious population, sensible of its own giant strength, and determined to use it tyrannously as a giant:-and it requires no great sagacity to work out the remaining terms of the political equation-from the first glowing and triumphant anticipations of hope, through the anxiety, restlessness, and despondency that succeeds them; and so on, to the deepening distress, the violence which results from misery and terror, and to that universal sense of intolerable suffering which at last gradually expels the poison of democracy from society, and restores the frame, seely shattered, indeed, and weakened, to comparative health.

But Revolution presents itself in a more novel character where it is inoculated into a healthier frame, instead of being generated there by its own evil tendencies; when the infection is conveyed into the midst of a people, whose sounder habits we should have been disposed to think the most calculated to resist its influence; where religion, though rationalized away to nothing among the higher classes, still retains a firm and effective hold over the minds of the people in general; where the national character is as remarkable for earnestness and steadiness, as that of the French is conspicuous for the reverse; where old institutions, old habits, old feelings, old attachments, and old prejudices, exist in some force, all operating with a counteracting influence against the spread of such doctrines; and where it might be supposed that every national feeling and recollection would have been up in arms against any impulse emanating from a nation which had never been connected with Germany save in the character of a treacherous ally or an insulting and merciless oppressor. Such is the case with Germany at this moment. National character, manners, and habits of thinking,—the recollection of the sufferings and humiliation which the first French Revolution was the means of inflicting on the Ger

manic body, evený feeling, in short, in that country, appeared to combine against the successful propaga tion of revolutionary opinions and yet, if we find that in the course of a few years, since the ill-omened re volution of 1830, the centre and south of Germany have been the constant theatre of tumults, insurrections, and bloodshed; that the aid of France-of that power which had already trampled the liberties of Germany in the dust, and is ready to do so again has been invoked and courted by the liberals of Germany; that the character of its public press, once so remarkable for the sobriety and morality of its tone, has lately emulated all the indecencies and atrocities of Parisian journal ism; that at last the audacity of the democratic faction has reached such a height, that at a great meeting, openly convoked, and attended by thousands, at Hambach, the determination has been plainly avowed to overthrow the existing German constitution, to substitute a democratic government in each separate state, and form a new German body, from which the obnoxious states of Prussia and Austria are to be excluded; that the result of this daring violation of law has lately appeared in the conspiracy and attempted revolt at Francfort, and the still later repetition of the same scenes this year at Hambach; if such convulsive movements and destructive opinions have so suddenly succeeded to the general tranquillity and social order which formerly prevailed, and that in a country which has no material wants to complain of, it presents a proof of the insidious nature and tremendous activity of the democratic principle, more decisive and appalling than any thing which the twice-told tale of revolution in France can afford.

But the point of view in which perhaps its importance is most obvious is, that it affords an opportunity of comparing the action of the Revolutionary principle on the different forms of government of which the Germanic Diet is composed, from the Austrian, almost unlimited in theory, though perfectly limited in practice by immemorial usage, to the more limited monarchy of Prussia, the newmade constitutional states of Bavaria, chrof

Baden, Cassel, and Wirtemberg, and the almost democratic constitutions of the free towns. If, for instance, it had been found that the destroying angel of Revolution, while he smote to the ground despotic empires and warlike monarchies in his progress through Germany, had everywhere passed over those whose lintel and door-post bore the protecting charm of" Constitutions," we should begin to be converts towards the modern creed, which places the external security and internal tranquillity and prosperity of states in the machinery of popular elections, a representative chamber exercising a direct control over the functions of government, and the other constitutional checks, as they are called, upon the exercise of the prerogative. But if, on the con trary, we find this result precisely reversed; if the storm which has con vulsed or shaken to pieces those mo dern creations, has passed harmless over the older monarchical governments, the conclusion we think will notless naturally arise; that however well the system of representative government may have been found to answer among a people who have be come habituated to its exercise by slow degrees, and during periods of tranquillity, when no external rimpulse exists to disorder the quiet action of its machinery, yet that, when suddenly conferred on a State at the present day, and during the present fermentation of opinion, it leads infallibly, on the first revolutionary inroad from without, or the first attack of distress from within, to a contest between the governed and the government; to the exertion of a despotic authority to support the authority of the State, or of conspiracy and treasonable resistance to subvert it; and finally, to the restoration of an authority more uncontrolled than before, either by the slowly gained practical conviction of the miseries of popular rule, or by the speedier process of an armed interference by neighbouring Powers,

Is not this precisely what has taken place in Germany? Has the moral pestilence of Revolution more fatal and more enduring, we fear, than that physical pestilence which has lately desolated her cities-found its chief focus in Austria and Prussia?

ment of a series of such conspiracies. At this very moment we see, by the German papers, that, in defiance of the prohibition of the Bavarian Government a prohibition most amply justified by the treasonable doctrines vented on the last occasion-a new attempt has been made to hold a festival at Hambach on the anniversary of the last, and that tumult and bloodshed have been the result. Bavaria is obviously, if left to herself, on the eve of a bloody and desperate revolution. The history of Baden, Wirtemberg, and Cassel, during the same period, is, as it were, a repetition of that of Bavaria. The same system of causeless opposition, intemperate attacks on authority, and increasing audacity on the part of the press, and the same practical impossibility of carry ing on the functions of government, from the determined resolution to withhold the means indispensable for that purpose, and thus to lead to a convulsion, occur in all. And the result has been, that the German Diet, who, under the powers vested in them as a body by the Congress of Vienna, are entitled to provide for the general safety, have felt them selves compelled to resort to the step of suspending for a time the exercise of a power which, instead of having been employed for the legitimate purpose of protecting the rights of subjects, had been con verted into a mere engine of unprincipled attack upon the not less clear and well-founded rights of Sovereigns.

We are quite aware that the Libe ral party (in this country at least) have a simple way of accounting for the tranquillity of Prussia and Austria, amidst the convulsions which have swept like a tempest over those favoured children of modern theory, the constitutional states, possessing a representative government. This tranquillity, say they, is entirely forced; the people in both countries are groaning with indignation under the oppressive yoke of their respective governments; and, but for the iron hand of military power, would instantly shake off their fetters, and hurry to join the ranks of freedom. To say the truth, however, we do not find this opinion quite so current among the

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continental Liberals, who, being a little better informed as to the facts, know better what the real feelings of the people in those countries are, and also know how impossible it would be, particularly in Prussia, (where the military system is placed upon a footing which gives to its army almost the character of a national guard, and blends, in the most intimate way, the soldier with the citizen,) to overpower public opinion by such an instrument, or to maintain a system of government oppos ed in any important point to the ge neral habits and wishes of the peo ple. On the contrary, they admit and lament the melancholy fact, that Prussia and Austria are insensible to the blessings which Liberalism holds out to them; and that they persist most unaccountably, and ignorantly, of course, in thinking themselves happier under the shelter of their own an tiquated and worn out feudal edifice, than under that modern temple of liberty of which Messieurs Wirth, Siebenpfeiffer, Rey, and others, would fain be the architects. "The Prussian people," says one of the leading journals of the party," supports its own system of government with an almost fanatical zeal, and is prepared to crush the hopes of Germany, and trample under foot the rising plant of liberty in the South. They are so degraded as to be deceived by views like this,We have bread enough, and therefore we will have nothing to do with a free press, a national representation, popular institutions, or the regeneration of a free German Fatherland. Such are the sentiments, the almost universal sentiments, of the Prussian people, and herein consists the degradation of Germany, and the curse of our people.* * * The Lord has so struck Prussia with blind pride, that its happy subjects, degraded as their political condition is, cannot be brought to confess it." * ** We might quote fifty such admissions from the same quarter, to the same purpose. Such, then, is the fact. Prussia is happy and contented; Prussia rejects the proffered boon of "liberal institutions;" Prussia turns a deaf ear to the strains of the revolutionary sirens, charm they never so wisely. Let us see whether a somewhat more satisfactory reason cannot be assigned for this "judicial

blindness," as our friend Herr Wirth would call it, than either the indifference arising from ignorance, or the forced acquiescence produced by the terrors of military power.

Were we to condense into a sentence what appears to us to be the true principle of the policy of Prus sia, and the real cause, both of the rapid, and, at the same time, steady, advances which she has made in the path of social and moral improve ment, and of the exemption she has lately enjoyed from the tumults and dangers by which the neighbouring states of Germany have been assail ed, we should be disposed to state it thus: on the one hand, the removal of every real evil, and the furtherance of every real good; on the other, the steady denial of every increase of popular power. Without the former condition, Prussia never could have conciliated the attachment, and insured the loyalty of her citizens; without the latter, in these periods of convulsion, she never could have en→ sured the safety or permanency of any established institutions whatever. The Government which wishes to preserve the affections, and satisfy the judgment of the wise and the good, must address itself steadily to the removal of every real grievance; to the abolition of vexatious and unequal privileges; to the establish ment of an equality of rights, and an equality of protection in the eye of the law; to the inflexible maintenance of justice and public principle to the promotion of merit, and to the opening of a free path to the honourable exertion and ambition of all. But these important interests being once attended to-if they would on the other hand restrain the factious and unprincipled, and secure for the country the permanency of those advantages which their liberal and beneficent policy has procured for it-let them steadily set their faces against the clamour for popular power and popular institutions; let them allow no fulcrum on which the revolutionary press can rest its lever; and then, when they are assailed by the calumnies and abuse of its organs in other quarters, let them proudly point to a compari son of the respective institutions of the monarchy and the constitutional government, and ask, in which most

has been done for the promotion of religion, education, and justice, for the real happiness and security of all ? thereal On the judicious combination of these principles Prussias has acted, and she may confidently refer to the position which she at present holds, not in Germany alone, but in Europe, as the most triumphant refutation of the calumnies by which she has been assailed, and to the immunity from revolutionary movements, which, during the late tempestuous times, she has enjoyed, as the most satisfactory vindication of the political wisdom by which her course has been guided.

We shall endeavour to sketch the outline of those great measures by which, since 1806, this calumniated monarchy has done more, we will venture to say, for the real advantage of its subjects, and the elevation of Prussia in the scale of Europe, than all the modern constitutional Govern, ments are likely to do for their respective States in as many centuries.

In doing so we shall go no farther back than 1806, that period when Prussia had been humbled to the dust by the victorious arms of France, and when, to a superficial observer, it might have appeared that her importance as a European state was for ever at an end, by the large portions of her territory, never very large, of which she was then deprived. Stein, the able, though somewhat rash and overbearing Minister, who, by the direction of France, had been placed at the head of the councils of Prussia, but whose honest and patriotic conduct soon convinced Napoleon that he was not likely to be subservient to the ends for which he had been placed there, saw the necessity of resorting to extraordinary measures, suited to the extraordinary position in which the country was placed, in order to revive its almost extinguished energies. Many of them were in a high degree despotic, Some of them must be considered as a strong interference with the right of property; but they were justified by the exigency of the time, and the magnitude of the social evils which they were intended to cure.

The first grand measure projected by Stein related to the condition of the peasantry, a class of men who