Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN ESSAYS AND LETTERS, BY LEONARD A. MONTEFIORE. [IN MEMORIAM.] Clear brain and sympathetic heart, A spirit on flame with love for man. Hands swift to labour, slow to part, - If any good, since time began, The soul can fashion, such souls can. ESSAYS AND LETTERS CONTRIBUTED TO VARIOUS PERIODICALS BETWEEN SEPTEMBER, 1877, AND AUGUST, 1879, TOGETHER WITH SOME UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENTS, BY LEONARD A. MONTEFIORE. PKIVATELY PRINTED. LONDON: 1881. l/HAX'ERY LAXF. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Page Memoir ........ vii I. POLITICS. Liberty in Germany : First Article 1 Second Article 36 Third Article 71 Alsace-Lorraine since 1871 .... 115 Letters to the Times on Freedom in Germany : First Letter 142 Second Letter 149 Letter from " T." in reply to the above 156 Third Letter 166 II. LITERATURE. Heine in Relation to Religion and Politics . .179 New Translations of Heine's Poems . . .209 Mr. Hay ward's Gothe 217 Seeley's " Life and Times of Stein " . . . 227 Treitschke's " German History in the XlXth Century" 247 Joseph Johann Gorres ..... 260 III. SOCIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. The Socialists of Oneida 269 A new " Song of the Shirt" .... 277 Working Women . . . . . .282 1C vi Table of Contents. Page The Position of Women in the Labour-Market . 286 A Visit to the Jewish Home . . . .294 Undergraduate Oxford 298 My Cousin Ethel 314 In a Boarding-House 320 Boarding Out 332 The Art Museum at Berlin . 338 THIS volume contains almost all the published writ- ings of Leonard Montefiore together with a few manuscript pieces which he left in a more or less un- finished state. They are the work of a period hardly exceeding two years. He wrote his first article, " Heine in Eelation to Religion and Politics," when he was just twenty-four, and he died when little more than twenty-six. The time which he devoted to literary work and some of his essays are the result of great labour was snatched from the tumult of numerous and diverse occupations. Under these circumstances he never thought of what he wrote as more than imperfect and, to use his own expression, " preparatory" work. These essays must be taken for what they pretend to be studies, and nothing more. They are brilliant sketches, thrown off in haste as the first-fruits of an ardent industry which, had the author lived, would have resulted in work of more permanent value. As sketches, they are singularly full of instruction as well as of interest, and their merit has been acknowledged on all hands. With regard to German politics more especially their author had become at the time of his death a recognised authority among English publicists. Those who knew Leonard Montefiore well will viii Memoir. always look with pride upon these fragments not only as striking achievements in themselves but as containing the promise of work of the highest order. But it is not of his literary activity that they will think first when they recall his memory. What he did, even what he might have done, is quite over- shadowed by the recollection of what he was. It is impossible in a few pages to give even a complete outline of a character at once so strongly individual and so wonderfully many-sided. Whatever may be said here, everyone who knew him well is sure to miss something. If it were intended to place these pages in the hands of strangers, they would indeed be sadly inadequate as an account of him. But this book is intended only for friends. Their loving memory may be relied upon to fill up the details of the imperfect picture. The outward events to be recorded are very few. For the first nineteen years of his life he was born on the 4th May, 1853 Montefiore lived almost entirely at home. His education was unlike that of the ordi- nary public-school boy. There was less Latin and Greek and far more general reading, especially in modern literature. Of German he was always pecu- liarly fond and from early boyhood he spoke it with the same fluency and almost the same correct- ness as his native tongue. Another respect in which he differed from boys brought up at school was his dislike of sports. The love of physical exercise is either developed or created in ninety-nine boys out of every hundred who go to a public school. Monte- fiore, though he was strongly built and had an almost excessive admiration of manly strength and beauty in others, was himself averse to exercise, whether it took the shape of games or field sports, except to the extent absolutely requisite for health. At Oxford he Memoir. ix could never get over a certain contempt for the out- door amusements which occupy half the time and far more than half the thoughts of the majority of under- graduates. The fact is all the more remarkable, because it was perhaps the only instance in which he ever showed a want of sympathy with the interests, however trivial, of those among whom he moved. It was to this want of practice in boyish sports that he owed an excessive shrinking from physical pain and danger, which seems at first sight inconsistent with a character decidedly not wanting in substantial courage. If this timidity and certain difficulties with the Greek Aorist were drawbacks of his home education, they were the only drawbacks ; and they were far outweighed by some rare qualities in him which only a happy and favoured home-life could have fostered and which no amount of contact with the world was ever able to dim. The frankness and simplicity, the total absence of mauvaise Iwnte and embarrassing self-consciousness, the ready expression of warm and generous feeling, which belong to the boy of fine disposition fresh from a genial and cultivated home, were his in a pre-eminent degree and remained his to the end. He won affection by the childlike open- ness of his manner long after he had begun to com- mand respect by his manly qualities, his industry, his helpfulness, his strength of principle and purpose. Pomposity and pretence were simply impossible to him. What a contrast he formed to the great mass of shy or stately freshmen during his first term of residence at Oxford, no one who saw him under those circumstances can possibly forget. Oxford was, however, not quite his first experience of college life. In July, 1870, he had matriculated in the University of London. In the following x Memoir. October he entered University College, London, and continued to attend lectures there for two years. During this time he passed his first B.A. exami- nation at the University, taking the German prize. His favourite lectures were those on English litera- ture given by Professor Henry Morley, of whose teaching he always spoke with admiration and gratitude. A love of literature and an interest in politics had by this time become firmly rooted in him. He was a frequent speaker at the College Debating Society and also at the " London Union," a short- lived imitation of the famous debating clubs of Oxford and Cambridge. His speeches here were generally successful, though a somewhat careless style and inadequate prepai-ation marred the effect which his humour and fluency would otherwise have produced and prevented his achieving any signal triumphs. He had as yet given no decided signs of the great intellectual capacity which he afterwards displayed. The two years at University College are of little interest in the history of his mental growth in comparison with the four which he afterwards spent at Oxford. But in another respect they were very important to him. It was at this time that he formed with a fellow student, Henry Birchenough, the greatest friendship of his life a friendship which was marred by no reserves and subject to no fluctua- tions but continued from its first commencement to Montefiore's death as close and affectionate as it is possible for such a relation to be. Even after they had both left University College the friends had frequent opportunities of meeting, and in times of separation they kept up a most regular correspondence which, on Montefiore's part, was almost an auto- biography. In his own judgment the birth of this Memoir. xi intimacy was the chief fact in his career at University College. During these two years Montefiore had still lived at home. It was not until he went up to Balliol College, Oxford, in January, 1 873 he had matricu- lated about Easter of the previous year that he experienced the strangeness of an independent life. How keenly he felt the separation from home, but how quickly and fully he entered into his new life, is best told in his own words in the fragment on " Undergraduate Oxford " which forms part of this book. For a man with his keen intellectual interests, his width of sympathy, his rare power of amusing and readiness to be amused, Oxford life was from first to last almost pure enjoyment. It is hard, indeed, to imagine a place, other than a wilderness, in which he would not have been happy. Only let him have people to converse with, and he was sure to find entertainment and instruction. He never in- dulged in that commonest of all complaints, the complaint of the dulness of one's fellow creatures ; and he had little reason, for few persons were dull with him. He generally succeeded in getting some responsive note out of even the most reserved and unpromising companions. But though he had the power of being happy in almost any society, Oxford, and especially Balliol, was peculiarly congenial to him. The stirring intellectual life of the place absorbed without exhausting him. He was saved from the ennm which gradually overcame most men by the strength of his interests, from the mental strain which depressed others by their variety. How he appeared to his friends at this time may be gathered from a letter written soon after his death by one of them, and intended to preserve, while xii Memoir. every impression was still vivid, reminiscences that were very dear to himself and to others. That letter is here printed exactly as it was originally written. "Montefiore," says the writer, "spent the usual four years at Oxford and took his degree at the close of 1876. He went out in the Honour School of Modern History, obtaining a second class. There was no first class in that school at that examination. In November, 1873 i.e., about the close of his first year at Oxford, he gained the Taylorian Exhibition for proficiency in German. This is a university prize open to all undergraduates. " This somewhat meagre list of honours entirely misrepresents the importance of his Oxford life, whether to himself or to others. He always attri- buted the rapid success which he subsequently achieved to his Oxford training, and I think he was right. Of course he never could have learnt the vigour, the liveliness, the enthusiasm which give his work its greatest value and promise. But what he did learn, without which his natural gifts would have been inadequate to success, was the power of application and the conception of thoroughness, which stimulated his industry and gave substance to his work in subsequent years. Like most young men of his brilliancy and power of seizing the salient points of any new subject, he had at first a tendency to be superficial. He has often told me how much he felt indebted to his Oxford training and to his comparative failure in the final examination for teaching him the worthlessness of merely clever writing and raising his whole standard of intellec- tual work. And it has struck me particularly, though not in this instance only, how greatly he possessed the highest of all faculties, that of learning from every experience. Success and failure alike Memoir. xiii improved him, the former by its encouragement, the latter by its warnings. " It is not true to say, as was said by someone, I remember, at the time of his death, that he was uni- versally popular at Oxford. His extremely Liberal opinions and his outspokenness on all subjects could not fail to make him enemies among the body of undergraduates who knew only the outside of him and who are intensely formal and Conservative. He was as great a contrast as it is possible to con- ceive to the normal sixth-form boy, with his reserve, his self-consciousness, his Toryism, and his absorption in athletics, which Montefiore hated. It is chiefly to this want of sympathy on the part of those who only knew him at a distance that I attribute his want of success in standing for the Presidency of the Union. He had been a frequent and often very effective speaker there, but his opinions on political and still worse on athletic subjects were distaste- ful to the greater number of his audience, and so a Conservative and public school " whip " ended in his defeat by another candidate, the facile exponent of the views of the majority. This was in the spring of 1876. " But if Montefiore was not universally popular, he was yet rich in friends. The more he was known, the better he was liked, even loved, for he was a man whom it was difficult merely to like, when once you knew him well. It comes a little oddly from me, but I think it can truly be said that his friends were of the best kind. And they were not only taken from his fellow-students. He was almost the only undergraduate I remember who was old enough and sympathetic enough and man of the world enough to get on really well with his seniors and in mixed society. And so he was welcome in many xiv Memoir. Oxford homes. I might mention several names, but perhaps Mark Pattison, for whom he had an un- bounded admiration, was his greatest friend among the older men. " He was a great reader, though not exactly a student. His university work (I mean that demanded by examinations) was always the least part of his intellectual activity. He was devoted to German literature, especially Goethe and Heine, with both of whom he had a really intimate acquaintance, and the latter of whom he was constantly translating. The Elizabethan dramatists too, and especially, of course, Shakespeare, were great favourites. In his first year he started among his friends a Shakespeare Club which had a brief but intensely vigorous exis- tence. He did not care at first for history but became fonder of it as his political interests waxed stronger and the intimate connection of the two subjects grew upon him. Of the ardour and sin- cerity of his Liberalism, which was always growing in fulness and intelligence, I need not speak. "One or two episodes in his Oxford life deserve special mention. I take them in order of time. From the end of 1873 to his last term at Oxford he was a weekly visitor at the workhouse, whither he used to go to talk to the old men, to tell them stories and amuse them amusing himself not a little at the same time. Many a quaint anecdote he brought back from there. And they, of course, were devoted to him. " Don't be long, Sir, before you come back again to amuse us." These or similar words gene- rally closed the interview on their part. And no wonder. He was far the most amusing companion I have ever known. " Another work of genuine kindness, which he undertook, was the instruction of a class of pupil Memoir. xv teachers in English literature. These were the best boys of a very successful Wesleyan (I think it was Wesley an) school in Oxford who were going up for a special examination, for which the schoolmaster had neither the time, nor perhaps the knowledge, ade- quately to prepare them. Montefiore took up the task and worked really hard with them for about a year. They were very fond of their teacher, and here again, as in all his kindnesses that I can re- member, he seemed to be benefiting and delighting himself as much as those to whom he was giving his time and thought; he took as much pains about teaching these boys as about writing an article for the Fortnightly, more, I suspect, than about pre- paring for an examination. " Lastly, I ought to mention his intense devotion to Ruskin, at whose lectures he was a regular, and at whose ' undergraduate breakfasts ' he was a pretty frequent attendant. Of the strength of this attachment I can give no better evidence than that it induced him to become a ' digger,' the only kind of physical exertion I ever saw him submit to with- out great reluctance. He was one of the last sur- vivors of the road-makers and might be seen trudging out to Hincksey in ducks with a spade and pickaxe, when most of the original enthusiasts had reverted to their ordinary occupations. Very characteristic of him was the fact that, though he was in complete earnest in the matter and returned with interest the ' chaff ' to which he and his com- panions were exposed, he yet never slipped into the homiletic tone of self-righteousness and condemna- tion of the world at large which made a good many ' diggers ' and Ruskinites so ridiculous. " His rooms were among the most delightful, as they were certainly the most exalted, in College. He xvi Memoir. lived at the top of the tower over the great entrance, a Sabbath-day's journey from the ordinary meeting- places of men. His friends who were always teasing him about his aversion to exercise used to regard the exertion of that journey as a kind of antidote to his laziness, and he himself was very proud of the steepness and difficulty of the ascent and always boasted that the man who could accomplish it half-a- dozen times a day must be, at least potentially, a great gymnast. The trouble of getting to him was certainly a test of affection; and those who know how College society gravitates to ground-floor rooms will appreciate the strength of the attnaction which kept Montefiore's perch constantly supplied with visitors. Of noisy ' wines ' or big parties of any kind he had the strongest dislike, but he delighted in collecting a few well-assorted men in his rooms to afternoon tea or for a glass of wine after hall. The character of these parties was most various. He always took the greatest pains that the men who met in his rooms should be really congenial and regarded it as a duty to see that everyone was amused in the way he liked best. Nobody was left out of the conversation, or allowed to feel de trop. In this respect his social tact was very remark- able. "During the last terms of his undergraduate career Montefiore and two friends took lodgings together in Broad Street, within a stone's throw of Balliol. They were all in the throes of examination, but owing to his unquenchable spirits and his endless fund of stories not to mention his talents as a mimic the days passed most happily. When he was acting or telling stories, the sorrows of life, very heavy just then, were almost forgotten. He had the most marvellous faculty of drowning any troubles of Memoir. xvii his own in sympathy with others. He was very proud of his power of cheering people up, and an appeal to him to exercise it was never made in vain. "How he contrived to do so much in the time, to read so many books, to keep up his interest in so many undertakings, to know so many people and to know them intimately, was my standing wonder. But if this was remarkable at Oxford, it became much more so during the last two years of his life, when he had begun to make acquaintance with the great world. Of this time,however, others can speak better than I can. " I could write a great deal more about his Oxford life, but it would be only the expression of individual feeling, with which others might not sympathize. In what I have written I have confined myself to common ground and facts which all would recognise. Other friends might be able to add much, for after all I knew only one or two sides of him and his many-sidedness was perhaps the most remarkable of his many striking qualities." (This letter is dated February 14th, 1880). These words correctly indicate the nature of Montefiore's life at Oxford. It was a time of vigo- rous growth, but the fruits had not yet ripened. These only became apparent, when the intense and most successful activity of the subsequent years in London began to make him a man of mark. But to those who watched him closely at Oxford his subse- quent distinction was no surprise, though even they could hardly have expected it to come so quickly. This growth of his during the Oxford years showed itself in various ways, in his increased tolerance towards men and opinions which he disliked, as much as in the increased strength and depth of his own b xviii Memoir. convictions and his fuller appreciation of the meaning of work and the difficulty of knowledge. When he first came to Oxford he still had all the intolerance of the ardent young Liberal. Without having thought out his own creed, he was always ready to pour a full volley of raillery into that of his opponents. His satire, indeed, was always good-natured, but still it was often unjust, and people felt the injustice all the more because the banter was effective. And this intolerance was not confined to opinions. In- tensely affectionate to those whom he liked, he took too little pains to conceal his pretty frequent dislikes. There was one class of men in particular, to whom he had throughout life the greatest difficulty in being civil. These were the men in buckram, the fine gentlemen, whose claim to predominance over their fellows rested upon the perfection of their dress and the lordliness of their demeanour. It must not be thought that as a rule he was jealous of superiority in others. For excellence of every kind, physical as well as mental or moral, he had the most generous admiration, and accorded it the most ungrudging praise. But a superiority based merely on externals was repugnant alike to his feelings and his principles. For a man of this sort he had an almost physical repulsion, and his struggle to command his manners in the presence of the alien monster was often quite ludicrous to watch. He could find relief, indeed, in laughing at the silliness of this kind of assumption, but at the first blush it was not laughter but indig- nation which its presence excited. His impulse was to meet such people with open defiance. It was a long time before he could train himself to regard this commonest of social phenomena with the genial good-humour which enabled him to get over most of the ills of life. Memoir. xix One word more about this * youthful narrowness, which is only interesting now for the complete con- trast which it forms to his later liberality. When he first came to Oxford, he naturally had seen but little of the world and fervently believed that what he knew and loved was all in it that was worth knowing and loving. His sympathies were always wide, but no sympathies can ever be wide enough to justify such an attitude. And so he was apt to slight what others held dear, not from any want of delicacy of feeling, but merely from want of ex- perience. A single instance of this one-sidedness may be related here. Coming to the chosen home of classical study and mixing with men who had been brought up almost exclusively on classical literature, he yet never lost an opportunity of expressing a contempt for Greek and Roman writers whom he had not read. Shakespeare, Goethe, and George Eliot, he lightly asserted, were the three greatest names in literature. If they had an equal, it was Heine. The truth is, these were the authors he knew best. Intensely appreciative as he was, he could not know a great writer without loving him, and his love showed itself, as youthful ardour will, in depreciating everyone who might be regarded as a rival to its object. Sch heretical dogmatism plunged him into many a warm debate, in which he defended his narrow views wih an amount of humour and resource with which the broadest and most tolerant opinions are, alas ! but rarely advocated. It was indeed a pleasure to argue with him, for, how- ever illiberal his thesis, he was most generous in the conduct of a discussion. Hitting hard himself, he always took a return blow with perfect temper ; and not only did he tolerate criticism he profited by it. It was this magnanimous temper which lay xx Memoir. at the root of his wonderful power of improvement. Vehement in his opinions and reckless at first in the expression of them, he was yet not devoid of a noble docility. He could bear to be laughed at, he took advice, he was open to conviction, hospitable to strange ideas ; and so the circle of his sympathies was always widening, and even where he could not sympathize, he learned at least to respect all sound knowledge and honest conviction. His bearing, moreover, even in uncongenial company, became far less uncompromising ; his sallies, even when he was in the wildest spirits, less boisterous and more con- siderate. It would, indeed, be too much to say that his utterances could at any time have been described as judicial. Chacun a les defauts de ses qualites. His sparkling impromptus could lay no claim to such sober virtue. But he became in time deeply im- pressed with the responsibility of written words, and in conversation too he exercised a growing power of self-restraint. He might still upon a sudden impulse say and even write things which he after- wards bitterly regretted, because they seemed to him unjust or likely to give needless pain. But at any rate he was conscious of the fault and strove hard, and with increasing success, to get the better of it. + The impetuosity which sometimes played him a trick in society was his stumbling-block also in study. He conquered this recklessness, no doubt, and conquered it completely ; but it took him all his Oxford years to do so. A friend who knew him at University College says of him, "He was ingenious and imaginative, and he could not resist the charm of an ingenious theory." Such theories are the beginning of knowledge, but at first he was inclined to regard them as equivalent to it. Before he left Memoir. xxi Oxford, however, his whole attitude became changed. He now knew what was implied in the fall compre- hension of a subject and understood the true nature of knowledge, which may, indeed, be summed up in a few pregnant sentences, but only by the master of a thousand laborious details. He had become quite intolerant of sweeping general assertions, except in the mouths of the few people really entitled to make them, and turned round upon his own early dog- matism with good-humoured but unsparing ridi- cule. But this gradual revelation of the depths of wisdom filled him not with despair but with emula- tion. His last few months at Oxford were his first of really hard study. He had developed quite a passion for facts. The writers whom he had always loved, the principles which his heart had always approved, had now a deeper meaning and a stronger attraction for him. He was determined to be a worthy student of the former and an effective ex- ponent of the latter. He would read not only more, but more systematically, and think even more than he read. But this increased seriousness of purpose in no wise detracted from his gaiety of spirit. He had become a more patient listener than hitherto and a closer reader. But he was still as quick as ever in seizing a point, as lively in explaining one. He had lost none of the freshness of youth in accept- ing the responsibilities of manhood. Before leaving Montefiore's Oxford life it is neces- sary to dwell for a moment upon the beginning of what for want of a better expression may be called his philanthropic work. His visits to the work- house at Oxford, alluded to above, were his first introduction to a side of life, in which he afterwards took a growing interest. They came about in a very simple way. Being a Jew, he never worked on xxii Memoir. Saturday ; but he did not care to pass the day in idleness and soon began to cast about for some means of turning Ms leisure to the advantage of others. The means suggested to him, a weekly visit to the workhouse, to talk with and entertain the old people there seemed very unattractive. He himself confessed that there was hardly any way of spending his time which he would not have pre- ferred. But it was difficult to discover any kind of usefulness which was not work, and therefore pro- hibited. Besides, here was an opportunity for much unpretentious kindness, and that was enough for him. And it was highly characteristic of him that he very soon became interested even in these old men. They told him the stories of their lives, and with his keen sympathy for all modes of human fortune he detected many an element of humour or poetry in what to most men would have seemed utterly vulgar and commonplace. His visits which at first were a mere duty soon became also a plea- sure. But whether agreeable or otherwise, they were always regularly paid, for he never played at doing good. The following words in a letter to his mother describe his first introduction to the workhouse : " I had a letter from Mr. S. yesterday, saying that the guardians had consented to my being a visitor, so I went to-day to see the master of the workhouse and find out what sort of thing was wanted. He is a very good fellow and seemed pleased at the notion of my coming to cheer up his poor old people oc- casionally. He took me all over the place, and it was very interesting. The inmates are chiefly old men and women of sixty or thereabouts. The master told them of my views, and they chuckled and seemed pleased. I ain to tell them stories, not Memoir. xxiii to read to them ; PO to-morrow I am going to face about twenty of them for the first time. I would much rather have had to do with children, but of course one cannot choose but only do what there is to be done. At the workhouse there are very few children, and these babies almost. We went into the nursery and there saw the poor little things, about six iii number, I think. They were chubby, healthy-looking children, and looked so happy and so like other babies who begin happily and are, humanly speaking, almost certain to go on happily, that it seemed very sad to think that they would soon be turned out into a world that will have very little to say to them but reproach, as they are all children of shame. Indeed, it was the saddest thing in the workhouse, much sadder than the old men and women, though many of them had seen better times. " This visit to the workhouse, however, cheered me up tremendously and made me remember that one might do good in the world even if one was to be beaten time after time and oould not get Taylor scholarships and other things, for which one had tried long and hard." Writing again to his mother at the beginning of Michaelmas Term, 1874, when he had been a visitor for nearly a year, he says : " I went to see my old men in the afternoon, and they were quite touchingly genuine in their pleasure at seeing me back, ' to talk to us a bit and make us jolly,' as they said." The reason of his popularity is best explained in the words of a friend, who accompanied him on one or two of these visits. " I have a vivid remembrance," he says, " of the plea- sure which Montefiore's visits gave these poor people. He was so human with them, so simply kind, so free xxiv Memoir. from all the patronizing way of the ordinary ' do- good ' person, that they felt no gene in his presence. They welcomed him as a friend who came to them gladly." This was indeed the simple secret of his success in all works of kindness, of the deep affection he inspired in those below him in station ; he was " so human " with them. Montefiore left Oxford at the end of 1876. He had worked very hard for the last few months of his undergraduate life but he went away with the desire and determination to work still harder. He had made up his mind to go to the Bar, not so much from any particular love of that profession, as because it seemed the most available way of making a living. That he ought to earn something for himself, even though his circumstances were not such as to make it necessary, was a cardinal point in his philosophy. However hard he might work, however much he might do for self-improvement or the benefit of others, he thought he was shirking his duty as long as he did not support himself. According to his creed, work was the equal duty of all men, and work was not work while it was done merely for plea- sure, and not in some sense by compulsion. He took perhaps an overstrained view of the desirability of strictly remunerative labour. Men with his love of study and his enthusiasm for the public good are too rare to be thrown away upon the lower business of money-making professions. But his motives at least were such as everyone must respect, and what made them all the more laudable was the fact that he wanted little for himself. His habits of life were most simple. He always lived much below what he could well afford and he had no extragavance, unless it were his great generosity to others. But this way of spending money he always regarded as a luxury. Memoir. xxv He would not esteem it any merit rather the reverse as long as his gifts were not made out of his own earnings. "It seems to me," he writes to Birch- enough, " hardly true benevolence, and will scarcely be anything but a spendthrift's benevolence, to give away money that one has not earned. I mean to slave at the Bar and also to write, so as to make at all events something. I think one owes it to one's own strength to make something at all events." With this idea he went into a barrister's chambers in the spring of 1877. Reading law, however, proved even more of a slavery than he had expected. It is hard for an idle man to force himself to work, but it is far harder for a man with strong inclinations in one direction to bind himself down to uncongenial labour in another sphere. And law was the very last subject to attract him : " Ingenious and imagina- tive," with a strong love of poetry and all good litera- ture, intensely interested in politics and enthusiastic for every scheme of social improvement, what could he find to satisfy his desires or rivet his attention in the marshalling of assets or the doctrine of estoppel ? The human interest was so distant, while the dreary mass of technicalities, which must be waded through in order to reach it, seemed only to grow with each attempt to master them. He did, indeed, make some heroic efforts to arouse in himself a serious interest in the abstractions of the law, his humorously pathetic account of which afforded no little amuse- ment to his friends. But it soon became apparent that this study went too much against the grain. It might have been forced upon a vacant mind. It could not be made to supplant the teeming thoughts about life and literature, the fortunes of man arid his true welfare, which were continually coursing through his brain. His common sense too showed him that xxvi Memoir. even for the object which he had immediately in view the law was an ill-chosen profession. It would be years before he could make an income at the Bar, and while in this direction he could discern nothing but a weary course of preliminary study, he was growing more and more anxious to have some finished work behind him. " Do you know," he writes to Birch- enough about this time, " thatl have one regret, remorse rather, which always besets me? It is this I don't make money : I feel a miserable and complete infe- riority to Frederick, the clerk at D.'s, who often makes as much as a pound a week, and even to the omnibus conductors. Why am I to go on living on the fat of the land and tilling no soil?" It was this feeling which helped to induce him during the sum- mer of 1877 to arrange and fill up the studies of his favourite author Heine, with which he had for some time been amusing himself, and to offer them in the shape of an article to the editor of the Fortwightfy Review. He did not anticipate the success which he was to achieve but he wished to have some completed work upon record, if only to assure himself of his own power. His delight may be imagined, when the ar- ticle was favourably received by the editor and very BOOH afterwards appeared in the pages of the magazine. But this was only the beginning of his triumph : it was the general popularity of the essay and the un- equivocal praise of the most competent critics which crowned his success. That success he enjoyed to the full, as he did all good fortune ; his simple-minded exultation over it was delightful to witness. But he formed no exaggerated opinion of his work. It was a joy to him that he had done so well, because it was an earnest that he would yet do better. While rejoicing in the evidence which he had given of his literary power, he readily invited and gratefully ac- Memoir. xxvii cepted criticism. He confessed that in some places his pen had run away with him and he had expressed himself more strongly than he really felt. He ad- mitted that certain passages the abrupt diatribe against the privileges of the Lords, for instance were " red patches " which marred the temper and unity of the whole. The essay indeed bore distinct traces of his earlier slap-dash style of argument. But these were faults of which he was conscious and which he knew he could amend. They did not detract from the essential merits of the article, or make it any the less a remarkable piece of writing for so young a man. The universal acknowledgment of these merits decided his course during the two remaining years of his life. Although his legal studies dragged on a lingering existence for another six months, they had, in truth, received a covup de grace. He now turned with decision in the direction in which his inclinations had all along been drawing him, towards literature and politics. Before following him in that course we must turn to another side of his varied activity, which was now coming more and more into prominence. This was his work for and amongst the poor. Ever since the summer of 1874, when he first met Mr. Barnett, the Vicar of St. Jude's, Whitechapel, and learnt from him how much good work was to be done outside the beaten and questionable paths of ordinary " charity," he had devoted some time during each Long Vaca- tion to visits to the East-end. When in the spring of 1877 London once more became his head-quarters, these visits increased iu frequency, and to the end of his life, whatever else he might be engaged in, he never failed to devote a substantial share of his time to his work in those regions. The nature of that work it is very difficult to describe. It falls xxviii Memoir. within none of the acknowledged categories of philanthropy. He himself would have detested hearing it called by any term which implied benefi- cence or condescension. He went among the poor neither to relieve their wants nor to reprove their morals. He went among them, as he would go into any other society, from a love of human intercourse : for to converse freely with men and women, what- ever their station, was always his greatest pleasure. " There are few men," says one who knew him intimately, " who have such genuine enthusiasm of humanity as he. He simply could not recognise the difference between Jew and Gentile. He was pained by marks of deference andstirredto indignation by the trammels which prevented free intercourse. It was therefore that he as a rich man could become friends with the poor and as a Jew could establish equal relations between Jew and Gentile." This sense of human equality was the charm by which he won all hearts. Brought face to face with any man or woman, who would be open with him, the feeling of a common humanity quite overpowered any con- sciousness of class distinction. He did not suppress the sense of separation, he simply did not feel it. And as he could never be anything but himself, whatever his company, so he insensibly led those who conversed with him to be equally natural and at their ease. The good which such intercourse did the people with whom he came in contact lay not so much in his acts as in his presence, in the silent in- fluence of his rich, simple, loving nature, his kindly humour, his contagious enthusiasm for all that was noble and beautiful and humanizing. There was nothing laborious or mechanical about his goodness. It was wholly effortless, the outcome of his own happiness and warmth of heart, as natural and as Memoir. xxix refreshing as the sunlight. The greatest tribute to the rare quality of his kindness is the fact that poor people learned to welcome him not as a patron but as a friend. And so his converse with them was free from the evils which too often infect the intercourse of rich and poor. He lowered no man's self-respect, he created no dependents, he gave the help which never pauperizes, the true charity of encourage- ment, sympathy, and counsel. To attempt to give a picture of Montefiore's work in Whitechapel by chronicling the duties which he undertook, or the public acts which he performed, would be to miss the whole spirit of his life there. The simplest occasions were sufficient to give him the desired opportunity of kindly intercourse with the people. A flower-show, or a children's treat, or a parish conversazioiw, enabled him to establish friendly relations, and he was not the man to lose his hold upon affections that he had once gained. The fact that he was a Jew gave him a certain ad- vantage in a neighbourhood where Jews abound. But what made him invaluable was his rare combina- tion of sincere Judaism with perfect liberality. His attitude in this matter was such that Jews were proud of him as one of themselves, while Christians never felt the difference of race and creed as any separation between him and them. His great fond- ness for children too was a sure means of over- coming prejudices. The most surly and stubborn among grown-up people were conciliated, when they saw the "love at first sight" which he inspired in children and the trust which they immediately placed in him. A good instance of his happy way of dealing with the poor was his success in orga- nizing a flower-show in the district of St. Jude's, one of the first enterprises which he put his hand to in xxx Memoir. that region and typical of the kind of undertaking in which he delighted. Of this flower-show Mr. Barnett writes : " Montefiore made himself secretary and set about to visit the people. He found a way into most homes, and once in, by a compliment to the woman, a joke with the man, or a romp with the children, established himself as a favourite. He was very energetic himself and helped his fellow-workers not a little by his bright accounts of his own way of meeting or escaping difficulties. On the show-day he was able to say how pleased he was at the meet- ing of Jew and Gentile and how he hoped that they would have common pleasure in the flowers. When the prizes had been given and the customary com- plaints followed, there was no one so clever as he at restoring good temper. With his ready speech, his quick wit, and his brotherly manner, he got round the most stubborn grumblers." Of a later occasion of the same kind another fellow-worker says : " Almost the last piece of work that brought us to- gether was a children's flower-show in St. Jude's parish, Whifcechapel, in the summer of 1878. Such a scheme could not fail to please Mr. Montefiore. He saw that the rearing of flowers might teach the children (and perhaps even the parents) to love beauty in the house as he loved it himself; and he readily agreed to address the Jewish Schools in Castle Street, to explain to them what the show was to be and how they were to take part in it. He went from class to class, making a little speech to each, and all in simple language that every child could under- stand. When he left in the afternoon, a crowd of little children pressed round him in the street, and he said, with a laugh, that he surely owed his popularity to his family name." Another friend relates a similar story. " His love Memoir. > xxxi for children and his influence over them were re- markable. The affection they had for him was strikingly shown by the children of the Workhouse Schools during the distribution of toys collected in response to letters in the Times from Mr. Knowles and others. Those who attended these distributions, more especially that at the (schools of the White- chapel Union at Forest Gate, will remember not only his touching little addi'esses to the children but the readiness with which they appropriated him as a playfellow in the games which formed part of the programme." "Often," says Mr. Barnett, "has he by himself amused a whole roomful of children by games invented on the spur of the moment, or by talk of egregious nonsense impossible to repeat or imitate. When all was over, the children would cling around him as he left : ' Come again soon to play with us.' " Such anecdotes might be multiplied indefinitely. It is very noteworthy, that in the memory of all who knew Montefiore well some of the most vivid pictures of him are connected with his love of children. There was an instinctive sym- pathy between him and them, and in his gravest as in his wildest moments the companionship of children, or the thought of them, exercised a strange, deep influence over him. " If I were to die," he once said to a friend, not long before his journey to America, " I wish you would do a kindness to some child once a year for my sake." It must not be thought, because he shone most in play and in social intercourse, that hard business and work of a more serious kind were repugnant to him. On the contrary he discharged many heavy duties. He was Secretary of the Jewish Schools in Red Lion Square from April, 1877, until he left for America. He became a member of the Jewish xxxii Memoir. Board of Guardians in 1878. But his chief work of a public character in the East-end was done in con- nection with the Society for the Extension of Uni- versity Teaching. He was secretary of the Tower Hamlets branch of the Society and " served the cause," to use Mr. Barnett's words, " by visiting the workshops of the neighbourhood, and also at meet- ings, when his power of speaking told." The busi- ness of committees was mostly uncongenial to him, but yet his presence was an invaluable element on such occasions. His genuine enthusiasm for educa- tion inspired his fellows and enabled him to get over the dulness of the necessary routine. From first to last he preserved in all work of this nature his dis- tinctive character of cheery helpfulness and impartial humanity. To quote once more from the fellow- worker already referred to : " He did not affect the philanthropist. His good deeds in East London and elsewhere came to him as luxuries rather than as duties. His own enjoyment of art and literature was so keen that he found a real pleasure in diffus- ing it. He tried to make men good by treating them well, and he made no difference between rich and poor ; he spoke to all as fellow-men. Though he gloried in avowing his nationality, he gained the ear of Christian and Jew equally well, for no audi- ence could resist his happy blending of gaiety and humour." With his deep and wise sympathy for the labour- ing classes, and his strong interest in all that could make their lives more humane as well as more com- fortable, Montefiore was naturally a great advocate of workmen's clubs and of every means of promoting healthy social intercourse among the poor. He felt intensely all the disadvantages under which they labour, but he felt also that any attempt to lighten Memoir. xxxiii those disadvantages, which might result in weaken- ing their self-reliance and injuring their self-respect, was the greatest wrong which could be done them. All the more enthusiastic was he for such means of improvement as were free from objection on that score. He was ever ready to lend his help to make the social meetings of working people a success, whether by his conversation, or by reading, or by simple entertaining lectures, in giving which he had a happy facility. During his undergraduate days he had delivered one or two addresses to village audiences, both at Aston Clinton, where he often stayed with his aunt, Lady Rothschild, and at Saris- bury, his own home in South Hampshire. Later on, when he lived principally in London, he gave several lectures at the Jewish Workmen'sClub in Hutchinson Street, Aldgate, and read from time to time both there and at the Women's Protective and Provident League in Great Queen Street, an institution in which he took a peculiar interest. The subjects he liked best to speak about were the writings of some living author, such as George Eliot, or a picturesque period of history, like the reign of Queen Elizabeth. With his fluency, his plain language, and his genius for vivid description, he could interest audiences to whom lectures on any subject were only too likely to be dull and incomprehensible. The address over, he would mix, in his genial, unaffected way, in the general flow of conversation, and it would go hard with him, if he was not very soon the centre of a laughing and chatting group, who forgot " the gentle- man who has kindly consented to address" &c. in the cheerful companion who talked so delightfully and made them also talk their best. And this was no mere good-nature. While associating gladly with poor people and enjoying himself heartily when- xxxiv Memoir. ever he could add to their enjoyment, he was yet deeply sensible of their troubles and distresses and gave to the grave social problems involved in their position his careful and constant thought a fact which some of the later essays in this volume show in a very striking manner. This double vein indeed ran through his whole character on the one hand he was the gay, amusing, even boisterous companion ; on the other, the tender, thoughtful, sympathetic friend. Is it out of place here to call to mind one occasion, when, after spending an evening with a party of young men, whom he had kept in constant merriment by indulging in his wildest humour, he turned, as all were separating, to one of the com- pany, who had not shared the general gaiety for he had just lost a dear friend and spoke to him with suddenly altered voice and manner a few words of gentle, appreciative sympathy which have never been forgotten ? It is time to return to Montefiore's literary work. The article on Heine had appeared in the Fortnightly Review of September, 1877. It was followed within a twelvemonth by the first of the articles on " Liberty in Germany," all three of which were written during 1878. The small compass of these articles gives no idea of the amount of work which they entailed. Up to this time Montefiore had the slightest possible knowledge of modern German history. His ac- quaintance with German literature was extensive, but that literature is, on the whole, singularly inde- pendent of politics. It was probably his intense in- terest in all Heine's opinions which first led him to study the political and social system which was the object of Heine's perennial scorn. Once started on this course of reading, he pursued it with marvellous energy. The struggle for freedom excited all his Memoir. xxxv sympathy. He amassed knowledge with such ra- pidity and realized the dramatic incidents of the story with such foi-ce that he was soon seized with the desire of imparting to others what had made so deep an impression upon himself. His studies up to this time had been as desultory as they were comprehensive. But now, though he seemed to ac- complish an equal amount of general reading, though he was as much in society and as conversant with current affairs as ever he had been, yet by a rigid economy of time he managed to make rapid progress with the particular study which he had chosen for his immediate task. The lists of authorities given at the end of each article, all of which he con- scientiously ransacked, afford sufficient evidence of the pains which he took and the space which he traversed. And his information was not wholly de- rived from books. He knew Germans, whose per- sonal reminiscences threw light on the events in which he was interested, and at least one of his ac- quaintance had been a prominent actor in the move- merit which he sought to describe. The conscientious accuracy in study which he had been so long in ac- quiring now stood him in good stead. Biased, no doubt, he was, biased as well by his own fervent Liberalism as by the partisanship of his German friends. But if he was not devoid of partiality, he at least made every effort to be rigidly accurate. Prejudiced in judgment, he was scrupulous in as- sertion. " I feel the responsibility of it all," he says to Birchenough, "and how exact I ought to en- deavour to be. You would hardly know me if you saw me looking up references." And in speaking thus he did himself no more than justice. Had ho lived to carry out his plan of writing a complete history of Germany since the War of Liberation, it xxxvi Memoir. would have been as fair as any interesting account of the immediate past is ever likely to be. When Montefiore first conceived the idea of these sketches, he proposed to contribute them to the Fortnightly. The editor, however, was of opinion that the subject would excite no special interest among English readers at that particular time, and so they were offered to and accepted by the Nine- teenth Centwry. As it turned out, the moment of their appearance was particularly opportune. While tkey were being written, the rapid growth of So- cialism, the two attempts upon the life of the Em- peror, and the repressive legislation of Prince Bis- marck turned the attention of all the world to the domestic troubles of Germany. The first of the ar- ticles appeared in August, 1878, while the Emperor's life was still hanging in the balance ; the second, in October of the same year, just before the debates on the Socialist law ; the third, in February, 1879, when the German Government had finally committed itself to a policy of reaction. Interesting under any circumstances, the essays were especially appreciated at a time when the internal affairs of Germany had for once attracted the eyes of Englishmen. In Montefiore's own judgment " Liberty in Ger- many" was a more praiseworthy though less spon- taneous piece of work than the essay on Heiue. He was fonder perhaps of the latter and willing that his friends should be fonder of it too, for it had been wholly a labour of love. But he was prouder of the articles in the Nineteenth Centwry, for he knew that in composing them he had worked harder and with more concentration than ever before, and their suc- cess left no doubt that the result had been fully proportionate to the labour expended. Of the effect which they had produced he soon received the most Memoir. xxxvii practical proofs. His article in the Fortnightly had already insured him the ear of the public, but now his work was not only welcomed but solicited by the best English periodicals. From the appearance of the first article on " Liberty in Germany" to the time of his death he had far more offers of literary work than he was willing or even able to accept. The Athenaeum entrusted him with the criticism of the two greatest books on German history which have appeared in recent years, those of Seeley and Von Treitschke. The Encyclopedia Britannica had ob- tained his promise to contribute biographies of a number of German statesmen and writers, only one of which, the life of Gorres, he lived to complete. He wrote also, as several essays contained in this volume show, for the Observer, the Spectator, Time, and the Magazine of Art, as well as for other papers of less note. The more he wrote, the more he was pressed to write ; but though he was grateful for every mark of appreciation and took great pains even with the slightest article, he was yet deter- mined not to give himself up to merely ephemeral work and devoted his best energies to increasing his knowledge and widening his experience. In the spring of 1878, while he was busy reading German history, an event occurred which tempo- rarily interrupted his studies and permanently modi- fied his plans. This was the sudden death of his uncle, Sir Francis Goldsmid which quite unexpec- tedly placed him in the position of heir to a large fortune. The accession of great wealth made abso- lutely no difference to his habits or his view of life but in one respect it greatly altered his prospects. He had always been ambitious of a political career, but unwilling as he was to be in any way a burden to his parents, he never thought of asking them to incur xxxviii Memoir. on his account the expense of a contested election. But now there could be no objection on that ground to his standing for Parliament. His family wished it, and his friends, some of whom, like Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Grant Duff, were themselves promi- nent in political life, agreed in urging him to enter upon a career for which he was so eminently fitted. Brought face to face, however, with an opportunity which he had ardently longed for in the distance, he had at first great scruples about availing himself of it. Was he fit for a position of the duties and re- sponsibilities of which he had such a high conception ? The social prestige which it would give had absolutely no attraction for him. What he did desire was the power of doing good, the opportunity of playing a worthy part in public life. But the higher he es- teemed the position, the more he doubted his own capacity to fill it. He wanted to read more and know more. His acquaintance with political history had, indeed, vastly increased during the last two years, and his work at the East-end had brought him into contact with social facts with which statesmen would do well to be more familiar. But the more his knowledge grew, the loftier became his standard of the requirements and capacities requisite to a poli- tical career. It was not till the arguments of men who spoke from experience had convinced him that the business of politics could best be learned in the House of Commons, that he reconciled himself to the idea of standing at the next general election. He finally made up his mind to do so about the be- ginning of 1879. The time for carrying out this resolution never came to him. It would be worse than useless now to lament the tragic eclipse of so many brave hopes. But it is impossible, in speaking to his friends, not to Memoir. xxxix express what all have felt, how greatly he would have enriched our English political life, if he had lived to play a part in it. He had such an intense faith in human progress, such manifold sympathies ; wealthy and gifted with various culture, he yet felt such kinship with the poor and uneducated, that he would have exercised a rare influence to inspire, to combine, and to conciliate in a time of doubt and disunion and threatened warfare between class and class. It may seem strange that with his poetical temperament, his keen enjoyment of art and litera- ture and society, he should have been so eager to mix in the dusty work-a-day world of political life. But it was a true instinct which led him to regard this rough business as his proper function. It was just because in addition to his strong political in- terests he had qualities which most politicians lack, that his presence amongst them would have been so valuable. And on the other hand he had not the characteristics of the thinker, who is at his best when he keeps outside the battling world. He was by nature rather a thoughtful man of action than a man of thought. All his interests lay on the side of the human and the real ; abstract and theoretical discussions were dull and even repulsive to him. For metaphysical argument " useless and uncanny rubbish " as he termed it with humorous exaggeration ho had an innate distaste. Doctrines and contro- versies about doctrine, religious or philosophical, were without interest for him. Speculative doubts troubled him but little, and on the other hand he was hardly, if at all, influenced by any dogmatic creed. The religious unrest, which he speaks of in " Undergraduate Oxford," affected him rather out of sympathy with some of his companions than from any proueness of his own mind to lose itself in xl Memoir. questionings of this nature. A simple belief in goodness, a reverent delight in all that was bright and beautiful in the world, and a deep love of his fellow-men these were his religion. In the practice of that faith he might well have found satisfaction, as he certainly would have diffused blessing, had he lived to tread the bustling highway of politics and to spend his abundant strength in works of social reform. Nor would such a life have interfered in any way with his literary activity. As a writer on politics and modern history he would have gained much from personal experience of great affairs. It may not be out of place here to say a few words about his political opinions. No one who knew him will need to be reminded that he was a Liberal of verj advanced views. But he did not quite conform to any of the recognised types of Liberalism. To the high regard for personal independence and fair play, the love of perfect freedom of speech and opinion, which all true Liberals share, he added an enthusiasm for equality, more French than English in its general character, but which in its breadth and consistency was peculiarly his own. This feel- ing was something deeper than any doctrine. It not only prompted all his political opinions, it ran through his whole character and conduct. Not merely privileged classes and institutions, but the thousand social inequalities, which in daily life are acquiesced in by Liberals as much as by Conser- vatives, excited in him a spirit of opposition. He was at war with all social distinctions, with every- thing that prevented people of different classes from ineeting on the common ground of their humanity. He detested the relation of patron and dependent wherever he found it, whether in master and servant, or in man and woman. The idea of Memoir. xli becoming a country gentleman was repugnant to him from the very fact that it would have forced him to exercise patronage. Free contract between equals, not habitual homage of inferior to superior, was his ideal of social life. He had too much com- mon sense, despite something approaching fanaticism on this point, to deny that differences of wealth and rank were inevitable. What he hated was the diffe- rence of bearing and conduct resulting from them the assumption of superiority on the one hand, the air of servility on the other. The latter difference, he felt, was far greater than it need be, and was allowed, especially in England, to constitute a fatal barrier to healthy human intercourse between men of various ranks. And so he assailed this spirit of separation, not only with argument and satire, but by the example of his conduct in the smallest details of daily life. A good deal has already been said on this point in connection with his work at the East-end. And the impartial cordiality which characterized him there was his attitude all the world over. At all times and in all places he kept protesting against the hauteur and exclusiveness of wealth and station. Some of his protests were, perhaps, a little ill-judged, and others verged on the ludicrous. He wore shabby clothes, he travelled third-class, he bought cheap things at second-rate shops. Generous as he noto- riously was, such conduct could not fail to expose him to a suspicion of affectation. But in truth no man was ever freer from that foible. He did these odd things, partly, maybe, from a careless- ness of appearances, but chiefly from an objection to being more comfortable than his neighbours. He did not like to feel that he was constantly enjoying luxuries from which the majority of mankind were excluded. xlii Memoir. This love of equality showed itself in innumerable ways. Nothing made him more angry than the common argument that inferior education is good enough for the poor. He was a sturdy advocate too of the claims of women to share the labours and the privileges of men. Not that he loved blue-stockings, or was anxious to encourage women to undertake tasks for which they were unfitted. But he felt that it was wrong to deprive them of equal oppor- tunities, because the majority might never be able to make use of them, and he was keenly sensible how imperfect education, unwise protection, and false notions of propriety had combined to injure and degrade the class of women who are compelled to work for their bread. His views on this point are pretty fully set forth in the essays on " Working Women" and "The Position of Women in the Labour Market." Next to his hatred of inequality came his contempt for fashion. The cause of both animosities was the same. The wanton trammels of fashion do as much to spoil society as the inevitable barriers of rank, and a free and spontaneous social life, rich with various characters, genuine interests, and fresh ideas, was the object of his adoration. He was intensely un- conventional and preached incessantly against con- vention and formality. " Live the life which you feel to be best for you and never mind what people say." Such was his constant exhortation. He laughed at people who furnished their houses elaborately in a style they did not care for to suit the prevalent taste of the day. " Buy only what pleases you," that was his canon of artistic decoration. He had quite a Carlylean hatred of shams, but without any touch of Carlylean ferocity. He rather ridiculed than de- nounced the world of fashion, while proclaiming Memoir. xliii half in jest and half in earnest his own allegiance to the vie de Boheme. And to a certain extent he actually sought out Bohemian society, but his liking for it was probably all the greater because his acquaintance with it was only superficial. He loved its freedom, but its license would have disgusted him ; for it was the outward conventionalities which distort society, not the deeper moral conventions which make society possible, against which his cru- sade was directed. It would be vain to attempt a regular chronicle of Montefiore's life during the years 1878 and 1879. His activities were so manifold and so inter- woven with one another, that the various threads would be exceedingly difficult to disentangle, and the attempt might only end in an accumulation of dis- tracting details. His diary, though full of life, and recalling the sparkling freshness of his conversation far better than any of his writings which it has been found possible to print, is too fragmentary to be a reliable guide. There is, however, one episode in the story which stands out in clear relief, and of which his own exceptionally consecutive narrative gives the best possible account. This is his visit to Berlin in the late autumn of 1878. He spent some two months in the German capital, reading history in the Library, and seeing as much as he could of Berlin society, both literary and political. To talk to politicians was, perhaps, his foremost object, and the heated state of the political atmosphere at the time made such conversations exceptionally interesting. He met on all hands with a very cordial reception, and his skill in inducing those whom he visited to talk familiarly on the subjects they knew best made these interviews of the greatest value to him. His diary shows that he hardly passed a day without xliv Memoir. some conversation worth recording. Bunsen and Lasker explain to him the popularity and necessity of the Socialist Law and prognosticate, only too truly, the approaching troubles of German Liberal- ism. Gneist gives him a lecture on the early de- velopment of Socialism and expounds the secret of Bismarck's success in dealing with men. Sybel is full of information about the history and present position of the Prussian nobles, gives a lively account of Frederick William IV. and his surroundings, and tells some good anecdotes of the incompetence of French diplomacy under the Second Empire. Rich- ter, the leader of the Progressists ; Rickert, one of the foremost men in the new Liberal " secession " ; Schneegans, the well-known Alsatian deputy, to- gether with other politicians of less note and the correspondents of the chief English papers, made up the list of his political acquaintance. The limits of space and the dictates of prudence alike forbid the reproduction of conversations which were often as lengthy as they were confidential. But there are exceptions to this rule, and nothing could be at once more innocent and more characteristic than the fol- lowing account in Montefiore's own words of a single day, typical of many, which he spent in Berlin. The rough jottings of the diary are given without alteration, except that in one or two places, where the indistinctness of the writing (he wrote one of the worst hands on record) makes such a course neces- sary, a conjectural word has been admitted. " Wednesday. Read Madame Lewald's tracts. Only thing I felt useful was her account of kitchens administered by women and Realschulen. " Called on Lord Odo Russell. Told me Rouma- nians would be forced to emancipate Jews, and it would be better for the Roumanians in the end. Memoir. xlv Then to lunch with M. Talk pictures. Dinner with Lasker. Lasker very tired, had been speaking at Landtag. Debate had been on Budget. Lasker said to my amazement that the financial position of Prussia was unequalled in excellence in Europe. I asked, how. Then Rickert, another Landtag man, explained that if the property of the State were divided every man would have a considerable sum of money, besides all the debt paid off. ' Oh, wenn wir es nur theilen kownten,' said J., at which there was a general laugh. Rickert went into a very elaborate land-calculation. " Then all fell to abusing Grneist for his misrepre- sentations of England. After dinner Bunsen talked incessantly and extremely well. He described the French Chamber and said that Cassagnac in his most offensive speech had remained a gentleman. Rickert laughed and said, ' Yes. Not as in our Herrenhau^, where two members once held their fists in the face of a speaker.' Bunsen then told a capital story of Moltke, who, it seems, does not consider a battle won, if the enemy's army is not captured. At Sedan, being informed that the French were completely surrounded, he said, 'Ja, das stimmt,' and took snuff. Another grand story about a man called to arms saying, 'Nun geht das Gesiege wieder los. J Great fear was expressed by every one that the Emperor's illness would end disastrously. There is talk of putting the city in a state of siege as enacted by the Socialist Law." The following too is of interest from a purely political point of view : " I found Lasker " (this was on a different occa- sion) '* wonderfully kind. He pointed out to me the panic of the people at the second attempt on the Emperor. The object of politicians now was merely xlvi Memoir. to restrain their madness. He believed no people would have gone so little mad as the Germans. He referred to the action of the Americans, when a woman was taken and hanged, simply because she had known Wilkes Booth, the murderer of Lincoln, not at all because she was an accomplice, of which there was no shadow of proof. Germany had gone mad at the second attempt. He knew it was absurd to say that the Socialist leaders desired it, but their teach- ing had in a way incited to such deeds. The young Socialists had glorified Vera Sassoulitsch, the Russian would-be assassinatrix. As to England, he believed our KlassenJcampf was very near at hand, and that we should find it bitterer than this one. He spoke very kindly of my letter to the Times and said he had at once recognized the authorship. ' The times are indeed difficult,' he said. ' Tou have Bismarck on the one side impatient of any law or restraint, and revolution threatening from below on the other. Midway the peaceful Bwrg&r, perplexed and fearing both, but fearing Bismarck less than Bebel.' " With the opportunities which such interviews afforded, and which he knew so well how to use, it is not wonderful that Montefiore's third article on " Liberty in Germany," which he was at this time writing, greatly surpasses its predecessors in wealth and variety of knowledge. But his experience of Berlin life was not confined to political circles, nor did he derive the information which he gathered so fast from notable persons only. He was always as glad to talk to a nobody as to a somebody, and generally got as much out of the one as out of the other. His wonderful power of making new acquaintances and of inspiring his friend of a few hours' standing with a confidence which led him to talk on the subjects nearest his heart, was never Memoir. xlvii more strikingly illustrated than in the streets and cafes of Berlin. Coming out after a hard morning's study to stroll Unter der Linden, or to dine at a favourite restaurant, he was pretty certain to pick up some one, who would express an opinion or tell a story that was worth remembering, His diary is full of incidents of this kind. A man, " presumably a tradesman," whom he found looking on at a parade, poured forth to him from the fulness of his bourgeois heart his hatred of military service, his sense of its inequality and the break it makes in a man's life, his fear of the police and irritation at their meddling supervision, but on the other hand his terror of Socialism an epitome of the political feelings of a large class of German society. A Radi- cal editor, who had already been in prison for his opinions and expected to go there again, gave him after a very short acquaintance an eloquent account of the adventures of a proscribed journalist, of the method of fighting behind barricades, of the varieties of prison discipline, of the hopes and fears of the Ultras, the distrust which they excited in the bour- geoisie, and the positive hatred with which they were regarded by the peasants. And so on and so on. The temptation to continue transcribing such conversations is great, but to multiply them would give an undue prominence to these two months in Berlin, which were not different in character from all the rest of his life, but of which alone we are fortunate enough to have a record from his own hand. That record shows how constantly he kept his graver studies and the political questions with which he was dealing before his eyes, but it shows also how wide was the range of his interests and how inexhaustible was his sympathy with every kind of genuine human experience. One of the xlviii Memoir. most interesting pages of his diary gives an ac- count of a visit to Bayard Taylor, then American Minister at Berlin, whom he saw several times and always with fresh pleasure, a common Goethe-wor- ship supplying a constant topic of eager conversation between the two. The account of his experiences in German society too is full of various interest, rang- ing from bright description and characteristic anec- dotes of celebrated people to more serious discussions about art, religion, and social questions. Everything that affected the social position of women, their pursuits and education, was always of intense interest to him. Madame Lewald, whom he saw often and who showed him much kindness, attracted him even more by her theories on these subjects than by her literary accomplishments. He found time too, amid all his work and engagements, to attend more than once at the Victoria Lyceum for ladies, where lectures were given on foreign literature in various languages, and his diary contains a very full analysis of one lecture which he heard there about Rousseau. He was constantly learning, not only in his work but in his pleasure, if indeed any such distinction can be made in speaking of his later years. Hardly any conversation came amiss to him, and in all conversa- tion, though himself talking much and laughing freely, it was the feelings and opinions of those whom he was with, not the impression which he might be making npon them, on which his attention was concentrated. But though he was very receptive and accumulated information of all kinds with astonishing rapidity, he tested all he heard by the light of his own studies and experience, and his convictions were not easily shaken. He had a fine power of entering into his interlocutor's point of view but a no less remarkable tenacity of bis own matured opinion. Two passages Memoir. xlix of his diary are so characteristic of this double quality in him that it is impossible to omit them here. One is an account of a conversation with a Jewish acquaintance, who seems to have shared the notion of the incompatibility of Judaism with ordi- nary patriotism. " Long talk with S. He asked me if I was Jew first or Englishman first. I said Jew, but confessed I should vote against a Jew Tory. He then spoke about Roumanians and justified Rou- manian distrust of Jews. I asked him how he could expect Jews to like Roumanians, but he showed me, I must confess, the difficulty of the situation. On afterwards thinking over our conversation I thought his line was rather weak. You might ask a man whether he was John Smith first or John Bull first ? Still, it is a view." Here is a similar discussion, but purely political this time : "Went to see L. Long talk about Das Mau- chesterthum. He protested that the Cobden ideal was without the notion of home-love and others which were really above material considerations. At the time I felt almost nn-Cobdened, but when I was alone again where, I thought, can this feeling of home-love be, and other kindred feelings, without a certain degree of prosperity ? " A circumstance which added greatly to Mon- tefiore's enjoyment of Berlin was the fact that during a considerable portion of his stay there he had his mother and sister with him. Though he was the very reverse of a stay-at-home and was constantly longing for new society, he was yet never long happy when away from his own family. What he liked was to live at home as he always did in London and at the same time to be seeing a great number of people. He always wanted to relate his d 1 Memoir. expei'iences in society to a loving and sympathetic ear, and every day with him brought a fresh crop of such experiences, as delightful for him to relate as for others to listen to. It was very rarely that he had a blank day, but when such a misfortune did happen, he never failed to express decisive repro- bation. He had so high an opinion of the value of society and so keen an enjoyment of it, that he felt boredom, to which he did not easily fall a victim, as a kind of personal insult. It is amusing to notice how throughout his diary he seldom omits to classify the talk he has had on any particular occasion. He is all enthusiasm when the conver- sation has been brilliant, instructive, or original. "Talk anecdotic" too is a good mark. In "talk amusing but not instructive " there is already a note of dissatisfaction. Below this we come to "talk weak" and "talk poor." On one occasion things must indeed have gone badly with him. There is quite a wailing note in the record : " A very very dull party. No brightness whatever. I was the only gay element." The letters which Montefiore wrote from Berlin to the Times, and which are printed in this collection, need no comment. They speak for themselves and will probably be regarded by everyone who reads them as some of the most effective and spirited of his political sketches. That they are the letters of a partisan must be admitted, and those who wish to see the other side of the question will find it in the letter of T., also printed here, to which Monte- tiore's third letter on " Freedom in Germany," written after his return to England, is a brilliant reply. But under the circumstances it was to his honour that he remained so warm a partisan. Just then it required both courage and skill to make out a good Memoir. li case for toleration. In the great scare which fol- lowed the attempts of Hodel and Nobiling many even of the coolest politicians lost their heads and de- serted their principles. It is somewhat remarkable, and is fresh evidence of a characteristic already noticed that, living among Liberals who for the most part approved of repressive legislation and fully ap- preciating many of their arguments, Montefiore pre- served his own Liberalism so intact. He might hate Socialist teaching as much as any frightened bourgeois, he might respect the considerations which made so many Liberals incline to a policy of reaction, but he could not adopt such opinions himself. The old cherished doctrines of free opinion and free speech must be right at all times and in all circum- stances. Petty tyranny like that of the "minor state of siege" must always be as unjustifiable as it was foolish. Such was his unalterable conviction, and he was proud to appear as the champion of his principles on so conspicuous a stage. " Found to my great joy," he says in one place, "that the Times had accepted my outburst of rage dated 23rd Octo- ber." The amount of attention which his letters excited naturally pleased but it also somewhat amused him. "Read Times article on my letter with satisfaction. Times attributes rather more wisdom to me than I have." But though he might .smile at his sudden importance, he was far from un- dervaluing the real power which his hard work and quick observation were beginning to give him. " I am getting quite an authority " he said laughingly to his mother just before she left Berlin. And it was perfectly true. Montefiore spent the Christmas succeeding his visit to Berlin, the last Christmas of his life, in his country home at Coldeast. As a rule he was much lii Memoir. less there than in London, where his work principally lay and where he greatly preferred living. Country amusements had no attraction for him ; he soon tired of the country. The busy various life of Lon- don, on the other hand, was a ceaseless source of pleasure and interest to him. In the holiday season, however, his family, who lived a great deal at Coldeast and were always regretting his absence, naturally claimed him. The house at such times was often full of visitors, and he was always the centre of the party. Quick wit, unrivalled spirits, a fund of admirable stories, and a fine skill in falling in with the humour of thope about him, in interest- ing himself in their interests, and drawing out their powers of conversation, made him the life and soul of every company. Talking eagerly, he yet never sought to monopolize the conversation, nor was he one of those who can only be amused at their own wit. He enjoyed other people's stories as much as he appreciated their talents. His bursts of hearty laughter did one good to hear. And thus, though always welcome in society, he shone most in the un- constrained society of home. Among strangers he might sometimes talk too much, but for those who knew him well he could never talk enough. His power of entertaining people was quite unrivalled. He was at times a little piqued to find how often the first impression he made was that of an amusing man. He wanted to be praised for something else than being humorous : but humour such as his was a gift of which any man might be proud. It was not merely that he told excellent stories and told them well. He had at his command an inBnite num- ber of anecdotes which he had heard or read, but he was always at his. best in relating his own adven- tures, in describing the strange people he had met Memoir. liii and the quaint thing's which they had said to him. In doing so he would soon drop the style of mere narration and in the most natural manner in the world would begin to live over again the scenes which had impressed him and to imitate the very tones and manner of the actors. And then indeed delight knew no bounds, for there was genius in his mimicry. It was no vulgar imitation of external peculiarities but caught in an indescribable way the character of those whom he depicted. He was in truth a great improvisatore and would run on in the most spontaneous fashion, blending fact and fiction, sense and nonsense, till those who heard him were quite carried away with wonder and amusement. It is not unjust to his memory to dwell so much upon these lighter traits. No man ever had such humour without rare qualities of the mind and heart. His humour indeed was only one aspect of the most striking and the best-remembered of all his attributes, his great gift of sympathy. Some of those who will read this book recollect what a friend he was in distress, what a counsellor in trouble, what a consoler in sorrow. Perhaps they will best under- stand how he, whose keen sensibility enabled him to enter so deeply into the solemn things of life, must also have enjoyed most intensely whatever was hu- morous or glad in it. They were merry times, those Christmas days at Coldeast. Who that has shared their joy can ever forget them or him in them ? Perhaps the merriest time of all was that last Christinas of 1878. His life had been one of unclouded happiness, how well deserved ! Little did we any of us think that the night was so near at hand. Montefiore came back to London in the beginning of January, 1879, and from that time till his depar- liv Memoir. ture for America, early in July, he lived in an un- ceasing whirl of business and pleasure. If he had any rest at all, it was for a few days which he spent at a boarding-house in Brighton, where he had already stayed for short periods on several previous occa- sions of overwork. He liked the boarding-house because of the out-of-the-way types of character which were to be found there. ISTew faces, new histories, unwonted talk were his favourite recrea- tion, which he preferred alike to solitude and to travel. Travel, indeed, he would at all times have disliked though he found a certain pleasure in beautiful scenery had it not been for the new ac- quaintances, the oddest medley, whom he always picked up on the road. Two sketches contained in this volume, " Cousin Ethel," which was never published, and " In a Boarding House," which ap- peared in Time after his death, are in their general character, if not in every detail, true pictures of his own experience. They illustrate his way of making strange friends, entering into their lives, and learn- ing from them. With the exception of these days in Brighton, his time was incessantly occupied. He was hard at work reading history, especially any books which bore upon modern politics. He was writing for the Nineteenth Century his article on " Alsace-Lorraine," which he never lived to revise a fact which accounts for the roughness of the composition, for he was a great corrector in proof. He wrote also a number of smaller articles for various papers and at least one laborious review. Besides his visits to the East-end, which still continued, charitable work of a more regular kind was beginning to press on his attention. He was much in request also at public meetings and gave two lectures on " Socialism," one Memoir. lv on February 2nd at the Eleusis Club, in Chelsea, where Sir Charles Dilke took the chair, and one on May 10th at the College for Men and Women in Queen's Street, Bloomsbury. These lectures were of a much more serious kind than any he had pre- viously given and cost him a good deal of hard work. Of his speech at the Eleusis Club, which was delivered to a large audience and followed by an animated debate, he says in his diary : " Great success. Delighted to find I went well and fluently for an hour extempore." Addresses of a less formid- able character were now common events in his life. In May he opened the annual public debate at his old place of study, University College, with a motion about the Colonies, Sir Charles Dilke again taking the chair. Towards the end of June he made an open-air speech in dedicating to the public a drink- ing-fountain, erected by his mother in memory of her brother Sir Francis Goldsmid at the junction of Dock Street and Royal Mint Street, Whitechapel. This was the last public act of his life. During all this time, moreover, he was busy making serious pre- parations for the coming election. He had settled upon a constituency and had been presented to Lord Hartington as an intending Liberal candidate. Negotiations with leading local Liberals took up a good deal of his time, and he made at least one visit to the borough to reconnoitre the ground. In addi- tion to all these engagements society was beginning to make larger and larger claims upon his time. He fought very hard to avoid many such distractions and to preserve every hour he could for steady work, especially for his historical reading at the British Museum, which he pursued with great regularity. But a certain amount of society was as inevitable as it was thoroughly to his taste when once in it. His Ivi Memoir. acquaintance had for some time been very wide, especially in artistic and literary, and more recently also in political circles. How much he profited by snch intercourse, it is needless after what has been said already to repeat or to illustrate. Never was his extraordinary power of expansion more strik- ingly manifested than in these last months of his life. The harder he worked and the more he went among men, the greater seemed to be his power of learning alike from study and society. Of the grow- ing influence which he exercised over the lives of others, both men and women, this is not the place to speak, but, as far as he alone was concerned, it had now become obvious that a man with Montefiore's advantages, who had achieved so much at six-and- twenty and showed such a growing capacity of further achievement, was destined, humanly speak- ing, to an extraordinary career. There was one fact about him, however, which troubled his friends during the early summer of 1879. Intellectually he was at his very best ; but his bodily health, usually to all appearance so good, seemed frequently to flag. He was doing too much. He wanted, as others told him and he himself felt, a thorough holiday. It was for this reason that many people encouraged him in the idea of a trip to America, a country which he had long been anxious to see. Hitherto, though he had travelled almost every year on the Continent, he had never been out of Europe. But America had always a strong attrac- tion for him. As a Radical he admired the great Transatlantic Republic. As a student of character he looked forward to the new and boundless field of observation which a young society of such vast pro- portions would afford. In a few months spent in America he hoped to learn as much and enjoy him- Memoir. Ivii self even more than during his happy and success- ful visit to Berlin. Such a tour seemed indeed the very best thing for him at that particular time. The health-giving voyage, the complete change of scene and of ideas, the infinite variety of new and diverting experiences were just what he required. There was in all probability some heavy work before him in the coming winter and spring, but he would return to it was it not natural to hope? with renewed strength and vigour, return to reap the rich harvest which his restless activity and zealous study during the last few years had sown. It was not to be. He sailed for America on the 10th July, Birchenongh, who had come to Liverpool to see him off, parting from him on board ship. At first the journey realized all his expectations. The voyage did him good, and for the few weeks which he spent in America before the fever overtook him he seems to have been better, both in health and spirits, than during the last two months in England. His letters during these weeks were few and short he was in fact too busy to have much time for writ- ing and his American diary is the merest fragment ; but everything goes to show that he was enjoying the country and the people and availing himself of his opportunities, whether of pleasure or instruction, with all his usual zest. He reached New York on the 19th July but went straight on to Longbranch, where he found a number of people to whom he had introductions. His new acquaintances gave him a hearty welcome and he greatly enjoyed the few days he spent with them. On the 24th he went back to New York and thence to Elmira, Buffalo, and Nia- gara, returning by way of Oneida. From that place he wrote to the Times his letter on the " Socialists of Oneida," which is included in this collection. It ap- Iviii Memoir. peared on the 18th of August and is the last of his published writings. Early in August he went to New- port, a fashionable sea-side place in Rhode Island, where he intended to stay a few weeks and hoped to see more of some of the friends whom he had already made in America. He had only been a day or two at Newport, however, when he was seized by a sharp attack of rheumatism, which soon proved to be rheu- matic fever. From the first moment that the illness declared itself he had every assistance which the best advice and the tenderest care could give. Dr. Watson, a physician of large practice at Newport, was at once consulted and attended him with un- tiring devotion. He even went so far as to hire a room at Ocean House, next to Montefiore's, in order to be constantly at hand both day and night. Dr. Pepper of Philadelphia, one of the leading men of his profession in America, visited the patient and advised with Dr. Watson as to the method of treat- ment. Massonnat, Montefiore's courier, "not a servant," as he himself said, "but a friend," was all faithfulness, and tended his master with a skill exceeding that of the trained nurses. Nor was this all. By a rare piece of good fortune, Montefiore, though far from home, had throughout his illness the priceless comfort of the presence of a near friend. Mr. Moritz de Bunsen, whom he had known inti- mately for years, and who was then Secretary of Lega- tion at Washington, gave up all other engagements in order to be with him and from the 26th of August to the day of his death never left his side. Mr. Greenough, a young American artist, who had been Montefiore's fellow-passenger on the voyage out, and for whom he had conceived a great affection, was no less constant in his kindness. And there were other recent acquaintances too who lost no opportunity of Memoir. lix manifesting their attachment. His illness excited universal sympathy, and the sick-room was daily supplied with every possible delicacy and with quan- tities of flowers, in which, even at times of great suf- fering, the patient had an intense delight. If any- thing can alleviate a most bitter memory, it is the picture of so much rare kindness, and above all of the devotion of those whose names have been men- tioned here. One of them, Mr. Greenough, is now himself beyond the reach of human thanks. But if any other of their number should chance to cast his eye upon these lines, let him accept a simple assu- rance of the lasting gratitude felt towards him by those nearest to Montefiore in blood and in affection, whose poignant regret at having been separated from their loved one at such a time still knows no comfort but the thought of those by whom he was surrounded. At one time it seemed as if so much loving care was not to go unrewarded. After the illness had lasted about a fortnight there was a decided change for the better. Montefiore's family at Coldeast, who had been terribly alarmed at the first bad news, were reassured by successive telegrams. Those who watched at his bedside were beginning to count upon a recovery. He could even talk on ordinary topics and was gratified to hear of the warm appro- val with which the editor of the Times had received his letter from Oneida. But on the 31st August there was a sudden return of severe fever. Dr. Hodges of Boston, who was telegraphed for, while fully approving the treatment which had been adopted, expressed grave anxiety as to the issue. During the 4th September the fever continued un- abated, on the 5th brain symptoms appeared, and on the morning of Saturday, September 6th, Monte- Ix Memoir. fiore passed peacefully away. Mr. de Bunseu, Mas- son nat, and Dr. Hodges were by his bedside when he died. Dr. Watson, completely broken down by his labours, had been obliged to lie down to rest. Throughout his illness Montefiorewas tortured by feeling what those at home must be suffering on his account. Their wretch edness was constantly presen t to his mind, and all about him had hard Avork to divert his thoughts even for a little from a subject which so greatly stimulated the fatal excitability pe- culiar to his disease. His great wish was to make the best of his condition to his family, to soften in every way the accounts of his sufferings and his danger. He even dictated bulletins more favourable than his state actually warranted ; but the kindly wisdom of his friends intercepted the love-inspired deceptions. This distress on account of others quite overcame the sense of his own sufferings and the fear of death. Up to this time he had always felt an almost morbid horror of death. He could not bear any allusion to the subject. The intense life in him turned with aversion from every image con- nected with it. But now he looked death in the face with perfect calmness. He shrank, it is true, from the thought of the misery which his loss would cause to those dearest to him, but for himself he had no fear; his last coherent words were an expression of the tenderest anxiety for those at home. In that home his affections had always centred. To the vision of it he clung in the very shadow of death with all the intense devotion of his most loving nature. Montefiore's illness had been watched with anxious interest by many of the visitors at Newport, and its sad end made a deep impression upon them all. At New York too, whither the body was taken in order to be sent to England, there was, in the words of one Memoir. Ixi present at the time, " an indescribable stir " amongst the whole Jewish population. Various synagogues vied with one another in their zeal to pay the last tribute of respect to the bearer of so famous a name. The sympathy which was felt with his family was heightened by the tragic circumstances of his death so far from home at the outset of a career of such high promise. A funeral service which was held in the Temple Emmanuel Synagogue on September 12th was attended by a large and deeply-moved congre- gation, and after it was over a procession was formed which accompanied the coffin to within a short dis- tance from the wharf. The body was placed on board the steamer " Germanic " and reaching Eng- land in safety was interred in the Jewish cemetery at Ball's Pond Road on September 24th. These last pages have been painful to write. It is sad enough when Death strikes down a man high in years and honours, far sadder when he comes to blight so fair a springtide of youth and hope. And surely no death could seem more untimely than Montefiore's. " To die now," said one who knew him intimately, " with everything about him and in him to make life precious, it is too hard." It was indeed one of those calamities at which the wisest patience is inclined to murmur. Yet even these have their consolations. It is a real consolation to look back upon the blessed- ness of his life. Splendidly endowed both by nature and fortune, happy in his home, successful in his work, delighting in life himself and filling with de- light the lives of others his was verily one of the sunniest as it was one of the worthiest of human existences. Had he lived to retain through a long course of years his simplicity of character, his wealth of enthusiasm, his nobleness of purpose, he must yet have encountered many misfortunes and disappoint- brii Memoir. merits which would have marred the brightness that is now inseparable from the thought of him. So sensitive a nature, as it enjoyed keenly, must have suffered keenly too. He is removed from all such suffering ; he has been spared all failure. Could any life attaining the full number of human years have remained so free from saddening imper- fections, so unclouded by sorrow arid disastei-, so blessing and so blessed ? In every long life there must be many things to regret ; here there is no room for regrets. No thought of lost opportunities, of misspent time, or of wasted efforts comes to dis- turb the mournful pride with which we now look back upon the brief life of which he made such noble The family of Leonard Montefiare desire to take this opportunity of thanking tJie proprietors of the periodicals, in which any of the essays contained in this volume originally appeared, for the ready courtesy with which they gave permission /or the collection of these icritings POLITICS. LIBERTY IN GERMANY. 1 I. IN the year 1813 Geheimrath von Goethe received a visit from Heinrich Luden, Professor of History at Jena. Luden came to tell Goethe that he was about to set on foot a newspaper which would aim at inciting the people to a feeling for German unity and to hatred for France. He pleaded earnestly that it was necessary that the Germans should be taught such doctrines. The arguments were palpable and many. Every day when Napoleon was in the ascendant new states would forget their kinship to their neighbours, bow in facile subjection to the conqueror, and yield at once territory and nationality without a struggle and without a sigh. Was the old glory of Ger- many indeed never to return ? And then Luden spoke passionately of Vaterland and deliverance from the foreign yoke. Goethe listened in silence, and Luden records that he seemed like one re- signed to sorrow. To Goethe the new project appeared to be premature. The people could not, 1 The Nineteenth Century, August, 1878. B 2 Liberty in Germany. he said, be roused suddenly from the deep slum- ber in which they had long lost all consciousness. And other doctrines, he held, would soon follow the first which Luden sought to teach. 'You want/ he said, f to publish an anti-Gallic news- paper you will soon attack the various thrones/ It was the voice of a prophet: the cry for unity in Germany was indeed to become afterwards the cry for liberty. When Saxony had deserted to France in 1813, there seemed no hope that Germany could ever be united again. Vaterland was a forgotten word. Who was to recall it ? It echoed again from the hearts of the poets ; it was soon on the lips of the princes. The princes used the word as Luden used it, to stir the people up to fight against France. Luden and the poets told the people not only of the glories of victory, but also of the reward that victory was to bring, the war-cry changing, as Goethe had prophesied it would, to passionate clamour for freedom : Fight, German brothers all, Lay the Frenchman low ; Him alone who yields his arms Spare the deadly blow. Holy is the cause at stake ; Great the vengeance ye shall take ; God shall give us victory, And the prize is liberty. 1 The princes took up the word : it was a rich bait 1 From Luden's paper the Nemesis. Liberty in Germany. 3 to offer to the people. If they would fight they should be free. As soon as the Frenchman was conquered there should be a return in Germany to the old traditions of Teutonic freedom. When Napoleon had been conquered for ever, as it seemed, and his empire over Europe changed to an empire over Elba, there was breathing space for the constituent parts of Germany to take counsel together. They assembled to take coun- sel not only for the public safety, but also for the manner of their future life. The two questions were indeed intimately blended. The disasters of the war had taught two very obvious lessons. The first was that a tie of some strong sort was necessary for Germany to prevent one part of her or another from joining the foe at any moment that he might be victorious. The second was, that slaves will not fight like free men. In the hour of supreme need the German princes had succeeded in bringing armies to the field by hold- ing out to their subjects the rich promise of constitutional freedom. The Congress of Vienna met and proposed for itself problems the solution of which concerned all Europe. There were vague and magnificent schemes for the destruction of the slave trade and for a demarkation which should be final of the boundaries of every country. We need concern ourselves at present only with such business as related to the constitution of Germany. The two chief factors at the Congress were of 4 Liberty in Germany. course Austria and Prussia. Their hopes, and their ambitions, and their fears were the forces that set all in motion. Francis, the Emperor of Austria, had been long away in Paris, where, to use the words of one of his French biographers, 1 he had seen certain monuments that must have been little gratifying to his vanity/ These monu- ments were the monuments of the victories of France and the repeated treachery of Austria. Newly returned from Paris to the business of the Congress, Francis determined that that business should be as long delayed as possible. The means of delay were costly, but comely. Instead of discussion and councils there were feasting and dancing. The sum spent by the Viennese Court in amusements of various kinds reached the amazing figure of three millions sterling. And this was spent when the country was starving after a desperate war. A well-known epigram about the Congress recounts its early history in one sarcastic phrase : 'Le congres danse, mais il ne marche pas.' But the constitution of Germany had been undecided for so many years that perhaps it mattered little whether a few months more or less passed now before its final form was determined. There was no pressing need ; the enemy was safe in his prison. So indeed it seemed. But while the Congress was beguiling at a ball its unearned leisure there came to it terrible news. Napoleon had escaped from Elba. He was free once more, and the magic Liberty in Germany. 5 of his name had already begun to work its spell. All Europe might soon be changed again into provinces of France. The Congress awoke from its dream of gaiety. It must be for other than for dancing measures. That the history of the Congress up to this time had only been a merry blank was, however, not universally admitted. Many German writers of the time suspected that the feasting was only a veil under which the princes hid from their subjects the main objects they had in view. It was said by some that the .Austrian Minister Metternich, the acutest of all his contemporaries, was far too intently .pursuing an unplatonic flirta- tion with a beautiful duchess to occupy himself with State intrigues. But others maintained that he never lost sight of his main purpose, and that he let the duchess merely play the part of the dog of Alcibiades. Gorres believed that in these days, amid the sounds of tender music, Austria and Prussia were plotting the conversion of Napoleon's old pillage to their own uses. ' The imperial city of Vienna is now/ he said, ' an exchange where souls are reckoned and weighed out for money. Providence is enraged with our princes for these unholy deeds, and has sent in his anger the Man of the Island among them/ Vaster issues than the question of the constitu- tion of Germany were pending now that Napoleon had escaped. But to the Germans that question of constitution seemed one not only of the manner 6 Liberty in Germany. of life, but possibly of life itself. They looked eagerly to their assembled princes, and waited breathlessly for the outcome of their deliberations. The future constitution of Germany was com- posed in the haste that was the natural birth of terror. By one article Austria, Prussia, Denmark, the Low Countries, and the so-called Free Towns, agreed to form a perpetual league. The object of this league was ' security from danger both within and beyond the borders of the allied countries/ Another article decided that there should be a Diet formed of seventeen members. These members were to be the delegates of the Government of each state. Further, it was stated that there were to be in every state of the league representative assemblies. The last vague phrase, so often quoted after- wards as the forgotten thirteenth article, was a renewal of the old promise held forth in the year 1813, when it had been loudly proclaimed that f the allied armies offer to the people independence and liberty/ Liberty meant chiefly representa- tive government and a free press. By the new constitution both these were left to the impro- bable generosity of individual princes. Expectation centred in the Congress of Vienna : men longed to know whether Germany was to be divided or one. At the Treaty of Kalisch, in 1813, a hope had been held out that if a victory were achieved there should be a United Germany, with the old Reichsversammlung Liberty in Germany. 7 (general council of all the states) and the old liberties. Those liberties had indeed been in- complete, but they had contained the germs of better things, and they were precious beyond words because they were the survivals of the free Teutonia of the earlier days. These liberties had perished when Germany split up into little states. Then the old constitution had been forgotten, and the new ones meant only diverse modes of tyranny. To the princes of the new divided Germany the traditions of freedom would never be quoted with a chance of gaining a hearing. But after the Vienna Congress there was a great hope that Germany would be one again. The princes had long since promised to weld their states together into one indivisible Germany with free representative institutions. The little states of the South had been hurt but little by the French conquest. The deliverance which they sought from the conquest was the deliverance from the tyranny of petty princes. Their hope lay in the new coming of the empire, which would bring them the freedom of which they had been so long despoiled. People had looked, Gorres said, to the Congress of Vienna for a regeneration of the empire, with a first chamber of princes and peers and a second chamber of commons. ' And instead of this unity and this liberty/ he continued, ' there has resulted a democracy with a demos of courts : a central force commanded by the separate parts : an executive power bereft of all strength/ 8 Liberty in Germany. The new unity was truly of a strange kind. Francis was president of the League, and ex- plained that his office implied merely being primus inter pares. When the Diet of the League met in 1816 the message of the President was never- theless waited for with most eager interest. Was Germany to be one or to be divided ? The answer was given by Count Buol-Schauenstein, who re- presented the Emperor Francis. It was enig- matical enough to be ludicrous. ' Germany/ he said, ' is not destined to form one dominion, but it is not desired, on the other hand, that its union should be a merely potential league/ Luden, in his Nemesis, which was now a much-read paper, laughed at this unity as loudly as Gorres had in the Rheinischer Merltur. And he distrusted the Diet ; ' it speaks/ he said, ' of the needs of the time, and calls every one who tries to point out those needs a Jacobin and a disturber of the peace/ Meanwhile the various states were all to fight the question of constitutionalism or tyranny. The King of Wiirtemberg, who had been a puppet of Napoleon, threatened his Chambers with dis- solution if they ( indulged in language contrary to all order,' which meant, if they ventured to remonstrate with the executive for needless despo- tism and heedless extravagance. One year before, Wurtemberg had seemed likely to attain to con- stitutional government, and had been exalted in the MerJfur as the home of liberty. In Hanover Liberty in Germany. 9 the representative system was for the time set on foot, and Hesse and other states witnessed vigo- rous struggles for constitutional government. The chief interest of the time centred in Prussia. It was on the 22nd of May, 1815, that the King renewed the promise he had made at the Congress that Landstande, or representative assemblies, should be held. On the 1st of Sep- tember a commission was to sit to determine the organization of these assemblies. A representa- tive system, said King Frederick William, is manifestly a requirement of the time. Yet in 1816 there were still no Landstande no representative system. It was not wonderful that a feeling of discontent grew daily stronger and stronger. That discontent found a clear voice in the journal we have already mentioned, Gorres' s Pheinischer Herkur. The motto which Gorres a professor at the University of Berlin chose for the title-page of his journal was ' De minoribus principes consultant : de majoribus omnes ; ita tamen ut ea quoque quorum penes plebem arbitrium est, apud principes pertracten- tur/ And he did not fail to remind his readers that these words came from that work of Tacitus which treats ' De Situ et Moribus Germanorum.' The ideals on which Gorres insisted were, first, a united Germany ; secondly, an emperor at the head of it, and, finally, constitutional government. Gorres said in very unmistakable terms that Prussia had not in any way come up to the stan- 10 Liberty in Germany. dard of government which she had promised. His was no bitter outcry like that of Jacoby fifteen years later, who asked, Is it for this tyranny that we gave you our best blood to fight the legions of France ? Gorres, though an enthusiast, was in tone solemn and even pompous. ' I could wish for Gorres' own sake/ said Varnhagen in a letter to Rahel, ' that his style were a little less clumsy. But perhaps he has more effect as it is. The Germans like sentences which they have to chew a long time, just as the English like half raw meat/ The readers of the Merkur continually increased: the Government grew alarmed. Hardenberg warned Gorres not to go too far. Let him be- ware, he said, of stirring up anti-Prussian feelings, nor talk too much of the good that would come from restoring the old manner of the empire. But Gorres took no heed of the warning. Pro- bably he knew that his paper would soon be stopped, and for that very reason wished to make its swan-song as loud and as clear as he could. Early in 1816 the royal mandate came the Ehe- nish Mercury must be suppressed. ' I can go on with my cataloguing work again/ Jacob Grimm wrote to his brother William ; ' I shan't have my days filled up as they have been till now in bring- ing people copies of the MerJcur. Its career is over ; but the work it has done will remain.' The MerTcur had been so popular that a loud outcry followed its suppression. Frederick Wil- Liberty in Germany. 11 Ham felt that he had lost popularity by the act an act done rather from fear than from malice. He could not justify himself by speaking of an impending danger from without the old stock excuse for there was none, now that Napoleon had been annihilated at Waterloo. Failing all justification he tried to comfort the people by the announcement that he was ' devising a plan which would reconcile the jarring claims of liberty of opinion and the security of the State/ In all his life Frederick William never learned that truest lesson of statesmanship, that until opinion and its expression are free the security the ruler aims at can never possibly be attained. Meanwhile a new democratic force was gradu- ally growing stronger. This force was situated in the universities. Professors and students alike were continually contrasting the old glories of united Germany with the littleness of the petty states that now took its place, and their hearts burned for a renewal of the liberties of the past. But soon this longing was to be associated with very different feelings. He who praises the past usually praises it at the expense of the time in which he lives. If he does not actually decry the present in express words, his panegyrics of the past may often be interpreted to imply discontent with that which has taken its place. So though in the German universities the feeling was pro- bably at first more ( the scholar's melancholy ' than anything else rather the cherishing of old 12 Liberty in Germany. memories and a vague hope of their new realiza- tion, than an active wish to contend against the things that were it was easy enough for enemies, or quidnuncs, or alarmists, to hear in all this a note of discontent, even the first cry of a pre- paring revolution. ' You use the word Deutsch- land as the Jacobins of the French Ee volution used the word humanity/ said Schmalz, a bitter enemy of the young romantic school ; * you use it to make us forget the oaths which we have taken to our princes/ Some years before, certain societies, or Bur- schenschaften as they were called, had been instituted in the universities. The universities of the Reformation time had been divided into nationes, and these divisions had appeared later as Landsmannschaften student clubs whose pur- poseof meeting was chieflyif not entirely hilarious. These clubs had been found to split the univer- sities up into sets and cliques, and other abuses attached to them. Perceiving this, Fichte had suggested to the students to found in each uni- versity a large club or Burschenschaft. Of a Burschenschaft (i.e. young men's club), each student of the university became a member by the mere fact of matriculating. Their laws dealt with many matters relating to student life no- tably with the rules and etiquette of duelling. Every student was bound to observe these laws, and probably did, just as in our own day club law is better obeyed than any other. Besides definite Liberty in Germany. 13 injunctions and prohibitions, the Burschenschaften set before their members many vague ideals, such as chivalry, the Vaterland, and the unity and equality of all students in Germany. After the Wartburg feast, a kind of freemasonry bound to- gether all the various Burschenschaften. Jahn who was generally called half lovingly and half laughingly Old Father Jahn had insti- tuted Turnvereine, gymnastic societies, that is, which were to meet in friendly contest all over Germany. The Turnvereine seemed to him the best hope for freedom in Germany, and in his own fantastic words, which were meant, no doubt, to be patriotic rather than revolutionary, he declared that 'from the goodly tree of the Turnvereine they must fashion the cradle of freedom and the coffin of tyranny/ The growth of such clubs was witnessed by the Governments, and especially by that of Berlin, with considerable anxiety. It has often seemed incomprehensible that so much real dread on the part of the executive should have been thus pro- duced. The Burschenschaften and Vereine were, after all, only very indirectly political. Their watchwords were of the vaguest kind, their ideals romantic and seen but in the far distance. Above all, they were in no way private societies ; all that they said or did they shouted loudly to the world in the highways and market-places. What, then, was the cause of the distrust and alarm which they excited ? It was simply this. The clubs were 14 Liberty in Germany. organized, and a joint principle and action ran through all of them. Besides their social aspects, all the clubs were held together by one and the same enthusiasm. That enthusiasm was patriot- ism, and patriotism meant following at all hazards whatever might be held to be Deutsch. Let it once be enunciated as a doctrine that any course of action was Deutsch, and there was no saying to what length any or all the clubs would go. They might murder a government officer ; they might set on foot a revolution. Notoriety was, of course, ambrosia to the palates of the students; for the present there was no absolute ground on which one could attack them, but it was obvious to every one that they would lose no opportunity of attracting to themselves all possible public attention and government reprimand. The year 1817 showed small hopes of the fulfil- ment of the King's promise of constitutional government. Impatience was expressed once and again, and it was asked why the King failed to keep faith with the people. A courtly bishop, Egbert by name, was ready with a glib and cooing apology for his royal master's perfidy. ' It often happens/ he said, ' that a father overcome with emotion promises that to his children which he does not afterwards fulfil, because he sees that such fulfilment would injure them/ Stourdza and Kotzebue were already beginning to report to the Emperor of Russia how a revolution was being prepared by the German universities. Liberty in Germany. 15 Schmalz, their old enemy, was every day bringing Hardenberg new accusations against them . Har- denberg was too wise to pay much attention to the wild charges of insurrectionary plots which the fertile brain of Schmalz saw in every move- ment at the universities, but King Frederick William, without consulting his minister, saw fit to reward Sch malz's vigilance or imaginativeness by elevation to the ranks of the nobility. It was the most disastrously stupid act Frederick William could have done. For it attracted to the Govern- ment the odium which had rested before on Schmalz alone. The year 1817 was the three hundredth year that had passed since Luther had inveighed against Tetzel. In various parts of Germany even in Roman Catholic districts there were festivals held in memory of the great reformer, and the students of Jena and Weimar determined to combine in one celebration the memories of the old victory over Rome, and the recent victory over France. The 18th of October, the anni- versary of the battle of Leipzig, was chosen as the day which should have this doubly patriotic meaning. Luther had always represented to young Germany much more than a merely religious re- former. They recognized in him an illustrious patriot, a veritable German, ein dcht deutscher Mann. More than that, they thought of him as the champion of liberty and the enemy of op- 16 Liberty in Germany. pression and tyranny. There was something peculiarly apposite, therefore, in associating his name and memory with the manifesto they in- tended to proclaim to the world at their approach- ing festival of rejoicing. The scene of action was to be that old castle at Wartburg, where Luther had rested in secure retreat after the Diet of Worms his Patmos, as he had called it. The Government of Weimar thought the celebration the outcome of a proper patriotic feeling, and gladly gave its consent for the necessary preparations. The Duke of Weimar even permitted wood to be cut from his forests for the bonfires that were to be lighted to com- memorate the victory over Napoleon. Eisenach, the little town below Wartburg, was gaily de- corated with flags, which the women in the town had helped to make for the patriot students. At the first meeting about five hundred assembled, mostly students from Jena, some also from Berlin and other universities. Among the rest at Wartburg was a youth twenty years old, Sand by name, who was to play a too conspicuous figure in the history of a later year. He was then a young lay preacher. He had prepared for the Wartburg festival a pamphlet which was circulated there, and which acquired afterwards an interest beyond its own merits or the importance of its occasion. It is manifestly the work of a very young enthusiast never argumentative, always fanciful and romantic. Liberty in Germany. 17 Virtue, knowledge, and Vaterland, it asserts with some historical retrospect and much Biblical quo- tation, must be the guiding stars for young Germany. There must be a general Burschen- schaft through all Germany, knitted together not by oath but by unity of sentiment. There is now darkness in the land : there was darkness of old in the days of Luther. And light came not from high places then ; nor will it now. The speeches delivered were of the same vague and mystic tone. The students spoke first ; pro- fessors followed with equally innocent remarks. Many of the hearers, tiring probably of this ex- ceedingly visionary eloquence, went down from the mountain to bed in Eisenach. Suddenly at least there is nothing to show that the act was in any way premeditated those who re- mained resolved on a new mode of expressing their sentiments. Luther had once made an auto-da-fe of the papal bull ; they would imitate him and make an auto-da-fe of certain writings as hateful to them as that bull had been to Luther. With the intolerance not unnatural to young re- formers, certain books which had attempted to decry the ludicrous anti-Gallic prejudices of the time, and one which had sought to show that German Jews were entitled to civic rights, and were Germans though Jews, were thrown amongst the first to the bonfire. The writings of Janke and Kamptz, who had persistently denounced the universities, followed soon; Kotzebue's c 18 Liberty in Germany. history of Germany was tossed into the fire amid loud hurrahs and shouts of pereat, pereat ; and enthusiasm reached its summit when that book of Schmalz, 1 which had earned for its writer the patent of nobility, was thrown into the middle of the flames. The pereat resounded again and again, and a strange pot-house lyric was chanted as Schmalz's work crackled in the bonfire : Now to Schmalz's rascal sheets Cry pereat as well : Here goes with three times pereat, And off they go to hell. The auto-da-fe ended the first day's proceedings. The second and last was spent in vowing eternal adherence to the Burschenschaft, and in giving mutual promises to spread its principles. One link was to connect all the Burschenschaften, which were to form together the 'Allgemeine Burschenschaft 'through all Germany. All through the feast its religious character was not over- looked. It had commenced with the choral sing- ing of a hymn : it ended by the students taking communion. The real political significance of such a strange medley of religious and patriotic feeling with the rowdyism, always natural to young men of strong digestion assembling together, was clearly very This hook, which I have not been able to procure, seems to have contained accusations against the univer- sities and students of the same kind as Stourdza's pamphlet which is quoted below. Liberty in Germany. 19 small. Had no notice been taken by those in authority of the Wartburg festival, its fanciful follies would soon have been universally forgotten. But the childish rage of the authors whose works had been burnt in the festival led them to imagine that there lay in that auto-da-fe the germs of a revolution. Reigns of terror, communism, the guillotine all these they developed with true German ingenuity from the speeches and bonfire at Wartburg. In Prussia there was great alarm. In Berlin a festival not unlike the Wartburg had been held. Old German dresses had been worn there did that mean discontent with existing things ? Were the patriotic speeches delivered really insurrec- tionary outcries ? And Prussia was not alone in her terror. Letters to the Duke of Saxe- Weimar poured in from Austria, France, and Russia, assuring him that danger was near now that democracy sounded loud and unashamed in Saxe- Weimar. Borne said, some years afterwards, that the sovereigns of the large states foresaw a democratic deluge about to descend over Europe, and so tried to make Noah's arks, so that they themselves and their beasts might be safe. Carl August, Duke of Saxe- Weimar, was a man of strange vacillation. After being for years the friend of Goethe, he and Goethe had parted company because Carl August had wished the stage to be given up to the antics of a per- 20 Liberty in Germany. forming poodle instead of to Goethe's plays. Though he had once inclined to Liberalism, the representatives of the Courts of Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and St. Petersburg soon dissuaded him from his wiser purposes. They urged him to investigate every detail that concerned the Wartburg festival, and he consented, and made the investigation. Further, he required that the names of all the professors who had taken part in it should be reported to him. He instituted a censorship over the press, and he strangled at its birth a journal issued by the Jena Burschenschaft. The Burschenschaft itself he regarded with much uneasiness, and the students becoming aware of this wrote to the Duke explaining that it advo- cated no principles hostile to law and order, but that nevertheless, in deference to the obvious wishes of his Highness, it would by its own deed dissolve. All this was not enough, however, to pacify the fears of the Great Powers. Austria and Prussia each sent trusty agents, who were to report precisely on the ' feeling ' in Weimar. The Emperor of Russia went further. Not satis- fied with sending Stourdza, who was to supply him with all information as to the growth of the hated Liberal doctrines, he sent Kotzebue to op- pose them at Weimar by means of a paper whose tone was -what its friends called constitutional and its enemies reactionary. Alexander of Russia had, when he ascended -Liberty in Germany. 21 the throne, inclined to Liberal doctrines. But out of these his courtiers had scared him by- continual prophecies of coming rebellion. 1 A singular woman, Von Kriidener by name, who had found her earlier amusement in adultery and her later diversion in religion, had persuaded Alexander that he was the elect of the Supreme and the Prince of Peace. And Alexander, by the help of some obscure passages in the book of Daniel, had discovered that he and some other European monarchs were to form an alliance to keep peace over all Europe. The first requisite for such peace seemed to him to be the stifling of all expression of public opinion. The princes, indeed, thought that the progress of the world would go on or lag at their own good pleasure. Hardenberg, wiser than his master, had, shortly after the Wartburg festival, received a deputation (with Gorres at the head of it) from the Rhine Provinces, and listened with sympathy to their eager demands for a represen- tative government. He promised it should soon be forthcoming. But Frederick William was exceedingly angry at this, and declared early in the spring of 1818 that representative govern- ment would be inaugurated when he chose, and iiot earlier. A wit, referring to this act of Frederick and to others like it, quoted the story 1 Dr. Wallace has shown that there were no doubt in Russia at this time certain secret political societies which in some measure justified alarm. 22 Liberty in Germany. of the courtier who, when asked by Louis the Fourteenth when his wife would be confined, answered, ' Quand il plaira a votre majeste/ The German princes thought they could choose what day the pregnant times should bring forth. A Congress of the four Powers Russia, Austria, Prussia, and France was hastily sum- moned to Aix-la-Chapelle. Its avowed object was to consider the removal of German troops from French soil. Its real purpose was no doubt to take counsel how to oppose democracy. ' From the time of this Conference/ says a modern German writer, 'there began a systematic and united effort on the part of the princes to oppose all movements towards freedom/ ' The object of the meeting at Aix/ said Gorres, ' is to put the world-clock three hours back/ At the Congress Alexander produced and read the reports which his agents Stourdza and Kotze- buehad sent him about the condition of Germany. Stourdza, after vague remarks about the confused state of religious doctrine in Germany, and the aid this gave to the propagation of revolutionary teaching, proceeds to an attack on the universities, which seemed to him the birth-place of all the abhorred notions of unity and liberty. The nature of Stourdza's pamphlet may be easily gathered from a brief quotation : ' What are the universities ? Gothic remains of the Middle Ages, in-econcilable with the institutions and needs of our own century. They confuse our youth ; they Liberty in Germany. 23 mislead public opinion. They are archives of all the errors of centuries ; they beget anew and perpetuate the false theories of the past/ The students showed their indignation at this in the orthodox German-student fashion, by challenging Stourdza to fight a duel. Stourdza, then a resident in Weimar, fled in terror to Dres- den. Trembling like a very Andrew Aguecheek at the thought of swords, he wrote to the students at Jena to assure them that what he had done, what he had written nay, what he had thought had been done, written, and thought at the com- mand of the Emperor, his master. Alexander's second agent, Kotzebue, was no less bitter than Stourdza in his attacks on the universities. The journal which, as we have said, he published at Weimar to further the purposes of the allied monarchs, contained political reviews, and in writing these he allowed his fancy as ample scope as he did in the composition of those melo- dramas by which his name is still generally re- collected. ' A young man sent to a German university,' he wrote once, 'is like a bottle thrown overboard by shipwrecked sailors. He is hurled from rock to rock. Dangers in the shape of Turnvereine, Burschenschaften, and other similar associations beset him everywhere. And, to make things still worse, ignorant professors tell him that it is his duty to reform his country/ A loud outburst of indignation arose from the students. They had been accused again and 24 Liberty in Germany. again of hiding revolutionary feelings under cover of patriotic expressions. This accusation had at first, as we have seen, very little truth. But the fact that the accusation was levelled against them by foreign emissaries made it, strangely but not unnaturally, truer and truer every day. Who are our accusers ? said the students. The foreigner. From the foreigner come these lies; from the foreigner come these attempts to tyrannize over us. Curses upon the foreigner, and upon those who listen to his counsels, and seek to make the Fatherland the seat of a new oppression ! Who is it that listens to him ? The Governments of Austria and Prussia. Are they worthy, then, to hold high place in the affection and reverence of the true German ? Murmurs of this kind grew daily more loud and frequent ; and so it came about that the love of the Vaterland grew gradually more and more nearly akin to a feeling of distrust and even hatred of the two Powers which were now usurping dominion over all Germany, and setting at nought the old patriotic traditions of good government and freedom. It will be well worth while here to recapitulate briefly the ways in which the feeling for nation- ality and the desire for constitutional government acted and reacted upon one another in the period of German history which we have now considered. It was the feeling of nationality which was used in the first instance to goad the Germans on to Liberty in Germany. 25 fight against the French. The feeling of nation- ality alone being found to be a motive not suffi- ciently strong, the princes joined to their exhorta- tions to patriotism the promise of constitutional government. In some minds patriotism and desire for such government had been one from the first, from a recollection that historic Germany meant the memory of freedom. These few minds, minds of savants like Gorres, had in brief space inspired the many with like doctrines. By their repeated passionate declarations they brought the whole people to believe that the attainment of a united Fatherland was a first and a necessary step to the realization, or rather to the renewal, of liberty in Germany. Then came the attacks on this party of constitutional government and pro- gress. These attacks emanated chiefly from foreigners. This made the doctrine that what was really German was really on the side of free- dom more clear, simply from the reason a very illogical one, but one easy and natural for the average mind to grasp that the foreign influence meant the growth of tyranny and the incitement of German princes to inquisitorial anddespoticrule. What decisions the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle arrived at seems not to be very clear. But it was the manifest determination of the princes to watch and combat the progress of liberal opinions. And this determination was easily traced to the in- fluence of Russia and the writings of Stourdza and Kotzebue. 26 Liberty in Germany. We have seen already how the students had attempted to revenge themselves on Stourdza. Their rage against Kotzebue was as great, and the retribution that was to fall on him is the beginning of a weighty chapter in the history of Germany. The intense interest created by his fate at the time justifies devoting some space to an account of the peculiar circumstances attend- ing it. I have mentioned how, on the occasion of the Wartburg festival, a pamphlet was written by a young man named Charles Louis Sand. Sand was born in the year 1797. He had studied at the Universities of Erlangen, Tubingen, and Jena. In his earliest youth a terrible accident had spread over all his thoughts a dark shade which they never afterwards lost. One of his fellow-students at Jena, swimming by his side, had been carried away by the current and drowned. Sand's life had been devout before ; the image of death being brought so closely and terribly before his eyes deepened his religious fervour. He became a lay preacher. His themes were the themes usual to young preachers the danger of sin, the terror of the end and the hereafter, the abnegation of the joys of the world for the spiritual life. His ser- mons were always effective. Besides being eloquent, he was young and beautiful. He had long brown curls, eyes tender as a woman's, and gentle lips always trembling with emotion. His life had been simple and perfectly pure, and he Liberty in Germany. 27 spoke with the agitation and eagerness that could only come from the most fervent belief. His diary, quoted in a biography published by some of his friends soon after his death, contains many phrases like these : ' Oh my God, how I yearn for Thee, for nothing but to come nearer to Thee ! 3 But side by side with these are passionate long- ings for the return of the old glories of the Vaterland and wild outcries against the foreign influence which was poisoning the mainsprings of the beloved German national life. We have seen what he wrote on the occasion of the Wartburg festival. Those vague utterances were followed by less ambiguous phrases. About fifteen months after that event we find in his diary the following entry : 'December Slst, 1818. I pass the last day of the year in most earnest and solemn thoughts. I am resigned at the thought that the Christmas I have just passed will be my last. If our en- deavours are to have any issue at all, if the cause of humanity is to prosper in our Fatherland, if all the past is not to be forgotten for ever and the old inspiration is to rise and glow again, then that wretched traitor who is called A. V. K. must die. Till I have done it, I can have no rest/ "Words like these, written long before the crime itself was committed, seem to prove conclusively that Sand was certainly not mad. The substitu- tion of initials for the full name of Kotzebue points most definitely to sanity. 28 Liberty in Germany. One day when Sand was sitting alone a friend came into the room. Sand, leaving the book he was reading, ran up to his friend and struck at his face. His friend put up his hands to ward off the blow. Then Sand struck him on the chest. His friend, utterly amazed, asked what might be the meaning of all this nonsense. ' You see/ Sand answered with his usual gentle voice, ' that is the way to kill a man. You just make a feint at his face, and then he covers it with his hands. This leaves his breast bare for the real blow/ Both laughed heartily at what seemed only a joke. But his friend was probably unaware that Sand had been for some time attending dissection lectures at the hospital to learn precisely the position of the heart. No one had any suspicion of his purpose when he set out on foot from Jena to Mannheim. He was a fortnight on the road, and when he arrived at Mannheim he went at once to the house where Kotzebue was staying. Kotzebue was not within, and Sand, who gave a wrong name and stated that he was a countryman of Kotzebue's, was told to come again at five o'clock. When he returned, punctual to the moment, he was at once admitted into Kotzebue's presence. They were alone together, and what took place is only to be gathered from the subsequent statements of Sand. These statements are variously reported. It is clear, however, that the words spoken by either were few before Sand, exclaiming, ' Here, betrayer Liberty in Germany. 29 of the Vaterland ! ' stabbed Kotzebue several times with a poniard. It had originally been his design to flee to France as soon as he had struck the blow. But he was diverted from his purpose. A tiny child four years old came running into the room, and seeing its father bleeding upon the floor, burst into an agony of tears. That kind of reaction which is common with men of the excit- able and poetic nature instantly came over Sand. The sight of the terror and grief of the child overpowered him. Clasping his dagger again, he plunged it into his own breast. He felt, he said afterwards, that ho owed this as atonement to the weeping child. Then he ran forth into the street. There had been visitors at the time with Kotzebue's wife ; they had now learned what had happened. Throwing open the windows the terrified women screamed to the people below to stop the mur- derer. A crowd surrounded Sand in a moment. He fell upon his knees, and with the word ' Vaterland ' on his lips stabbed himself a second time. He was borne away to the hospital with the dagger still fixed in his breast. When his wounds were examined it was found that his life was in the utmost danger. Everything was done to restore him ; he was tended for months by nurses and doctors with the utmost care. For justice was, if possible, not to be deprived of her victim. He who attempts assassination as a cure for 30 Liberty in Germany. tyranny is certain to meet with passionate pane- gyric and the bitterest obloquy. The wiser few will only think with laughter or tears of the strange shortsightedness of youth which believes that there can be in one dagger-thrust a panacea for bad government and oppression. But the many invariably on such occasions either refuse to recognize any moral wrong in what seems to them as honourable as killing a foe on the battle- field, or, rushing to the other extreme, deny that there is any difference between such an act and a murder committed from selfish malice. The crime was of course the occasion of feverish excitement in all Germany. The fame of Kotze- bue, the youth and beauty of his assailant, and the fact of his lying between life and death at the hospital all these made the whole seem to be the chapter of some weird romance. The hospital was beset every day by hundreds of persons who wished to see the chief actor in the scene. If they were refused admission, could they not be told what he was saying ? But nurses and doctors were all bound on oath to reveal nothing. His wound, though most serious, proved not to be mortal. It was evident at least that he would linger on for some time. The Prussian Government was determined to find out, if possi- ble, what accomplices he had. Was Sand's act really the final outcome of a conspiracy that had centre in all the universities ? Was he obeying the dictates of some Turnvereinor Burschenschaft ? Liberty in Germany. 31 Every one was ready with a new suggestion ; the Government was to beware of dangers lurking in one place, or of assassins hiding in another. When the news was brought to Hardenberg he felt that there was an end to all efforts towards progress. The constitution, he said, is now im- possible. Frederick William was only too pleased to listen to any alarmist who spoke of State dan- gers. And the alarmists had a tangible argument to build on when, three months later, an attempt was made on the life of a Nassau minister, Von Ibel, by a young apothecary named Loening. An inquisitorial commission daily visited Sand in the hospital at Mannheim. A member of this inquisition (for so it called itself), named Hohn- horst, has published an account of its proceedings. Sand was asked the most trivial questions : Had he ever joined in Jahn's tourneys ? to what Burschenschaft had he belonged ? had he ever sung a certain republican song had he, if he had not sung it himself, ever heard it sung by any one else ? When he was asked what accomplice he had, he invariably answered, None. He had done the deed because it had seemed right to him to do it; he had thought it necessary for the Fatherland that Kotzebue should die. Nothing was discovered, simply because there was nothing to discover. 1 1 Should a fall account of the trial of Nobiling be published, it would be interesting to compare the in- vestigation with that one which Hohnhorst has de- 32 Liberty in Germany. Sand was executed nearly a year after the murder had been committed. The popular sympathy was deeply aroused for the beautiful youth who had been restored to life only to be given over to a public death. He met his fate with great firmness. He had been forbidden to address the crowd round the scaffold, but just before his death he said in low tones, clearly heard in the midst of the horrible silence : ' I call God to witness that I die for Germany to be free/ But freedom never seemed further from Ger- many than now. Metternich was determined to use the agitation which the murder of Kotzebue had created in Germany to further the devices nearest to his heart. It was easy enough for him to work on the imagination of Frederick "William, and to persuade him that revolution was abso- lutely impending, and that it could only be averted by the most strenuous and unhesitating 'precautions/ At Metternich/s suggestion a congress of German ministers met at Karlsbad (September, 1819). Then were passed those celebrated Karlsbad Decrees of which it was said in England at the time, ' They take much care of the securities of the princes, but none of the liberties of the people/ One decree ordered that a censor ap- scribed. I may mention here that the present paper was written some time before either of tho receut attempts on the life of the Emperor William. Liberty in Germany. 33 pointed by government should reside at every university to control the Burschenschaften there, to watch the instruction given, and to dismiss immediately any professor whose teaching (in the opinion of the censor) might be injurious to the government. Another empowered a royal com- mission, which was at once to commence its sittings at Mayence, to examine and punish any persons who might be suspected of having used seditious language against the government. A third decree determined that a strict supervision must be exercised over the press, and that no pamphlet or journal must be published or sold, under heavy penalty, till it had been dulv approved. The fate that befell a great man whom we have often mentioned before Gorres, the Ber- lin Professor is sufficiently typical of the manner of the government that was now to be the lot of the German people. Books of a certain size could be published without previous inspection by the Censor of the Press, so Gorres published such a book. It was called Germany and the Revolution. 1 It reviewed the course of events since 1815, and prophesied that the present state of oppression could only end in a revolution. Despite its length, and its pon- derous and crabbed style, the book was read 1 The interest created by the book and by the fate of its author was so great at the time that it was found worth while to publish a translation of it in England, D 34 Liberty in Germany. with eager interest. Frederick William, in a frenzy of rage, ordered the arrest of Gorres and the seizure of all his papers. ' Notwithstanding the fact that Gorres derives from the liberality of the State a salary of 1,800 rix dollars, he has dared/ said the exasperated King, ' by audacious censure of governmental measures, to fill the people with discontent and rage/ The book was suppressed, and the papers of Gorres were seized, but he himself escaped by speedy flight, and found shelter in France. The inquisition at Mayence ordered every day new arrests and new imprisonments. ' Old Father Jahn ' was .one of the first victims. No justification or explanation was listened to k Houses were violently entered everywhere. Pri- vate correspondence was examined ; when letters were discovered which expressed dismay at the new tyranny, the writers were instantly, and often severely, punished. To have been heard singing a patriotic song, to have been seen wearing the old German colours, were crimes that could be punished with many months' im- prisonment. No man was safe. Every one knew that his home might be ransacked the next day by the inquisitors of the government, and that he himself might, on the most childish and frivolous pretext, be dragged away to be incarcerated for months or even for years, virtually untried and unheard, and with no possi- bility of appeal. Liberty in Germany. 35 Such was the effect of the Carlsbad Decrees. What could result from such fierce and relentless tyranny ? We shall see in another paper how it moved even German indifference at length to rise and mutiny. NOTE. Authorities. 1. NEWSPAPERS. Times; Morning Chronicle; Allge- nieine Zeitung ; Gb'rres's Bheinischer MerTtur ; Ludeu's Nemesis ; Okeii's Isis ; Kotzebue's L-iterarisches Wochen- Uqtt. 2. MEMOIRS, ETC. Hardenberg ; Stein ; Varnhagen ; Gentz ; Gorres ; Luden. 3. SEVERAL HISTORIES OP GERMANY SINCE 1815. Bulle ; Buchner; Von Hagen. The episode of Kotzebue's death and details of Sand's life are to be found in the works quoted before, and in an anonymous account of the murder printed in London in the year 1819. The history of the university clubs is partly to be found in Haupt's book, called Landsmannschaften und Burschenschaften, while Stourdza's pamphlet quoted above supplies other details. The writings of Heine and Borne give many suggestions of the state of feeling in Germany in 1815-19. I am indebted also to many German friends for invaluable suggestions. LIBERTY IN GERMANY. 1 II. THE Decrees of Karlsbad (1819) were the badges of Metternich's complete victory. Foolish princes had vacillated before, inclining indeed always to despotism, but hesitating to adopt it as their avowed and constant policy. The people of Germany, and the youth especially, had hoped on through the upheavings that had followed the growth of the new constitution had hoped for the time when liberty of expression, public courts of justice and a free press would be part of the German's acknowledged and unalterable rights. There had been on both sides tentative signs : at- tempts on the part of the people to speak in voice louder and clearer than those muffled tones the law would suffer: attempts on the part of the princes to stifle whispers even, to deaden all movement towards progress, to extend into con- tinuance periods of silence enforced of old only in days of highest peril. Finally, there had been arrayed on the side of the princes a cruel and 1 TJte Nineteenth Century, October, 1878. Liberty in Germany. 37 reckless adviser from without, and St. Petersburg joined Berlin and Vienna in new plans for the destruction of freedom. And then Germany, maddened by this final insult, had attempted to avenge it by one stroke of frenzy. We have seen how that attempt was met by the opposing force. The murder of Kotzebue simply framed the Decrees of Karlsbad. His death was atoned for, not only by the blood of Sand it was atoned for by the mourning of liberty. There followed for ten years a silence, a silence broken occasionally within the borders, and then triumphantly re-enforced, disturbed at times more effectually by the echoes of liberty in other lands. The Decrees were not the end of Metternich's zeal. The conference of German Ministers which he had first summoned to Karlsbad met again in Vienna, and there continued its deliberations for many months. By the end of the year 1819, the system of censorship, espionage, summary arrests and arbitrary imprisonments had been well set on foot throughout all Germany. But the game was difiicult. The sovereigns of the small states were no doubt as enamoured of absolutism as Prussia and Austria themselves, but they were not willing to be bidden to be absolute. To be a despot only at the command of another despot was only like being allowed to play at despotism. The great powers began to explain succinctly how far the small states might grant liberty of speech 36 Liberty in Germany. to their chambers, and what freedom they might permit to the press. It was so galling to receive such behests that it appeared not improbable that the sovereigns of the small states would as- sume the constitutional attitude from no other motive than the desire to wrest their indepen- dence from their own would-be masters. The first sound came from without. A pam- phlet was published in London, in the year 1820, called The Manuscript from South Germany, and copies were soon scattered throughout the Father- land. It was a political tract of a kind that was necessarily a success. It was brief and bitter, and, more than that, it embodied a notion new to German politics. Salvation, it said, must come to Germany from the south. Austria and Prussia are mere despots, the tools of Russia, the enemies of real German interests. Bavaria and Wiirtemberg, on the other hand, are the true homes of German freedom : it is to them that we must look for hope and help. They have granted to their peoples liberal governments, and their credit has grown apace ; justice is within their borders ; patriotism, self-respect, and con- tentment make their subjects different indeed from the serfs of Vienna and Berlin. Will those' whom the new tyranny has reduced to the con- dition of brutes be content to remain brutes always ? Can the princes believe that the silence they have imposed by their five years' decree will remain unbroken for ever ? Liberty in Germany. 39 : ' You forget that there are other persons besides diplomatists ; there are people with inte- rests and needs, and even with views of their own. Blot out the democratic principle if you will, efface all trace of it from your realms ; God has graven it on the very nature of the world ; it is set there lastingly; it is strong, it will endure. .... The Karlsbad Decrees find no opposition in visible foi'ces. But there are forces unseen : they bring results slowly but surely. What forces, ask you ? Spirits that fear not. A liberal newspaper rustles, and see how your Government trembles. That terror is an acknowledgment of the secret force. The walls of censorship have shut in our view, but they cannot prevent the sun from shining on our faces ; they cannot pre- vent it from warming our life-blood/ All obtainable copies of the Manuscript were of course bought up by the Government, but not before the book had caused a very real excite- ment. The Allgemeine Zeitung, then a ministerial organ, hoped the author would be severely punished, if he could be found in Germany, and urged that the appearance of such a dastardly work, and the fact that it was obviously written by a German, should rouse the Executive to new activity. ' God may use this book/ said the pious reviewer, ' as He uses other evil things, only to promote finally what is good/ The author of the Manuscript was one Lindner, once co-editor with Heine of a political journal. 40 Liberty in Germany. But there were grave rumours that the Manuscript was inspired by no less a personage than a king. William of Wiirtemberg was supposed to have supplied the author of the firebrand pamphlet with most of his argument praising the South of Germany, and with his invectives against the northern powers. It was no secret to Metternich that he was incensing the smaller states more and more. The Conference of Vienna had decided at its final meeting that there should be no interference on the part of the great powers between the small powers and their legislative chambers, provided always that the monarchic principle remained intact. There was here an obvious vagueness which might be interpreted to imply magnanimity. But the smaller princes construed it otherwise, and were determined to stretch the law as far as they could, and to assert their inde- pendence as loudly as possible. They held it in fact better to have constitutional struggles with liberals at home than truckle to the wishes of despots without. Accordingly in Hesse- Darm- stadt the prince listened to the cry of the people for retrenchment; in Sax e- Weimar the press was little disturbed by censorship ; in Wiir- temberg the censorship was practically nil, and the Chamber moved the retrenchment of pub- lic expenditure with the manifest sympathy and approval of the king. Nor was it long to be a secret at head- quarters Liberty in Germany. 41 how things were going in the distance. The Bundestag, which included representatives from the various princes, did not fail to echo the new tones of constitutionalism. Aretin, the Bavarian deputy, had been a decided liberal. At his death Metternich made a journey to Munich to urge the king to send a deputy more in harmony with the approved policy of the time. But the King of Bavaria explained, that while he would be sorry to interfere with the tranquillity of Germany, he intended to adhere to the policy which had proved the most prosperous for Bavaria ; and further he stated that he himself and not Prince Metternich must be supposed to know what lines that policy should take. The tone of the King of Wiirtemberg was still more decided. He com- municated to the various courts his firm resolu- tion in no way to depart from the system which he had found to be in harmony with the wishes of his subjects and the constitution of his country. The deputy of Wurtemberg at the Bundestag was Baron Wangenheim, a man who seems less like a character in history than the hero of a romance. He was a wit and a freethinker, earnest, eloquent, and subtle. His power of repartee was unrivalled, and his invariable good temper made him still more dangerous as a parliamentary opponent. He had taken the part of Anhalt against Prussia in an impost dispute between the small state and the large ; he alone had voted against the motion for thanking the 42 Liberty in Germany. great powers for their action at the Congress of Verona. These offences were great, but he en- raged Metternich still more when he defended a Wiirtemberg opposition paper, the Deutscher Beobachter. This paper was said to be of outrageous insolence, first because it sympa- thized with the revolutionary movement in Spain; secondly, because it laughed at the exponents of Church policy; and thirdly, be- cause it dared to preach downright liberalism. Wangenheim defended it. He made use of no vague phrases exalting freedom ; his argument was of that kind much more difficult to deal with strictly legal reasoning. He pointed out that if the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria were to bring their interference to bear on the King of Wiirtemberg in this matter of the life or death of the liberal paper, they who posed as law-makers would only be law-breakers. This he urged with much cogency and wit, and always with imperturbable calmness despite the threats and rage of his opponents. But Metternich succeeded at last. The Beo- bachter was suppressed in the year 1823 ; and a little later Wangenheim was removed from the Bundestag. The King of Wiirtemberg feared the absolute hostility of Austria, which seemed surely forthcoming when Metternich threatened to with- draw the Austrian ambassador unless the liberal attitude and the liberal deputy were given over by the king. Liberty in Germany. 43 Here too, then, was a new victory for the reactionary party. Hopes that had before turned to Wiirtemberg now inclined again to Bavaria, where the new King Louis had spoken bravely. He consented to the liberty of the press and the freedom of speech in the legislative chamber. He could not brook the interference of Austria, ' for I am responsible/ he said, ' only to God and the Constitution. Emperor Francis is not der liebe Gott, and Metternich is certainly not the Constitution/ But Louis, too, was not long to remain on the side of the people, though his despotism was to take a peculiar form. New power was brought to bear on the other states of Germany where any signs of opposition were still apparent. Bribes were mingled with threats, and flattery with obloquy, to silence would-be constitutionalists. In Austria itself Metternich's triumph was altogether complete. There the school-books authorized by the Govern-^ ment enjoined the children to ( honour the sove- reign as they would their father and their mother, and to remember that he had absolute power over their bodies and all their goods.' In all Germany the University professors were watched like es- caped criminals, while the restrictions which shackled literature were soon enough to make the whole press spiritless as a court-circular, and to limit poetry to odes celebrating the births of princes or the graces of ballet girls. It was from without, as we saw before, that the 44 Liberty in Germany. princes of Germany had continually received ad- monition and advice to more relentless tyranny. It was now from without that the voice of liberty rang forth to the German people. The echo of the revolution in Spain resounded first : then came the news of Austrian ill deeds in Italy, and the brave attempts to unseat the tyrant from a throne that he never should have filled ; and then more loudly and yet more piteously rang the cry of Greece struggling with a hand that seemed too strong for her. The old memories of Germany battling against Napoleon were awakened, and the present misery was newly felt. What Greece accomplished against her foes, partly with the help of English, Italian, and even German volun- teers, showed that there ran through the peoples a desire wholly other from that of the princes, a desire to maintain the weak against the strong, and to proclaim liberty in the very face of tyranny. More than this, it showed such desire was possible of attainment. Germany was not too distant to learn the lesson ; she knew that in her darkest hour there was at least elsewhere light. The old German instruments of opposition still existed, though they were weak and divided. The members of one Burschenschaft had met in exile in Switzerland, and there formed vague schemes to overturn the governments that existed in the Vaterland. Three other societies the Teutonia, theArminia, Liberty in Germany. 45 and the Germania still met in the utmost secrecy in Germany itself. The tone of the first two was national, insisting on the pre-eminence of the Fatherland. But the Germania took up a diffe- rent position. Its members felt that the new gospel of freedom must come from France, and they were eager that the old bitterness should cease now that she was to appear to them, not as the desolator of the land, but as the welcome messenger of glad tidings. Certain doctrines the Germania spread into all classes. They were the same doctrines which Heine was then expressing in his Reisebilder, the doctrines which the clarion voice of Hugo urges upon mankind to day: Forget nationality, think only of humanity; princes only have diverse interests : the peoples of all countries are all friends. Coexistent with these societies were others called Mdnnerbiinde and J tingling sbiinde. These aimed at bolder game. They sought to establish a revolution in Germany, and there was a vague hope that France would come with a strong band of helpers if once a revolution were attempted. The Commission of Mayence which Metternich had appointed in 1819 muttered from time to time vague suggestions as to the dangers still impending from these would-be rebels, and punished with years of imprisonment all persons against whom it could find a shadow of suspicion. Traitors came forward to tell what they had sworn never to reveal, and to invent numerous lies to 46 Liberty in Germany. gain large rewards. Conspicuous among these was the infamous John Wit or Doerring, well known once as 'the German' of the Morning Chronicle. It seems marvellous that any Com- mission could have pretended even to believe such palpable lies as those which Doerring was paid to tell. In his book he writes himself down villain on every page. The Commission, by supplementing with its own hypotheses the evidence thus offered, dis- covered the existence of the Mdnnerbund and the Junglingsbund. This discovery was made at a time most opportune for Metternich. The five years for which the Decrees of Karlsbad were to remain in force had just expired, and the ministers of various states were consulting together as to what regime should now be inaugurated. How fortunate then that tidings should come which gave fresh excuse for a renewal of the old tyranny ! With weighty sentences, Metternich adjured the assembled ministers to remember the danger which beset Germany ; to bethink them of the waxing discontent, the far-scattered plotters, the desperate band of frenzied youth within their borders ready at a moment to raise the banner of revolution, expecting, and possibly on good grounds, help from the wilder spirits of other lands to subvert the Governments that were, and pro- claim anarchy over the surface of the earth. The princes trembled, and the ministers believed what was spoken. All that Metternich could desire Liberty in Germany. 47 came to pass. The press is to be shackled more firmly than ever; the inquisition of Mayence is still to sit to investigate the secret machinations of democracy ; the universities are to be watched more closely than before ; political associations of every kind are to be instantly suppressed. The victory, which, in the excitement of the year 1820, must have seemed to Metternich transitory only, was now (1824) won a second time, and it was now well assured to be lasting. He had won ; he had crushed the life-blood of patriotism and honesty ; he had reduced almost all Germany to silent, pitiful submission. The hopes that men had cherished long and earnestly were doomed to be wrecked one after another. Had not Prussia promised Landstiinde ten years ago when was the good time to come ? A king had died at Berlin, and another reigned in his stead the despotism remained unaltered. Article 13, which had in the year 1815 promised the establishment of representa- tive assemblies in every kingdom of Germany, was still on the lips of the constitutionalists, and the wiser men of the court party felt that its pro- visions must sooner or later be fulfilled. The demand became more frequent and louder, and at last the king instituted a new commission to in- quire how the representative system might best be carried out in Prussia. But what a commis- sion ! A commission consisting of princes, royal ministers, and paid functionaries : these were to 48 Liberty in Germany. deliberate on measures that concerned the welfare and liberty of the people. Could its deliberations result in more than moonshine ? Moonshine only was their outcome moonshine called provincial assemblies. These assemblies were to confine themselves to local matters ; but it will be found difficult, said Hum- boldt, to define what is local and what imperial. They were bidden to consider of school matters and church matters : were these not delicate thing's to handle ? Moreover there were to be these 'safe- guards/ The king was to appoint the president of each assembly ; its decisions were to be subject to the veto of the home government, and finally, the deliberations of the assemblies were to be private or public as the king might desire and command. Provincial assemblies, said a historian of the time, ' do not fulfil the thirteenth article, for they are in no way representative assemblies of the State regarded as a whole/ They will give each party ground for complaint, said Hum- boldt; the Tories will say, why these ? and the Liberals will say, why not give us a real, universal representative system at once ? George Eliot has shown us, in a witty descrip- tion of the rustic of the period, how in the year 1831 the Eeform Bill was looked for in England as the panacea for all suffering, the discomfiture of the rich and the triumph of the poor. In Germany the classes above that of which George Eliot's Dagley is the representative, hoped that Liberty in Germany. 49 the Landstande would amend their troubles in somewhat the same way, but with better under- standingand stronger ground. It was quite certain that the various governments of Germany were hitherto administered by the richer classes only. No one knew how the taxes were spent, but they were increased on such slight pretence that it was manifest that the burden did not fall on those who imposed them. War was long past, but the taxes waxed heavier than in the time when Napoleon was at the gates ; the poor were nearly starving for bread, while court festivities and court pro- fligacies held their head as high as at the Congress of Vienna. Wastefulness, as has been acutely remarked, gives the last sting to taxation ; help- lessness, that is, being denied the power of even protesting against it, makes discontent against ruling powers certain to be dangerous. The German people felt things were getting materially worse : how can one rest satisfied with a govern- ment which is ill-efficient as well as despotic ? They cried out for a representative system which would give them some voice at least in the control of their own affairs. Whom did the imposts profit? The people felt that they were to themselves a bitter injury. Prices were enormously increased by them ; com- merce was terribly diminished. In Saxony, the complaints grew louder and louder; complaints changed to riots, and riots ended in violent collisions between people and police, and the 50 Liberty in Germany. destruction of the hated custom-houses. These scenes were repeated in various towns. The king grew alarmed and offered to remove the imposts. Then order was restored, and the vic- tory of the popular cause was still further assured by the fact that the nephew of the king was in future to be associated with his uncle as Mit- regent, or Co-Regent, and to succeed him after his death ; Frederick Augustus, the nephew, being generally understood to be of constitutional tendencies. In Brunswick the year 1830 witnessed a more serious outbreak. The Duke, Charles, who had been long a minor, was always impatient of con- trol, and at last at the age of eighteen took the power into his own hands. He soon showed that he intended to be a tyrant of no common order. He opened letters directed to persons he suspected of holding liberal principles, and banished all his personal enemies from his territories . He refused to be troubled with legislative chambers, and forbade his doctor to attend the confinement of the wife of a man who had been a member of the Landstande. Governing at all was a nuisance to Charles, and he determined to take a holiday and to spend it in Paris. Having enriched himself, partly by taxation, entirely arbitrarily imposed, and partly by the sale of state lands, which were in nowise his private property, he made his plea- sure trip to France. But he had chosen a most unfortunate time, for it was the time of the July Liberty in Germany. 51 Revolution. Charles was terrified and fled. When he reached home he began to boast how splendidly he would have kept revolution at bay had he been threatened. ' Charles X./ he said, ' showed no energy/ For the time no one could make this complaint of Charles of Brunswick. When he came back to his castle the country people wanted to welcome him with a torchlight procession. Charles showed his gratitude by threatening to fire on the people if they did. There had been an old officer who had been rewarded by Charles's father with a small post at the court. Charles took a dislike to this man and dismissed him. The old man fell ill ; Charles went to his sick-bed to revile him and annoy him. The man died ; naturally enough people said he had died of a broken heart. Then Charles went to the house where his body lay, and standing in the presence of death, he said, ' Well, I must accustom myself to corpses/ The speech was caught up and soon passed from mouth to mouth. Even the priest-taught herd cannot believe in the divine-right theory when the heaven-anointed prince speaks the words of the devil himself. The taxes were increased, and the people grew bitter. Would Charles receive a deputation from them ? His answer was to plant cannon round his castle. The people came up to the castle, and Charles's officers would not fire on them. They set fire to the castle- to the hell-house as they 52 Liberty in Germany. called it but Charles escaped. His brother, a constitutional ruler, was called to the throne in his stead ; nor were Charles's efforts to raise re- bellion in Brunswick, or get help for that purpose without, of any avail. In Hesse- Darmstadt the rioting against the imposts was as fierce ; but there the viler element mixed with the reformers mere peace disturbers, that is, universal malcontents, ready to use any cry to shelter lawlessn ess and plundering. In Hesse- Cassel a tax on bread caused a very serious insur- rection. The duke was terrified at the unanimity and strength of the people, and consented to abolish the customs. The people insisted on more than this ; they must have legislative chambers, and this he granted. More than that, they bade the duke banish his mistress from the court, for they believed she had been the reason of the reck- less extravagance that had been displayed in the administration of the national finances. The king hesitated. Countess von Reichenbach was first dismissed only temporarily. But this was not enough; the people insisted she must go never to return. The duke was obliged to issue the command, which proved even more advantageous than the people could have hoped. For he him- self followed her into exile and withdrew from Hesse, leaving the government to his son, who seemed likely to be a constitutional ruler. Nowhere did the revolution of July produce more effect than in Bavaria. That effect, moral Liberty in Germany. 53 and intellectual at first, was certain to be of prac- tical outcome later. For it was in Bavaria that the revolution of July first convinced the popular writers how closely allied nations might be, de- spite the differences of their races and the rivalries of their sovereigns. A new gospel was spread abroad. The attitude of Germany towards France had been one of hot loathing : it was now one of admiration and friendship. ' What France does and desires we hate and will fight against/ said the German of 1820. ' We admire France and will help her/ said the German of 1830. The press had been, as we have seen, set free by Louis of Bavaria. The revolution of July in Paris had been accomplished, every one knew, mainly by the influence of journalism. A wild ambition ran through the veins of the South German writers, who were breathing for the first time the air of freedom. l It is our destiny, too/ said Wirth, like his predecessor Gorres, a learned enthusiast, ' to overturn thrones and to proclaim the liberty of the people.' These words, and others like them, scared King Louis back to despotism. He had been trying constitutionalism as an experiment. It seemed to have been a false move. Best, perhaps, undo it as quickly as it had been made. And thinking so, Louis re-instituted a sharp censorship over the press. Then the liberal party made a vigorous effort. They established a Society for the Promotion of a 54 Liberty in Germany. Free Press. The pamphlets circulated like wild- fire, and were read with fever eagerness. The literature of liberty is always romantic; and governments can give no better help to those who try to write it than when, by prohibitory edicts, the Eve's apple flavour is added to that which was enticing enough before. Any one who wanted to write sarcasms about Louis of Bavaria had a very easy task. His old liberal witticisms could be most vivaciously held up in contrast with his present reactionary deeds. He had a habit of making frequent journeys to Rome, and when he was there he divided his time between worshipping Peter and Venus. People said that the Pope, indeed, was only the excuse, and certain fair ladies the real cause of his journey. Profligacy in a monarch is usually only exasperat- ing to a small portion of his subjects. But it en- rages them all when it implies heavy taxation. Bavarian thalers went, it was said, in thousands to that class of women which, in Eome as else- where, shows ready appreciation of the loves and purses of princes. When Louis came back from Rome stories were told of his gallantries ; but Louis himself, naturally enough, spoke only of his devotional acts in the Holy City. The worst of it was that he insisted on reminding his subjects in Bavaria of these devotional acts by erecting all over his do- minions Roman Catholic schools and churches and hospitals. Many were indignant at the very Liberty in Germany. 55 outset of these Ultramontane displays, and every- one was enraged when it was discovered that the pious works were all done at the public cost. Taxation grew heavier and heavier. The press had been hushed, but the writers of the old opposition papers suddenly conceived a new way of asserting their opinions. You may not write, said the law; then, said the authors, we will speak. Perhaps the thought of the old Wartburg Feast helped them to the notion which they soon had ready for execution. They would celebrate a patriotic festival. It should explain how the hopes of Germany inclined towards the South, es- pecially to Bavaria ; it should explain how Ger- many longed for democracy; it should show the world that the diviner day on which all people should be akin was near at hand, and how the sons of Poland, Germany, and France would soon march together under the banner of liberty. The Government of Bavaria took fright at the eleventh hour, and declared the holding of the feast illegal. Fortunately for the promoters of the feast there was among them a man of brilliant dexterity. By skilful legal fencing Wirth showed that the Government could only forbid the feast by making a new law, and to venture upon such an innovation was manifestly exceedingly perilous. Metternich had heard of this new plan of the liberals with far-seeing satisfaction. ' Their feast/ he said, ' will end after all in the triumph of 56 Liberty in Germany. righteousness : the wicked have made haste over- much/ With Metternich righteousness and despotism, and the wicked and liberals, were of course synonymous terms. The feast was to be called the German May. It was held at a castle near Hambach. The memory of the Wartburg Festival occurs to one. But the Hambach Feast was very different. At Wartburg six hundred sympathizers assembled. At Hambach the numbers reached five-and- twenty thousand. Among them were representa- tives of all social classes, and, more than that, persons from all parts of Germany, and from France also. The bands played the forbidden patriotic songs; the people wore the long forbidden national colours black, red, and gold. On a banner, borne before the leaders, were the words Germany desires Unity, Freedom,, and Equality. A. brief announcement of the objects of the gathering was followed by Siebenpfeiffer with a violent rhetorical tirade against the tyranny and the selfishness of princes. ' It was an oration of that kind which can only be quoted in full by the writers of later days,' said the judicious Menzel, a royalist historian of the time. Of the most important speech delivered, we have, however, a very full report. The speaker, Wirth, when he published beyond the frontier an account of the proceedings of the day, did not fail to include his own words. Some pas- Liberty in Germany. 57 sages are well worth reproducing : ' Germany, who was meant to be the guardian of liberty in Europe, has proved the very opposite. She has been the curse of Europe. Spain, Italy, Hungary, and Poland all prove this is true/ Then follow accounts of the steps Metternich had taken to re- establish in all these countries the regime of des- potism. ' What is the reason of all this unspeak- able sorrow ? ' says the orator. ' It is because Austria and Prussia have usurped all Germany. They have usurped it : they rule in Eastern fashion the land which they have stolen, and, more than this, they use their power for the suppression of the freedom of other peoples. When will the power of these despots cease ? It will cease the very instant that Reason gains ascendency in re- ligion and in politics too. . . . Truly I say unto you this day the princes of Europe have betrayed the peoples. Vanity, ambition, and covetousness these are the idols they have set before them- selves, and for these they sacrifice the races of the earth for these they seek to prevent man- kind from attaining to material prosperity and to spiritual perfection/ These seemed wild words, but there was much truth in them too. When Robert Owen explained to Gentz, the friend of Metternich, how certain reforms might bring about the amelioration of the physical and moral condition of the masses, Gentz answered with perfect graveness, 'But we desire to see the masses neither prosperous nor happy. It would 58 Liberty in Germany. not be so easy to keep them in subjection if they The Ham bach Feast showed an immense ad- vance, said Heine ; ' it was like the Wartburg only in accidentals. In Hambach the Present sang the songs of sunrise, and brotherly greeting was spoken to all mankind. It was not like the Wartburg Feast, where the Past crooned its sullen raven song, amid follies of speech and deed worthy of the most idiot medisevalism. The liberalism of France was uttered at Hambach. Much that was unreasonable was said, no doubt, but Eeason was acknowledged as the highest authority never- theless : it was not like the Wartburg, where Teutomania raged rampant, croaking much of faith and love, while its faith meant unreason and its love hatred for the stranger/ The eclat that followed the Feast of Hambach was more alarming to the Bavarian Government than the feast itself. There was a possibility of terrifying its promoters by bringing the principal speakers to trial. The charges made against Wirth, Siebenpfeiffer, and others were that they had, partly by writing and partly by other means, disturbed good government and tended to rouse the people to civil war. The jury was packed with government officials. ' You will take care/ said the public prosecutor, ' in considering your verdict, for on it may depend not only the public security, but also the continuance of the jury system/ Ominous words. The case against Liberty in Germany. 59 Wirth was weak, but with a packed jury and such a threat no one could say what the verdict would be. It was awaited amid wild excitement ; Landau, where the trial took place, was crowded with liberals, who had come from all parts of Germany eager to hear the news as soon as pos- sible. On every road around the town were de- tachments of youths bearing flags, to be waved as signals as soon as the verdict was known. Wirtb/s defence was so skilful that the hopes of his friends rose high. And, indeed, the verdict of ' not guilty ' was pronounced. But the joy of the people was soon cut short. Wirth was now impeached on a second charge : he had ' insulted the government officials/ It was clearly useless to expect a jury to pronounce him guilty, so the new trial was conducted by police magistrates only, and it ended in Wirth being sentenced to two years' imprisonment. In the next year (1833) a wild scheme was afoot to upset the whole of the existing regime. At Hambach Wirth had proclaimed that a republic was the only government fit for Germany, and now the attempt to win it was to be made. Sundry rumours reached the authorities at Frank- fort of some vague plot. All were disregarded, and on April 5 at midnight the troops were sleep- ing in the barracks the sleep of the undisturbed. Suddenly the great bell of the dome was sounded, by whom no one knew. Was an insurrectionary army in possession of the town ? The military 60 Liberty in Germany. rushed out. The guard had already been mastered, but the assailants were few in number. One hundred and fifty youths no more armed with pistols, short guns, and bludgeons. They made a brave fight, but it could not be a long one. The bell sounded in vain: the allies whom they had expected, but no one could say exactly whence, never appeared. In one hour and a half the fighting was finished. Some political prisoners had been released from the prisons ; they were mostly recaptured, and, of course, countless new arrests were made. The liberal party spoke of the affair afterwards as the Frankfort attempt : their enemies very properly laughed at it as the ' Frankfurter Putsch,' the Frankfort muddle. 1 Who were the movers of the affair remained always a mystery. One Franck, a bookseller, had been concerned in it. He had witnessed the July revolution in Paris, and had been much wrought upon by all he had seen. On returning to Germany he had travelled incessantly from one place to another, stirring up with much zeal, and little concealment, all the revolutionary feeling 1 A brief quotation from a leading article which appeared in the Times a week after the attempt, April 12, may not be uninteresting: ' The disturbance may be looked upon as a pretty intelligible symptom of the state of popular feeling among an immense portion of the Germans. The spirit of discontent has been ripening into a national passion. The German people want good government ; if peaceably, well ; if not, they will nevertheless have it.' Liberty in Germany. 61 which he could find. Franck was, however, arrested three months before the attempt itself was made. Another of the conspirators, Garth, rivalled Franck in the diligence he showed in seeking supporters of the movement. He also travelled through most of Germany, always tell- ing the people in one place that the people in another were sworn to a man to fight for the republic. The Frankfort attempt ended in so conspicuous a failure, that if the Government had only ignored or pooh-poohed it, they might have derived ad- vantage from the fiasco. They must have known that the stories of thousands of Frenchmen meet- ing just outside the borders to come and help in case a republic was set on foot, and twenty other such wild inventions, were nothing but romances. But, un fortunately , the Government forgot the failure, thought only of the attempt itself, and, with true German griindlichkcit, they tried to in- vestigate the causes that had led to it. They tried, in fact, to find the builders of a vanished castle in the air. The 1819 Commission of Mayence was now never alluded to without mocking. It would clearly, therefore, Metternich saw, be necessary to change the site, and so the name, of the new Commission. Where should that site be ? Met- ternich thought it best to show the imaginary lion that the valiant Government would run right into his mouth; so Frankfort, the scene of the 62 Liberty in Germany. ' revolution/ was chosen for the seat of the Com- mittee of Investigation. Frankfort was still a free town, and its troops were accordingly under the orders of the muni- cipality. Metternich declared that there was danger the troops would desert and join the sup- posed rebels. The Frankfort troops must, there- fore, be put under the command of Austria and Prussia. Frankfort attempted to resist, and England joined her in protesting against Metter- nich's new encroachment on the liberties of the smaller states. But all protest was unavailing. The Frankfort Commission, like the Mayence, sat for some years, and conducted its investigations in similarly inquisitorial ways. The repeated fail- ures of the liberals had disheartened their friends, and the cause would have been forgotten had not the outcries of its most violent supporters seemed necessary protests against the daily increasing tyranny. One year after the Hambach Feast, some enthusiasts at Neustadt were about to cele- brate the anniversary, when the military was suddenly brought out, and charged the assembling people without warning of any kind. Poor staring quidnuncs were driven at the end of the bayonet, and many women and children were seriously wounded. It was impossible for censorship, how- ever strict, to forbid accounts of the affair appear- ing in various newspapers, and the old bitterness against the Executive was revived with increased force. Liberty in Germany. 63 But the injury of many persons did not pro- duce so deep an effect as the wrong done under peculiar circumstances to one individual. It is not too much to say that the fate of Weidig made the Metternich system as much weaker as the crime of Sand had strengthened it eighteen years before. Weidig was a young clergyman of the district of Oberhesse. Among his friends were many of the republicans who instigated the Frankfort at- tempt. Weidig, more far-seeing than they, knew that it must end in ignominious failure, and begged them to desist. That he was, neverthe- less, continually in their society was perfectly true ; and on this charge he was arrested. After a lengthy, and of course a secret, trial, he was declared innocent, and returned to his parish. His parishioners were frenzied with joy at his safe return. Congratulations, wreaths, and speeches were showered upon him. Some persons wel- comed in him the pastor only ; others regarded his acquittal as a triumph of the liberty party. Weidig himself thought it so ; in a verse of thanks addressed to some of his well-wishers, he pun- ningly, as it were, spoke of the German tricolor, always regarded as the symbol of freedom : You are the welcome harbingers to me Of quick advent of right and equity, Of joyous time when all men shall be free; Then the black shadow shall be rent away, And the red morning mock the sullen grey, And hill and vale gleam gold in the new day. 64 Liberty in Germany. On Weidig's return to Hesse the press restric- tions were as stringent as ever; indeed, all oppo- sition newspapers were ruthlessly suppressed. But a secret supply was found for the increasing de- mand, and the Government met with sharp criti- cisms in the Bdeuchter (Illuminator), a biting weekly paper. Who was its editor ? Suspicion pointed to Weidig. The offence could not be proved, and he could not be directly punished. But Weidig was poor, and the Government would make him still poorer. He was accordingly moved to the parish of Ober- gleen, on the borders of Hesse, where the income was very small indeed. Weidig was a man of very remarkable eloquence. There was a simpleness about it that was irresis- tible, and a peculiar pathos. The first time he preached to his new parishioners, he spoke of the vicissitudes of his own life. He confessed that it had seemed hard to him to leave his own home at Butzbach, but it was not hard to suffer for liberty and truth. It was mournful to leave work half done ; but it was happiness to come to new work, to find oneself still among those bound to one by ties as close as those of birth among those willing to seek honestly the better and fuller life. The sermon was heard with much emotion. Religion and politics can form at times a most powerful alliance. Nor were Weidig's literary efforts to cease with his departure from Butzbach. His friend, George Liberty in Germany. 65 Biichner, started a new Journal for the People, and Weidig contributed to it. For its motto stood the words, ' Peace to the cottage war to the palace/ The great tyranny of Austria and Prussia, and the little tyranny of Hesse, were closely allied, and so the great Govenmient joined the little Government in bidding Weidig beware. Friends in Switzerland knew Weidig was in danger, and begged him to take shelter with them. But Weidig refused ; he would not flee, he said, although he knew that his arrest could not be long forthcoming. It came under touching circumstances. When Weidig had left Butzbach, in 1833, his father was still comparatively a young man. In 1835 the news arrived of his father's sudden and danger- ous illness. He instantly hurried home, in the hope of seeing him once more. But he reached Butzbach too late. His father was dead. He had left his wife near her confinement, and he returned home to her at Obergleen as soon as possible. On his reaching his house, he found a government oflicial already there. Weidig was dragged off to prison without being permitted to say farewell to wife or son. A note to the latter contained these words : ' Try to remember me. Be good to your mother, and comfort her when she weeps.' It was often thought that he had a presentiment of the terrible fate that was soon to befall him. It was by the testimony of one Clemm that p 66 Liberty in Germany. Weidig had been arrested. Clemm, who was an apostate from the cause of liberty, could indeed prove nothing with regard to the share Weidig had taken in the revolutionary newspapers. But he submitted that he had fresh evidence, tending to prove Weidig's participation in the Frankfort attempt. It was on this charge, for which he had before been tried and then acquitted, that Weidig was now to be tried again. Weidig was imprisoned in Darmstadt. There was no pretence even of a public trial. The in- vestigations proper to a court of justice were entrusted to a person who was to combine the office of head gaoler and inquisitioner. This man, Georgi by name, had been long an enemy of Weidig. He was of notoriously bad character, and it was said that he had suffered repeatedly from delirium tremens. During the two years of Weidig's imprison- ment, Georgi gradually increased the privations to which he subjected him. At first he was fairly well treated. But after a time Georgi removed from him his books and writing materials, and treated him like an ordinary criminal. It became too much for Weidig; and one day a knife came into his hands. The temptation was irresistible. He tried to kill Georgi. He was disarmed at once, and Georgi was determined Weidig should repent of his rashness. He was now kept all day in heavy chains, and usually in complete darkness. But it was still Liberty in Germany. 67 impossible to extract from him expressions of con- trition. Georgi now resorted to other means : he had his prisoner cruelly flogged. 1 It was a pitiful story : but the end was not long delayed. One morning the under-gaoler visited Weidig, and found him lying dead in the bed. He was covered with blood : a broken .water-bottle was near him. Doctors were called in, and the first suspicions naturally pointed to suicide. On the window there was found, written in blood, this sentence, signed with Weidig's initials : c As my enemy denies me every means of defence, I choose of my own free will a shameful death.' But had Weidig written this ? Had he really laid hands upon him- self ? Medical evidence went far to prove that the wounds were not self-inflicted. Had Georgi killed him ? Dark suspicions rested on him which neither he nor his friends and defenders were ever able to dispel entirely. But the Government would not for a long time hear one of their creatures contemned. To mark their approval, the Central Government at Frank- fort publicly complimented him, and the little Government of Hesse followed suit by making him a knight. But the outcry was too great and too terrible to be disregarded. An account of the life and death of Weidig, printed at Wintherthur, 1 Georgi declared that the story of the flogging was a ' coarse lie,' but he seems to have no evidence to quote in his defence. 68 Liberty in Germany. in Switzerland, was soon read and quoted all over Germany, despite the censorship. It opened with these words : ' This work bears the standard of no one party ; it is on the side of the eternal cause of humanity. It is concerned with a trial written on the records of Germany in letters of blood. But it is not addressed to jurists only. It is ad- dressed to the princes and rulers of Germany. It is addressed to those who, seeing innocent and guilty suffer equally, stay not the oppressor's hand, and care not for justice or for the honour of their fatherland. It is addressed to them heavy is their transgression/ The Government saw that the vox populi was now too unanimous and too bitter to be ignored. Scanty justice was done at last, and Georgi was dismissed from his post. 1 In the same year (1837) tyranny had, however, a considerable triumph. Ernst August had as- cended the throne of Hanover, and, by way of inaugurating his reign, announced his flat refusal to be bound by the Constitution. Some of the most renowned professors of Gottingen resigned their chairs on hearing this, saying they would not now be able to teach their pupils that it was 1 The literature on the subject of Weidig's death is very large and the evidence voluminous and conflicting. Two facts, however, remain indisputable: First, that the trial of Weidig was absolutely secret ; and, secondly, that the bitterest accusations against Georgi found many ready listeners in all Germany. These two facts demon- strate sufficiently the results that followed in Germany from the Metternich system of government. Liberty in Germany. 69 their duty to obey the Government, since the Government declared itself an unlimited tyranny. The professors found many sympathizers, but in the end Ernst August won the day, and reigned as he chose, in defiance of Constitution and of Law. Three years later a new king was proclaimed in Berlin. Frederick William the Fourth had, while a prince, shown great favour to the nobles, and their hopes were elated at his succession. But, on his accession to the throne, he was re- ported to have said that though the first noble when a prince, he was as king the first citizen. This story was often quoted, and the sanguine liberals believed that the day of good government was near at hand. How far their hopes were fulfilled we must investigate on a future occasion. NOTE. Authorities. For a general view of the government in Germany between 1820-1840 : LINDNER : Das Manuscript aus Siid-Deutschland, 1820. Published under the pseudonym of George Erichseu. J. BUSSELL : A Tour in Germany, 1828. JACOBY : Bilder und Zustiinde aus Berlin, 1833. LAUBE : Politische Brief e, 1833. The Annual Register (London). For the insurrectionary attempts of 1830-1833 : MENZEL: Tascheribucli der neuesten Geschichte, 1829- 1835. 70 Liberty in Germany. WIBTH : (1) Die politische reforr,iatori$che EicJitung der Deutschen im XVI. und XlX.Jahrhun- dert, 1841. (2) Denkwurdigl-eiten aus meinem Leben, 1844. (3) The biography of Wirth in Meyer's Grosses Conversations-Lexicon. ILSE : Geschichte der Politischen Untersuchungen, 1860 (this book relates chiefly to the ' Frankfort attempt ' of 1833). Constitutional points are best treated in : ROTTZCK and WELCKER : Staatslezicon, 1856. DAHLMAITN : Die PoUtilc, 1847, ZACHAJUAZ : Deutsches Stoats- und Bundesrecht, 1845. The history of Weidig, his trial and his death, is to be found in the following books : 1. WEIDIG: Eeliquien. '2. Der Tod des Pfarrers Wei- dig. The guilt or innocence of Georgi is further dis- cussed in books and pamphlets by Boden, Welcker, Noellner, and Georgi himself. Besides these, I have derived much information from the newspapers and general histories mentioned in the note to the previous article (especially from the Times and from Frau Biichner's admirable book), and I have again continually referred to the works of Heine and Borne, who seem to be the acutest, as they certainly are the wittiest, commentators on the history of their time. LIBERTY IN GERMANY. 1 III. CONCLUSION. THE year 1840 saw Germany perplexed and ill at ease. Danger was looming beyond the borders and discontent sat brooding within the gates. It was thought that France, the old enemy, was preparing to renew the struggle. What else, men asked, could France mean but a threat to Germany when the body of Napoleon was brought to Paris with military pomp and civic enthu- siasm ? The new King of Prussia, Frederick William the Fourth, now felt keenly enough that there might at no distant period be need for the patriot- ism of the people. He knew too how his father's perfidious tyranny, that is to say, his continual promises of liberty and perpetual practice of despotism, had gone far to estrange men's hearts. He feared that in long years of misgovernment the devotion that had in 1813 brought loyal soldiers to the struggle must inevitably have perished. A poet indeed now came to the rescue ; 1 Tlw Nineteenth Century, February, 1879. 72 Liberty in Germany. and all Germany singing his brave verses ' Sie sollen ihn nicht haben, denfreien deutschen Rhein' seemed to have forgotten the wrongs her masters had wrought on her and to think only of defending the beloved territory against the imaginary foe without. But Frederick William, the Fourth could not believe that the people had forgiven the injuries and the disappointment of five-and-twenty years, and determined while danger lasted to woo popu- larity in every possible way. Accordingly, he began his reign by various acts that pointed to pronounced liberalism. He removed the censor- ship on books over twenty sheets, and gave the obnoxious office of censor to well-known liberals. Further, he called a distinguished liberal named Schon to his ministry, and invited the two brothers Grimm (who had been among the professors who had protested against the tyranny of Ernst August of Hanover) to the University of Berlin. But in 1842 the danger was over. France had obviously no hostile intentions now. Germany was safe from all invaders. The mask could ac- cordingly be thrown aside. Frederick William the Fourth could show himself in his true colours; he could show the people that he was the true son of his father, and the contemporary of the Sultan of Hanover. Nowhere in Germany had the tyranny been planned more carefully, or executed more per- sistently, than in the petty government of Hesse. Liberty in Germany. 73 The chief administration of the government had been in the hands of one Hassenpflug. Hassen- pflug was now summoned to Berlin, to be the confidential minister of Frederick William the Fourth. 1 The old cry rang forth again. Why was there no representative system ? It was useless to con- voke the old Stiinde they did not satisfy the universal desire. The promise of 1813, of a real representative system, must be fulfilled, and was that fulfilment to be still further postponed ? What every one was thinking, earnestly but vaguely, was embodied in two vigorous pamphlets, each of which was sent by its author to the king. The first was Jacoby 's Vier Fragen ' Four Questions/ All related, of course, to the repre- sentative system. In the course of his argument, Jacoby roundly denied that the provincial assem- blies were in any way representative, and added that no institution in the world was so useless and so detested. The pamphlet ended in this way: ' Question IV. What is to be done now ? Take by force what we cannot get by begging : it is our right/ Schon, the minister of Frederick William, while the king was still feigning liberalism, was the author of the second pamphlet. It was called Whence and Whither. Whence meant, what is 1 His name lent itself to a pun, and the people spoke in bitter jesting of the man of hate (Hass) and curse (Fluch). 74 Liberty in Germany. the origin of the demand for a representative system ? Answer : The promise of the sovereigns in the year 1813. WJiither will the representative system lead ? Answer : To a proper administra- tion of the finances; to restrictions on the rapacity of government officials; to a purer system of justice ; and, finally, to more useful legislation, for none but the people can know the people's needs. This was stated with much emphasis, and with admirable brevity. Material which nineteen Germans out of twenty would scarcely have found space for in a hundred pages, Schon crowded into eleven. At the end came a passage which could only have one meaning : ' Paternal government is a thing of the past. If you do not take the Present as it is, and assist its natural development, then will the Present surely mete out your punish- ment/ Only a few copies of the pamphlet were printed, and it was, of course, instantly suppressed. But it was reprinted at Strasburg, sent on to Germany, and was soon in everyone's hands. A postscript was added to it by one Fein. The postscript held up to ridicule the liberal acts with which the new king had begun his reign. He had released Jahn and Arndt. Yes, truly, but only because they were old men, and could not harm him. He had invited the brothers Grimm to Berlin : how was this compatible with the restraint he still imposed upon the press ? But then the king had wide views. He could give his right hand to the Liberty in Germany. 75 liberty-loving professors, while with his left he drew the King of Hanover near to his royal heart, that beat in sympathy with every despot, great or small. Fein spoke of the devotional attitude the new king was fond of assuming when public eyes were fixed upon him. Was it not the man- ner of the Pharisees, says our satirist, to pray in public? Tyrants were not priests; and as for Frederick William, if he meant to play the tyrant, let him play it ; but let him not feign the while that he was a Christian too. The last sentence in this postscript points to the new influences that had now crept into politics. These were the religious influences, of which a very brief sketch must suffice. In the first place, the Ultramontane interest had acted and reacted in the liberal movement. In the year 1841 Frederick William the Fourth peremptorily forbade the priests to refuse to cele- brate mixed marriages. Now the pope had for- bidden them as stringently to consent to celebrate such marriages. The priests declared that the king had no power to tell them what they should or should not do in the matter, and to interfere with what they owed to the pope and their con- sciences. The liberals strongly sympathized with them. Gorres, who had passed out of the pages of history since the year 1819, and who was now a very old man, returned to public life to protest in favour of the priests against this new demand of the king. In the end the king won the battle ; 76 Liberty in Germany. but people knew that others were infallibly im- pending between king and pope. And when these other battles came, the argument of the Ultramontanes to the people invariably was, ' See how the king wishes to curtail our liberties. If we submit, and if you encourage us to submit, he will in the next place curtail yours/ And often the liberal leaders would adopt the same argument, and, like Gorres, bid the people resist encroach- ment on Roman Catholic liberty, as it meant only the future encroachment on other liberties. The Ultramontane faction was not the only religious element that was opposed to the king. The Church in Germany received a new factor of strength which was to be a new contending force against the secular government. There had been among many of the Roman Catholics themselves a certain feeling of dissatis- faction at the new demands of the pope, and a still more bitter feeling against the king for the way in which he had met those demands. Of this double feeling there arose a most powerful ex- ponent. Ronge, a man of great eloquence, com- menced a series of pastoral journeys all over Prussia, in which he pointed out the dangers of the Church from the pope on the one side and from the king on the other. There was, he in- sisted with very skilful argument, no safety for Germany while she allowed the pretensions of either. Let the deep religious feeling that had always been the stronghold of the fatherland Liberty in Germany. 77 assert itself now in the formation of a national German Church, acknowledging the wider doc- trines of Rome, but none of its discipline, aiming at fostering the patriotism of the people, but teaching them to beware of bowing low before any earthly king. 1 From Ronge sprang what might almost be called a religious revival. The new patriot church gained adherents by thousands : it in- cluded Roman Catholics and Protestants. In glaring contrast to this religious movement was a school that had grown up in Germany to a maturity like that to which Voltaire had brought it in France more than fifty years before. Bauer, Strauss, and Feuerbach had boldly questioned the fundamental truths of Christianity. There was no laughter as in France at the incongruities of revelation ; simply a spirit of earnest inquiry, which entreated mankind for a hearing as humbly and as pathetically as the preacher of an estab- lished creed might pray to God for the conversion of the infidel. The new teaching might have stood aloof from politics if politicians had not foolishly run counter to the inevitable issue of the time. When the students of Halle petitioned that a chair in the University might be given to Strauss, they were 1 The national Catholic Church seems now te be en- tirely forgotten in Germany, great as was its influence in 1841. Of Ronge himself I have heard from some of his contemporaries very unflattering accounts. 78 Liberty in Germany. fined for the impiety of their demand, and the King of Prussia took every possible occasion to declaim against the new doctrines. The teachers of the creed of Reason were silent for a time till the orthodox party went a step farther. Thinking to stay heresy by a larger demand on credulity, the priests announced that the time of miracles was not yet past. The court party joined them in asserting the truth of a new wonder. Treves was the scene of the ' manifes- tation/ There a coat was to be shown to all good Christians, the existence of which was a miracle. It was a coat which had absolutely been worn by Christ. More than that, Christ had been born in it : it was seamless, and had grown as Christ grew. In the space of eight days one hundred and fifty thousand persons made pilgrimages to Treves to gaze at the holy coat and pray to it. It naturally performed certain miracles, and did not, like most relics, confine its scope of action to the lower orders. On one occasion it even enabled a countess, lame before, to dance at a ball the night after she had gazed on its seamless sanctity. Whatever respect the school of freethought had felt for the court party before, vanished into thin air when they found that party sympathizing with nonsense of this kind. Indeed the worship of the Holy Coat made the new school look upon the court with absolute aversion. The divinity of the freethought teaching was of course Reason, Liberty in Germany. 79 and it was an outrage upon Reason and so flat blasphemy to ask credence in the miracles of the Holy Coat. 1 Estranged therefore from these various schools ultramontane, national- catholic, and rationalis- tic the king sought elsewhere for support. Ho saw a new hope in the creation of a new nobility. The strength of the hereditary nobility was mani- fest from the example of England ; perhaps in Germany it would be possible to keep it invariably on the side of the throne. To do this it was neces- sary to make it a separate caste. There was ac- cordingly inserted in the patents of the new nobles a clause forbidding, on pain of loss of title, a marriage with any one of the bourgeois class. This was in the. year 1845. In that same year came the first sound of that weird voice which has so often brought dismay into the souls of king and people, and which in Germany grows louder every day. It was the cry of socialism. In the Hartz mountains there dwelt a large and needy population, whereof the women were just able to live. Now that sewing machines had come into vogue, it seemed that the poor boon of their life was gone. In their despair was a wild 1 Sybel the historian demolished the pretensions of the coat by a learned treatise, in which he showed with great humour that there were, besides this holy unsewn coat, twenty other holy seamless coats, only there was a certain difficulty about finding out which was the ori- ginal article. 80 Liberty in Germany. outcry against the rich, who seemed utterly callous to the misery of their fellow-creatures. A poet of the time represented the child of a woman who had no bread for herself or it, calling for help to the Spirit of the mountain, since no human being would show them pity. The social movement was seen most clearly in Bohemia and Silesia. There it was put down with the utmost severity; socialist riots being suppressed by the military. An attempted assassination of Frederick William by one Tsesch gave new excuse to all kinds of precautionary measures. Tsesch had really a private wrong, but it was convenient to say he had been led to the attempt by the teaching of the socialists, and to connect it with their theories and present dis- content. It was not the last time that would-be assassins were to be of service to German govern- ments. The crime of Tsesch furnished also an invalu- able pretext for Metternich to make a new declaration against the cry for a representative government which was growing so perilously urgent. At a Conference of the States sum- moned in the year 1846, he begged the assem- bled princes to remember that it was only under extraordinary circumstances, carefully defined by the Constitution, that any German prince was obliged to summon his Chambers. Further, he stated that it was the duty of all governments to refuse to admit, under any circumstances, any Liberty in Germany. 81 extension of the prorogation of the Chambers for this sole reason : such extension was diametri- cally opposed to the due maintenance of the rights of the crown. But Metternich could not stem the advancing tide, which, as we have seen, various winds were blowing every day into a more and more dan- gerous wave. Over and above all that stirred them at home, the people of Berlin were growing hourly more and more hostile to the principle of uncontrolled monarchy, having not far from them a striking example of its effects. On that example it will not be necessary to dwell for long. Indeed, it may be summed up in one sentence. A brilliant adventuress appeared at Munich, and King Louis presented her to his ministers in these words, ' Gentlemen, I have the honour of introducing to you my dearest friend/ The rest may be imagined. Lola Montes ruled Louis, and directed the court what creed to favour, what ministers to choose. The scandal rapidly became common talk : it spread, as was natural, through all Germany. It roused doubts in men's minds. Even at Berlin people began now to be a little uncertain whether princes, with passions and weaknesses like other humanity, should indeed always be thought of as God-inspired, entrusted with uncontrolled power, and subjected to no kind of law. Frederick William could not fail to see in what directions men's thoughts were turning. He de- 82 Liberty in Germany. termined, therefore, on a new policy. He would come forth and proclaim himself the friend of freedom, the protector of the liberties of the people, the voluntary and gracious donor of a representative system. But the gifts of rnonarchs are as dangerous as the gifts of the Greeks. The wooden horse which Frederick William offered contained indeed many armed dangers. He pro- mised to summon a United Diet which should be formed of all the provincial diets assembled to- gether, and of representatives from the various orders. But the new nobility were to attend the assembly also, and princes of the royal blood be- sides. Taxes were as a rule not to be imposed without the consent of the Diet, but to this rule were numerous exceptions. Further, the king repelled the notion of a charter the notion dearer than all others to his subjects who thought of the Magna Charta and the Bill of Eights. ' A sheet of paper shall never interfere between me and my subjects ; paragraphs shall not rule us, nor shall they replace our time-hallowed reliance on each other.' Whatever concessions he made came, he said, of his own will : ' Heir to an unweakened throne, I am free from every pledge/ Thus, assuming still the tone of the despot, Frederick William the Fourth offered the people a little liberty as a royal pourboire. The new constitution was put forth in a royal patent. The ministerialists were full of pane- gyric, and spoke of the high-minded generosity Liberty in Germany. 83 of the king, who desired nothing but his people's happiness. But one Dr. Simon, who had left the Prussian Government from his own choice some years before, pointed out that the new constitution was not yet a constitution at all ; the royal patent would not be the law of the land till the eight exist- ing provisional assemblies had each separately approved it. In a learned but biting pamphlet, which he called ( Accept or Reject,' Simon briefly pointed out why it was undesirable for the people to take what the king offered. In the first place, he denied that it was fitting or desirable that laws should come as gifts. Further, he asserted that the patent took away as much as it proffered, for it limited the right of petition. Nor did the patent make any provision whatever for the most crying needs of Germany a free press, open courts of justice, and the responsibility of ministers. The Chamber separated after a brief and bar- ren sitting. It had assembled in a time of com- motion ; it was dissolved when the tempest was perilously near. The great policy of delay had at last been foiled. Enthusiasm was winning fast, and none could say how manifest the victory would be, nor how soon forthcoming. It was not in Prussia only Hesse, Bavaria, Saxony, Austria, all Germany was now ready ; the volcano of democracy might burst forth at any moment. In Bavaria, as we have seen, it was by a foreign La'is that the fire was kindled. 84 Liberty in Germany. There Lola cost Louis his throne, and then ran away with another man. But the example of Bavaria was not altogether sufficient. A louder trumpet was needed to rouse the forces of liberty into open battle. It sounded, as everyone knows, from France. To many of the ardent liberals of that day it seemed as though the telegraph had been invented just at that time to bring to Germany with magic speed the new glad tidings of Paris. The July revolution of 1830 had brought its lessons. But it was a bagatelle compared to the February re- volution of 1848. When the news came of the overthrow of Louis Philippe, and the building of barricades, and the proclamation of a republic, Germany awoke as though from a dream. What she had imaged to herself only in the eloquence of her orators and the passion of the poets, was now the tangible possession of men living in a neighbouring land. The news spread from province to province; from town to town. What man has done, man can do, was on the lips of everyone ; and then, also, Is Germany to be outdone by France ? Germany was, indeed, not long to remain be- hind. The people everywhere demanded a free press and a representative system, and the sove- reigns were obliged to obey. Ministers chosen by the people were appointed in the place of ministers of the old regime. In Vienna Metter- nich fled before the storm. Nor can it be denied Liberty in Germany. 85 that in the eventful days of March, 1848, he played his part with courage and unselfishness. He had devoted all his life, he said, to the main- tenance of the monarchic system ; he would now serve it best by retiring from office, for his per- sonal unpopularity might endanger the throne. Terrible were the apprehensions of Frederick William as the news came to Berlin of the scenes daily enacted around. On March 7 he tried to anticipate the storm by proclaiming the complete emancipation of the press. But the people were not yet satisfied, and on the very same day a large assembly of reformers met in a public gar- den and pledged itself to strive for all the re- quirements of a constitutional monarchy. Poli- tical meetings were new in Berlin ; the king was dismayed. Had he gone too far in allowing the freedom of the press ? should he again resort to reactionary measures ? The rest of Prussia was now throbling too. In the Rhineland a petition was hastily drawn up, and as hastily brought to Berlin by the most clarion-voiced of the reformers. It spoke of a representative system, of a free press, of tolera- tion for all creeds. It did not beg for these things it demanded them. If all that was asked were not granted, it was evident that the Khine- land would secede from Prussia. This gave a very serious aspect to the whole business, and the Chamber in Berlin determined that the petition should be forthwith presented to the king. 86 Liberty in Germany. Six days had passed since the first reform meeting. The excitement was increasing daily when the king, in the blind stupidity of his fear, forbade all further public meetings. But the people assembled nevertheless. Then the mili- tary were called out. A slight collision occurred ; there was just one attempt to erect barricades, and then the people disbanded. Frederick William again grew sanguine. Promises which could be made with very great facility as his own and his father's experience showed might allay the discontent. So then came the old Landstag promise. It should be convoked, he said, and soon on the twenty -fifth of the month. But that was a fortnight off, and the people were now too impatient to wait one day. Then Frederick spoke of a congress which should determine the new constitution. A congress ! The people thought with bitterness and rage of the days of Vienna and Karlsbad. The streets were now full of disturbances, and the baser elements of every revolution time, thieves and noisy disturbers of the peace, were not wanting. The king had an excuse for sum- moning many regiments to Berlin, and for planting cannon round his palace. ' I have called in my troops/ he said, ' to protect property. I will have a free people, but the princes, too, must be free; and in saying this I mean no hollow phrases.' The desire that now lay nearest to men's Liberty in Germany. 87 hearts was the acceptance by the king of the petition of the Rhinelanders. The excitement reached its climax on March 18. On that day a large crowd of people went to the palace to hear whether the petition was to be granted or not. Their temper showed that a refusal might lead to dangerous results. The news was not long coming. A herald appeared and announced that his Majesty had been pleased to grant the petition. The king now appeared on the balcony and was greeted with much cheering. But new de- mands were urged ; the present ministry was to be dismissed, for its head, Bodelschwing, was known to be the instrument of despotism. The clamour was great, and both the king and Bodel- schwing were terrified. Arnim, a well-known liberal, was now sent on the part of the king to carry certain propositions to the leaders of the populace, and to request them to disband. While the parley was still proceeding, two shots were fired from the direction of the palace. Who fired them was never known. The people believed that the king had played the traitor, and given the command to fire under cover of a parley. Desperate as the excitement was, all might still have been well ; but the royal guards imagined that the shots were a signal to them to charge, and they charged the people at the point of the bayonet. The crowd dissolved in wild confusion. All 88 Liberty in Germany. seemed lost. The sickness of deferred hope changed now to the madness of despair. Nor could despair have shown itself more pitifully. Tearing the stones from the streets and the shutters from the houses, seizing any- thing indeed that came to hand, the people built up barricades. No one thought of the morrow. Let them be safe at least for to-night from the treacherous cruelty of the king. All through that night the fighting continued. From the irregular surface of the barricades men fought with desperate rage against their country- men and kinsfolk. Sanguine commands had been issued to the officers: they were to be masters of the city by five o'clock the next morn- ing. And often it seemed indeed as though the soldiers must gain the victory ; the defenders of the barricades thought repeatedly that all was over. But time after time the attacks of the military were repulsed. Sometimes the defenders would leap down from the barricades and fight hand to hand with the leaders of the assaulting party. At other times men, women, and children would hurl from the roofs a rain of stones upon the soldiers. On the morning of the nineteenth the barri- cades were still defended; the soldiers were failing, but the patriots were as strong as ever. They knew now that victory was theirs. Forty thousand trained soldiers had been kept at bay by the devoted unselfishness and enthusiasm of the Liberty in Germany. 89 toilers for liberty. It was useless for the officers of the king to beseech the people to break down the barricades ; it was useless for him to make, in a new proclamation to his f Dear Berliners/ fresh vague promise of ' fatherly affection/ A thousand voices were cursing tyranny : new songs of liberty resounded now instead of hymns of praise to infamous princes. One poem, taking for its theme the old national colours, proclaimed that gold meant the blessing of freedom, red the blood that was shed for it, and black the warning to those who still opposed its progress. The 1 German Marseillaise ' saluted the princes of Germany with a grim parody : ' Tyrants of Germany, desecrated be your name your kingdom turn to a republic. May your will never be done on earth. Pay us our debts as we have hitherto paid u)hat we owe you. . . . For yours is neither right, nor might, nor glory; so aivay with you for ever. Amen' A song addressed to the people bade them : Stand firm and fast, nor slave nor lord ; United bauds of faithful brothers be ; Stand firm and fast; defend of one accord Your holy rights, and be for ever free. And to all princes shall you tell this word, A people that has shed its own life's blood To gain the crown of freedom by the sword, That people reigns now by the grace of God. Every one felt that for the present at least the cause of absolutism was at an end. The ministry 90 Liberty in Germany. with which it had been associated resigned, and the new ministry consisted of men who had all declared themselves on the side of constitutional government. Further orders were issued to the troops to leave Berlin forthwith. In the fulfil- ment of this command the people seemed to taste the first-fruits of their victory. Others were to follow. The prison doors were thrown open and the political offenders were released. The king issued an order bid- ding the people to be armed ; he could rely, he said, on. their protection. This was the dearest assurance the people could have that their cause had been righteous, and that the power was now in their own hands. But the king was forced to a still more direct acknowledgment that he had sinned heavily against them. The bodies of those who had fallen were brought to the palace on biers covered with flowers. A crowd stood before the windows, and summoned the king to come forth. He dared not now disobey, and he came with the queen to the balcony. It was not yet enough ; he must come from the palace into their midst. Both king and queen wept bitterly as they stood by the crowd a moment afterwards in the very presence of the dead who had fallen in the ter- rible night. ( Take off your hat/ said a voice ; and the king obeyed. Then the flowers were torn from the biers, and one saw the fresh and bleeding wounds. ' This is your work,' said a Liberty in Germany. 91 Voice from the crowd, and the rest echoed the cry. The king trembled ; the queen had fainted. The aim of the chief leaders of the revolution was, as we have seen, the unification of Germany and the establishment of a German parliament. After various committees had sat to arrange the manner of meeting and election, the new parlia- ment of the German Empire met at Frankfort in a church which was decked out to look as like as possible to a Senate-house. The Emperor's crown had been offered to Frederick William in the name of twenty-eight of the states of Ger- many. But he felt that his position was too in- secure in his own capital to enable him to run the risks attending the assumption of new dignities, nor would he be Emperor of Germany while Ger- many included Austria. Had Prussia then be- come mistress of Germany, the unity of the Em- pire might possibly have been accomplished. For a time the Germans tried to satisfy them- selves with a shadowy semblance of their hearts' desire : Germany was, at all events, to be con- sidered as a unit, and the administration of the imaginary state was given with all solemnity to John, the Archduke of Austria. The Archduke John was a striking personage. He was now nearly seventy years old, but still vigorous and resolute. His personal popularity was very great: the valleys of the Tyrol re- sounded and still resound with songs which the peasants sang of the good Duke John, endeared ()2 Liberty in Germany. to the people because he was estranged by his marriage with a bourgeoise, from his brother, the Emperor; and secondly because he was well known to be the personal enemy of Metternich. * The Archduke John must fill this post/ said one of the liberals when the choice of an administrator was being discussed, ' not because of his royal birth, but in spite of it/ An anonymous political writer spoke of the hope and the fear that filled men's minds while the experiment of unity was being tried. 'We are half afraid/ he wrote, 'that the time has not yet come. Prussia, or rather the coryphees of her administration, may coquet with German unity but the German is not as yet at one with his brother German. We shall soon learn that we ought to have ridded our- selves for ever of our idols/ Soon indeed was the dream to pass away. While Prussia was loudly contemning the decrees of the so-called Parliament, she was by force of arms asserting the supremacy of her power. By vigorous marches and merciless chastisement she quashed, in one part of Germany after another, every democratic rising. She played with arms the game that Metternich had played of old by his counsels. That is to say, she taught sove- reigns everywhere to set at defiance the consti- tutional demands of their people. Great was the terror that attached to the name of the Prussian army who could think of the poor Reichsverweser 1 John, who had no troops and no executive, aa Liberty in Germany. 93 other than as a person bearing a courtesy title ? Abroad his ministers were received with scant civility who could show deference to the repre- sentatives not of a nation, but merely of a Uto- pian scheme ? Thus the aim of the liberals failed. Unity was impossible, and they themselves, with their foolish differences on points of technical detail, soon brought the Parliament into disrepute. It was bidden to move from place to place, and the Rump that remained of it at last was ignominiously ex- pelled from its sitting. So ended the reign of the poor Archduke, a veritable John Lackland, and with his fall the hopes of unity were shat- tered, one could not say for how long a time. The democratic uprisings continued through Germany for about a year, but after March they were in every instance unsuccessful. The army was aristocratic in sympathies, and found keen pleasure in opposing the discontented masses ; and the people soon listened to the voices which urged them with seeming unselfishness to submit to the old order of things, so that discord being removed from the gates, trade and pleasure might flourish as before. General Wrangel in September, 1848, standing with his army before the gates of Berlin, which was again in the hands of the democratic party, spoke first with fierce threats of the sharp bayonets of his soldiery, and then too of the folly of desiring to maintain a struggle, the continuance of which implied ma- 94 Liberty in Germany. terial discomfort. Would you not rather Csesar rule again, that you should live as you did of old on the fat of the land, than that Ceesar should be opposed, and beggary reside within your gates ? It is curious to note that Wrangel made this ap- peal, and that it found ready listeners among the Prussian people. The same appeal, we shall find, could be made later for a very different issue. In a very short time ' Reaction ' asserted the supremacy of her strength all over Germany. The well-known utterance of the king, ' Soldiers are the only weapons against democrats/ was felt to be no idle threat, and Germany was too indo- lent, too disunited, and too timid to venture upon a second revolution. From the years 1849 to 1 866 the history of Germany is briefly the history of the rivalry between Austria and Prussia, and the establishment and organization of a tyranny rarely equalled in modern times. To recount the history of the period between 1849 and 1866 would chiefly be to repeat in other words what we have had before to say of the period between 1820 and 1831. In some ways the old tyranny was less complete than the new one.- Domiciliary visits were now attempted with a frequency and unreasonableness which were in- deed original of their kind. To have been seen speaking to anyone who had taken part in the Barricade day was enough to insure a visit from the police, and to give them ample excuse for dragging a man off to prison. Liberty in Germany. 95 On one occasion a man against whom there was no shadow of suspicion of having been con- cerned in any political undertaking was reading Shakespeare in his own house with a party of friends. The police broke in, took the name of every person present, confiscated the volumes of Shakespeare in their hands, and then marched the host off to prison. Having kept him there for some hours, he was dismissed again, without ever learning why he had been arrested, and of course with no kind of redress. But the bitterest persecution was reserved for those persons who, sickening of the unreasoning orthodoxy which the State was thrusting upon every church, every university, and every school, had established a so-called Free congregation. Once some members of this congregation, chiefly ladies, were listening to an open-air concert in a public garden at Berlin, when a body of police approached and arrested the whole company, taking them to prison and detaining them for some hours on no conceivable pretext. Another time the sacristan of the congregation was ar- rested in his own house, dragged to prison in his night-shirt through drizzling rain, kept there all night, and only released late next day without redress and without explanation. This regime continued, as we have said, for eighteen years (1848-1866). In 1863 the decrees of the Parliament went utterly unheeded, and the taxation of the State was apportioned to uses 96 Liberty in Germany. altogether different from those for which it had been voted. In that same year the liberty of the press was again almost destroyed, despite the powerful protest of Jacoby, who published side by side, without a word of comment, the oath of the new king on his coronation and these his new ordinances which were the expression of the vio- lation of that oath. In the next year the tyranny showed itself in a new form. The civic officers who had been appointed by the corporations of the various towns, being distasteful to the Govern- ment, were removed from their posts, and their posts were filled with creatures of the all-reaching despotism. When Germany in 1866 came nearer to unity, the government was relaxed, and an approach was made to constitutionalism. Since then pro- gress has been made, but progress of so inter- rupted a nature that it is difficult to say what may be its real import. Ministers are still vir- tually irresponsible, and there is scant or rather no liberty of speech. At the recent elections some candidate was declaiming against the mili- tary system, which he declared was the ruin of all the real prosperity of the Vaterland. He was cut short by an official, who asserted that such remarks were treasonable (Staatsbeleidigung) and could not be allowed. The Government, in fact, is so strong that it has been able to array itself for pastime in the garb of liberty. The press has been made free because it can at any moment be Liberty in Germany. 97 again enslaved ; the form of a constitutional government has been granted because its deci- sions can be controlled or even disregarded by the Executive. But two mighty powers exist before which the German Government may well tremble. One is the Ultramontane party, which recognizes in Prince Bismarck its bitterest enemy, and the other is the Socialist party, with which he can now afford to coquet no longer. As early as the year 1847 a political annual declared that a thick darkness covered the hori- zon ' the black cloud is the Social question : the solution may possibly be near at hand/ A variety of causes had conspired to make social difficulties very keenly felt. Taxes were heavy, and the disunion of Germany had made prices high. Machines of all kinds were multiplying, and by their introduction the hand-labourer was gradually driven from the market. Berlin and Vienna in 1848 saw the labouring classes in a most pitiable condition. Famine in many parts of Germany had completed the tale of their misery ; there was no work and no bread. The Prussian Government tried for a short time to keep the men thrown out of work in employ- ment by giving them entirely useless work namely, the erection of large purposeless wooden buildings in the neighbourhood of Berlin. But when the workmen discovered that no one cared whether the work was done or not, they returned 98 Liberty in Germany. to their state of idleness, took the wages for the labour they did not do, and added to their income in many cases by nocturnal theft. The excitement of the Eevolution of 1848 gave great opportunities for the display of the new discontent. Blending with the political move- ment was a distinctly social movement; one month after the barricade day in Berlin it was said that the contest of the future was not between rulers and ruled, but between capital and labour. There were voices sounding from the distance which spoke in no doubtful tones. William Marr, who agitated in Switzerland, founded many clubs which disseminated into Germany numberless pamphlets advocating Socialism and declaiming bitterly against religion. How Marr hoped to work upon the masses may best be gathered from a brief quotation. ' I lay awake/ he says, ' and pondered. I pondered over this what lever was there by which one could move the working classes. I found it at last, and when I beheld it, a shudder ran over me. For the name of that lever is Despair/ This was, in fact, the tone which the Socialist party in Germany adopted from their first begin- nings to the present time. They portrayed to the labouring classes their own misery. They held up to them in glaring contrast the prosperity of the rich not only of the nobles, but of all capitalists. They insisted that the whole organi- zation of the State and of society aimed only at Liberty in Germany. 99 benefiting these, and crushing still further the interests of the wage-getting. They inveighed against the military system, which rendered the burdens of the poor still harder to endure. They showed very plainly how foreign conquest would in no single instance result in anything but the deeper misery not only of the conquered, but also of the conquerors. And this was not all. Despair, as the Socialists preached it, struck a note of still more bitter agony. It besought its hearers to listen not to those who spoke to it of that consolation which might come from unseen spiritual sources. Let them not believe that in a future life there should be recompense for those who had borne here patiently and virtuously the heavy burden of the poor. Let them not believe such fortune awaited them, for the soul was mortal even as the body, and the hereafter was but an old wives' tale. Let them not believe that a Divine Providence con- trolled, with wise hand and to a beneficent end, the tangled skein of human woe. Let them pay no heed to those who told them of this unseen Power a lie that had cajoled men in the past, but one that should deceive them now no more. Let them know the truth and face it as best they could : There is no Immortality, and there is no God. This creed of despair was easy to understand, and it soon found eager listeners. The Socialist plan was unfolded with greater difficulty ; and the masses, who form the bulk of the party, are of 100 Liberty in Germany. course unable to comprehend at all definitely what are the real aims of their leaders, nor are those leaders too eager to define them. These aims are : the reduction of the army ; free education and free justice, in the widest sense of the word ; the abo- lition of a State religion j and finally, the State possession of all capital . This possession would entail the doling out of work to chosen agents, and their payment according to the value set by certain State-appointed judges on their services. It would imply, of course, the abolition of testa- mentary power on the part of the individual, and the complete abolition of all existing modes of in- heritance. The Socialist Utopia is, in fact, briefly a despotic Communism. There have been also among the Socialists many who desire no wider reform than a carefully-graduated income-tax ; but these are scarcely to be accounted as genuine Socialists. But such complex notions are, as we said, naturally not understood by the many. They read in Socialism an assertion of the rights of labour against capital ; and they hope that by some means, the nature of which they do not com- prehend, the existing relations of employer and employed will be suddenly overturned, and that the serfs of to-day may be the dictators of to- morrow. From the earliest movement of the Socialists the Government endeavoured to the utmost to make its leaders their own instruments. In 1847 a Socialist still living was asked by the Govern- Liberty in Germany. 101 ment to write communistic articles for a popular journal, but declined to do so under sucli auspices. Similar overtures, though often repulsed, were never discontinued, and it is not more than ten years if indeed so much since the Government which Prince Bismarck controls or constitutes was paying, with the enormous secret service money of Prussia, for the maintenance of journals advocating identically the same doctrines in which be now reads direct incitements to disobey the mandates of the Supreme Being. Without such support, given lavishly and with ill-kept secrecy, the wild writings of Schweitzer could never have been set afloat, and hundreds of other commu- nistic outpourings would have died unnoticed be- fore a still uncertain public. But Prince Bismarck, with splendid cunning, saw from afar the inevit- able outcome. He saw that if the poorest and most uneducated classes had Socialist literature thrust continually upon them, they would in time grow desperate in their rage against all that capitalist class whom they were taught to regard as luxurious spendthrifts, enjoying the pleasant idleness made possible by the ceaseless unrequited labour of the poor. That rage would soon be the terror of the classes immediately above the poorest of the smaller capitalists, the great middle-class population. And not of these only. It would clearly be easy to persuade a vast majority of the whole population that a terrible revolution was inevitably brewing; that they who declaimed 102 Liberty in Germany. against the capitalists were bandits who meant to plunder everyone possessed of worldly goods at all. Then there would arise a cry for help against the new Eed Terror, and in the general scare, who could refuse the Government all support to kill the grim apparition threatening every peace- ful home ? Who could cdmplain of reaction or of tyranny if he saw security from the immediate peril ? Events went just as Prince Bismarck had foreseen : the people believed in the portrait he gave of the monster his own hands had helped to shape, and even the so-called Liberal party gave him support in his efforts to kill the thing he had once so providently called into life. The two great apostles of Socialism in Ger- many have been men of very different type. Ferdinand Lassalle was a savant who became a politician : Carl Marx has changed from poli- tician to savant. Lassalle, intensely German, aimed at fostering the spirit of nationality : Marx, a cosmopolitan, seeks to destroy it. Lassalle was brought by his studies in law to consider the present institutions relating to pro- perty. These seemed to him nothing more than anachronisms conditions natural only to a state of society which has now passed away. Socialism he held to be the only possible remedy for the evils that separated the different classes of the community. Lassalle, unlike most economists, was at first, properly speaking, neither politician nor philanthropist. He had no desire to lead an Liberty in Germany. 103 agitation, and would perhaps have preferred ab- staining altogether from taking any practical part in politics. In 1862, however, when all the leaders of the advanced liberal or Fortschritt party had refused to preside at a proposed Labourers' Congress, the post was offered to Lassalle and accepted by him. It was then that he first made use of the afterwards famous phrase in which he denounced the iron wage-law which denied to the labourer the smallest increment over starvation- wages, whatever the profits of the capitalist. In 1863 Lassalle founded his ' Universal Union of German labourers/ the aim of which was as much political as economic the object their members professed being the attainment of universal suf- frage. The success of the Union was at first ex- ceedingly limited. The members numbered, in fact, only about 4,000 in all when Lassalle died in a duel one year after the foundation of the Union. The brilliance of Lassalle's personal qualities attracted great attention to all that he said or did. He was a man of almost universal information : he said of himself with pardonable vanity, ' I have all the culture of my century ; ' he had indeed been nicknamed the Encyclopaedia ; and, besides exceptional power of conversation, he had a rare personal charm. ' I can't help liking you/ Heine said to him once, and Prince Bismarck probably felt the same at the interview between the two which has now become famous. There was 104 Liberty in Germany. further a romance about his history : his relation- ship to the Countess of Hatzfelt was poetic and chivalrous, and friends and foes were touched alike by the pathetic love-story which ended in the death of Lassalle. Marx is a man of very different stamp, and the alliance between him and Lassalle was short. He desires also that the State should become pos- sessed of all capital ; but in his Utopia there is no individuality of nations, no Vaterland, and conse- quently no patriotism. Marx was editor of a newspaper at Cologne, in 184-8, and then already inveighed against capital ; but the first part of his great work ' Das Capital ' was not published till twenty years later. In knowledge of the facts of political economy no one is said ever to have approached him. 'Das Capital' has been trans- lated into most European languages, and is still the oracle of the Socialist party. Living in Eng- land, Marx has only indirectly influenced German politics, but he has probably accomplished his ends as he would most desire to accomplish them. Without himself sounding the war-trumpet, he declares that peace cannot endure much longer : he is not a revolutionary, though he, like many others, clearly foresees the inevitable revolution. The vagueness of the Socialist programme, and the fact that declaiming against the powers and things that are remains always its most con- spicuous element, contributed to making Socialism the flag around which all discontent most naturally Liberty in Germany. 105 rallied. The Socialist organization in Germany commenced as we have seen in the year 1863 : its recruits were gathered from all classes malcon- tents in matters religious, social, and political. In the years between 1866 and 1870, when the new yoke of Prussia was pressing more or less heavily on the provinces she had absorbed, and on the monarchies she had subordinated to herself, men in all parts of Germany allied themselves to the Socialists, not indeed adopting their doctrines, but glad to assert themselves on the side of so loud- voiced an Opposition. Thus Bebel, who is now one of the most conspicuous of the Socialist leaders, at first distinctly disclaimed any advocacy of the Socialist teaching, professing himself anti- Prussian and nothing more. In 1870 the triumphs over France made men forget the Prussian mis- government at home. In the feverish war-cry, and in the terror that the beloved Rhine-territory might again be conquered by the old enemy, the voices that had complained against despotism were all silenced, and in the paaans that greeted the long recurrence of splendid victories the tones of discontent were heard no more. A vista of glad years of perfect contentment and serene happiness spread out before the hero-Emperor as all Germany bowed in adoration before him at Versailles. Two-and-twenty years before he had been forced to flee from the rage of the people, who knew that he was the opponent of all consti- tutionalism and hated him as they had hated 106 Liberty in Germany. Metternich. But no one seemed to recognize the detested Crown-prince in the laurel-crowned and beloved Emperor. The German people were indeed intoxicated with the poison called of old the lust for con- quest, and now thrust upon us under the name of Imperialism. When Bebel and Liebknecht pro- tested against the annexation of Alsace and Lor- raine, they were condemned to a year's imprison- ment and the vox populi expressed its loud approval of the sentence. Soon, however, the scene grew very different. The enormous indemnity demanded of France, and paid by her with but little effort, raised through all Germany hopes of an unexampled material prosperity. Speculators embarked on every variety of commercial enterprise, and the whole people engaged in gigantic investments, which were to yield that high interest which is the natural concomitant of bad security. The crash came, and a commercial crisis of terrible magnitude showed the Germans continu- ally the nakedness of the land. They learnt, now that it was too late, the lesson that comes home to them more and more forcibly every day. They learnt that their army had indeed wrestled well, but that it had, like Orlando, overthrown more than its enemies. France is rich and fertile, and can better bear the stress of the enormous army that she is preparing probably for the day of recompense. Germany dare not disarm, if she Liberty in Germany. 107 would maintain her conquests, although she knows too well how the peaceful arts, trade, and manufacture are all languishing within her gates, as the military giant is glorying in his strength. Then the weird voice rang forth loud again. See, said the Socialists, to what your army, and your government, and your artificial institutions have brought you. Is it not true that things are so hopelessly wrong that nothing but a com- plete reconstruction of society can save you from ruin and misery ? The vague oracle now found thousands of eager listeners, and the Socialist party became a vast power over all Germany. The Government had for some time determined to quash the movement with the xisual prohibitory and repressive means that have invariably suc- ceeded admirably for a short time, and failed ig- nominiously in the end. The bill which before these pages are printed 1 will no doubt be the law of the land, creates anew the organization which Metternich used to crush the expression of written and spoken opinion. It must not be imagined that the bill is generally unpopular. The large majority of the people -are probably in favour of it : they are terrified at the teaching of Socialism : they read in the acceptance of its doctrines the uprooting of families, continual anarchy, and the destruction of religion. To avoid such terrors they hold all measures are just, and they are short-sighted enough to believe that the bill will 1 These words were written early in October, 1878. 108 Liberty in Germany. really accomplish permanently the ends at which it aims. The well-wishers of Germany could indeed desire that the opposition to the existing despot- ism had come from other sources and in other ways. But Socialism may end in something better, and at present it may be a desperate remedy for a desperate evil. Kleist-Retzow, one of the Conservative deputies, quoted in the recent debates the following incident, which did no doubt really take place. A little boy was taught at school by a clergyman, that all the Obrigkeit (that is to say, every agent of the Government, ministers, judges, policemen, schoolmasters, &c.) were appointed by God. The little boy burst out laughing, and answered, ' But I have read in the Vorwdrts that there is no God/ The Con- servative deputy might indeed be grieved that atheist doctrines should be so widely disseminated and so eagerly accepted, but the Government which has deliberately taught its subjects that God is the unreasoning ally of a foolish despotism, has no one but itself to thank, when men arise and deny that God exists at all. ***** Since the preceding paragraph was written, the bill against the Socialists has become law. The party which calls itself the National Liberal party joined its strength to that of the Govern- ment in support of one of the most reactionary measures ever framed in the present century. Liberty in Germany. 109 Sheltering themselves under the same plea as that which the Government adopted, the National Liberals declared the bill to be a necessity to still the fears of the populace, and to ensure the public safety. They believe, or profess to believe, that forbidding the written or spoken utterances of certain opinions will silence all objectors to the tyranny which called those very opinions into being. Thus far their hopes have not been in any way disappointed. Germany has submitted mostly in silence, and even with much approval, to the renewal of a despotism much like that thrust upon her sixty years before. But the Berliner Freie Presse, in its swan-song on the day of its suppression, declared that the Reich- stag at Berlin had excelled the Conference of Karls- bad, that Eulenburg surpassed Hassenpflug, and Bismarck Metternich in triumphs over prostrate freedom. All over Germany newspapers, books, and pamphlets have been seized by the omnipotent censorship. A history of the Commune in Paris, and an account of the Plebeian discontent in Ancient Rome, have been included among the long list of several hundred writings which are supposed to aim at ' overturning the existing conditions of society/ Workmen's associations have been forced to dissolve when anything savouring at all of socialism was found in their composition, and public meetings of every kind have been most diligently watched and instantly 110 Liberty in Germany. stopped when any sentiments were uttered at all at variance with the opinions of the Government. Till now all has been submission : no voice has yet been raised to inveigh against this almost in- conceivable tyranny. It was curious to listen to the debates in the Eeichstag while the anti- Socialist bill was before the assembly. Of the ultimate triumph of the Government there was, of course, no doubt ; but the opponents of the measure, and indeed all right-feeling men, must have felt satisfaction that the Socialists had the opportunity of stating their case not only to the other deputies, but through the press to all Germany. Prince Bismarck was rarely present as far as I know twice only. On the first occasion he insisted on the necessity of the bill ; on the last occasion, when the bill had become law, he thanked the House for having so readily supported him, but averred that it would be necessary to extend its length of action. The extreme Left gave vent to an ironical ' Hear, hear;' for they knew how little the Chancellor cared for the decision of the Parliament that decision having carefully limited the period for which the Act was to be in force. Yet even then no one conceived how firmly Prince Bismarck had determined to quash altogether the power of his Parliaments. There had been much to ruffle him. It was disagreeable enough when Windthorst protested against the uses to which the enormous wealth of Liberty in Germany. Ill the annexed dominions of Hanover had been applied by Prussia, when he inveighed against the Government which had employed those funds for infamous and shameless corruption. It was disagreeable too when Liebknecht related how time after time the Government had tried to press Socialists into their service by means of threats and bribes. These charges were un- pleasant ones, for there was no answer to them, and the newspapers, which could have ventured on no such comments of their own, in reporting these debates of the Imperial Eeichstag were re- porting to all Germany the vileness of her rulers. This, too, must be prohibited. Accordingly the Chancellor has devised a bill by which he who says in the Reichstag anything which may be ad- judged derogatory to the Government may be punished, expelled from the assembly, and dis- qualified from ever sitting there again. Further, any newspaper which reports such offensive utter- ances is to be silenced or prohibited as Censorship shall see fit. Thus is Representative Government, which, as we have seen, Germany has been pas- sionately demanding for- more than sixty years, to be reduced to a meaningless farce, and the press is to be humiliated as it was humiliated when reaction reached the highest pinnacle of its glory after the Decrees of Karlsbad. The suppression of written and spoken opinion has not been all. The Anti-Socialist Act gave the Government permission to put any town into 112 Liberty in Germany. a ' Lesser State of Siege ' whenever it seemed expedient so to do. Just before the recent entry of the Emperor a rumour was circulated that the Government intended to take advantage of this clause, which gave them the singular power of exiling, unheard, whomsoever they pleased. But it seemed too absurd to be true : many of the National Liberals laughed at the suggestion. When Berlin was gay with flags, and all the civic officers were enjoining the devoted people to welcome with merry greeting the return of their adored despot, would it then then of all times be necessary to regard the capital as a hotbed of angry discontent ? It seemed impossible, men said as much at least, and yet it was true enough. Men and women, 'whose opinions were such as were likely to disturb the public peace' were driven from the town at two days' notice. And not in Berlin only, but in all Germany, were such tactics pur- sued ; at the time I write (January 14, 1879) sixty-two persons have been already expelled from their homes. Many of the exiles lost by the edict all means of livelihood, and arrived, supported on such means as the benevolence of their friends could give them, in countries where thought is free, and all opinions are allowed ex- pression. Here they will live to feel that bitterest Heimweh, the knowledge of their fatherland's infinite degradation. Our chapter closes, then, with the inauguration Liberty in Germany. 113 of a new tyranny. The history of liberty in Ger- many, as far as we have followed it, has indeed been a very chequered one chiefly a chronicle of failure. It is a story that must seem dull and profitless to those who can sympathize only with success already attained. But by the nobler and more far-seeing natures there may here, too, be discerned events which may lead to great thoughts, even as great thoughts begot them. Nor let anyone think that the future of the story, distant though it may be, is not most surely forth- coming. What Borne wrote forty years ago has not yet been fulfilled, but it remains a world- truth: ' The French Revolution will presently be translated into every country of Europe/ ' 1 AUTHORITIES. For 1840-1848 : Neues Taschenluch der Geschichte. Leipzig, 1840-1848. Kritische Blatter, Koln, 1846-47. SCHON .- Wohin und Woher. Strassburg, 1842. JACOBY : Vier Fragen. Leipzig, 1842. DRONKE : Berlin (invaluable social sketches). Berlin, 1847. For the revolution in March, 1848: Glole newspaper. London. Leipziger illustrirte Zeitung. National Zei- tung. Berlin. Besides these a mass of material is to be found in the pamphlet aiid placard literature of the time. In this literature, which is, I need not say, of intense interest, the British Museum is very rich. A brilliant and faithful account of the Barricade day may be found also in Spielhagen's incomparable romance, Durch Nacht zum Licht. For the history of the Reaction there are among other works: B. BECKER: Die Reaction in Deutschland, 1863. Die politische Todtenschau (an ano- nymous work attributed to L. Wallesrode), Kiel, 1858. M. E. GRANT DUFF : Studi* s in European Politics. Edin- burgh, 1866. The history of the Socialist movement is I 114 Liberty in Germany. to be found in a very ample literature. Most important are: MEHRIXG : Die deutsche Social-DemoJcratie. JAGEK: Der heutige Socialismus. SYBEL: Die Lehrcn fles heutigen Socialismus. KATJFFMAN : Socialism, an ab- breviation of the larger work by Schaffle. The German newspapers of the day of course furnish other material. The bitterness of the Ultramontane hatred for the Prussian Chancellor may be gathered from an amusing but ridiculous pamphlet published in Bern, 1877, called Das Tfleine Buck voni grossen Bismarck. I have learnt much also from German friends, and I must in conclu- sion express my gratitude to two English friends who have helped me with the revision and correction of these papers. ALSACE-LORRAINE SINCE 1871. 1 1 IN the year 18 10/ says a German historian, ' our country knew her deepest humiliation/ It was then that Napoleon had achieved one of the aims nearest to his heart. He had practically made of Germany a series of French dependencies. In that year one of the most distinguished of Napo- leon's exiles returned to the country she so passionately loved. Madame de Stael had again entered France, bringing with her the manuscript of a new work. It was an account of Germany, where she had passed some years of her exile. It was an estimate of that country of which no Frenchman would think but with mocking; it had been written with the generous desire to see what was noble in a land that was not only utterly different from that in which the writer had been born, but hostile to it. It glowed with a large- hearted and intelligent sympathy, and ended with a passionate appeal to France to spread through Europe the rays of her genius instead of havoc, desolation, and ceaseless sorrow. 1 The Nineteenth Century, November, 1879. 116 Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. Written at a time when the Emperor had re- duced his own countrymen to acquiescence in his own manner of thought, as surely as his neigh- bouring States to his temporal power, this work could meet with only one fate. Madame de StaeTs L'Allemagne was seized by the police; the ten thousand copies that had been printed were all destroyed, but fortunately the authoress herself escaped with her manuscript, as another Arion with his cithara, to lands beyond the con- queror's domain. The year 1879 has produced another book from a French pen on the subject of Germany. M. Cohen, the author of Les Deicides, has given us an account of the impressions a residence in Ger- many made on him, as Madame de Stael did long before. But their tasks were strangely different. She desired to show her victorious countrymen that in the hour of their victory they should re- member that among the conquered too there existed a civilization not to be despised. M. Cohen has endeavoured to enliven his country- men in the time of their defeat; he has shown them with no malicious hand, but with yet un- sparing accuracy, the weakness of the foe who proved herself only eight years since so much too strong for France ; he has shown how the defeat at Sedan was followed by the sickness of the conqueror. When Madame de Stael wrote, Ger- many lay at the feet of France crushed and dis- tractel. M. Cohen writes not long after a series Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 117 of German victories of unbroken and almost unparalleled splendour. But nevertheless M. Cohen is more jubilant than Madame de Stael. The keynote of her book was, do not despise the foe you have defeated ; the pasan that M. Cohen sings is, let us rejoice that we are already stronger than our enemy. But both Madame de Stael and M. Cohen look forward to peace. Nor does it seem probable that war will soon break out again between France and Germany. Yet since the peace was declared the hatred of the two countries has been steadily increasing. It may be found in Germany most strikingly in the utterances of Prince Bismarck, who kept the term ' Frenchman ' as the final epithet of abuse to hurl upon his adversary Sonnemann. It may be found in France in M. Cohen's book modest and cautious as it is or in the more picturesque phrases of M. Renan. 'You are frivolous and unstable/ Berlin says to Paris. 'You are bar- barians/ the Frenchman still cries in scorn to the victors of 1870, ' and you are sick at heart/ One is reminded of Heine's story of the hospital where each patient would taunt the other with his in- firmities. In the eyes of Europe France has recovered her ascendency since 1870. Last year Paris proclaimed her fete; the great Exhibition was the throne ; she bade kings ( come bow to it.' In times of commercial distress the poverty of Germany has been even greater than the need of 118 Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. her neighbours ; France has been comparatively well-to-do. Germany has sunk deeper into des- potism, while France has shown high capabilities for constitutional government. The black shadow of Ultramontanism has possibly darkened France more than Germany. ' They have to fight the Kulturkampf now,' a Bismarckian said to me ex- ultingly a short time back. The feelings that lie at the root of the deep aversion of these two countries for each other are, probably, envy on the side of Germany, and dis- trust mingled with fear on the side of France. It cannot be pleasant to Berlin when M. Renan boasts that the austerity of Germany still prevents her from producing a literature and attaining to high civilization ; and M. Cohen reflects the sus- picious hatred of his countrymen, when he in- veighs against the treasures still poured annually by the Germans into the cannon factories of Baron von Krupp. There is reason enough for suspicion . ' We must guard for half a century/ said the grim Von Moltke, ' the possessions we have acquired in half a year/ These possessions Alsace-Lorraine may in- deed before many years are over be again the fruitful source of discord. Despite the efforts of Germany skilful efforts as we shall see, and not always unjust Alsace and Lorraine have not yet become German in sympathies. Will they one day be French again ? This appears to me less probable than that they should remain in the Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 119 possession of Germany, but what seems to be far from unlikely is that one day the provinces may be formed into a separate and independent realm. When Goethe was in Strasburg in the year 1770, he said one had only to go to Strasburg to be cured of one's love for France. Alsatia, says Mr. Lewes, in writing of this period of Goethe's life, still preserved its German character. Eight hundred years of national life were not to be set aside at once, when it pleased the powers at the peace of Westphalia to say that Alsatia should be French. The sympathy of the people was then no doubt entirely with Germany. The most popular paper in Alsace, while Alsace still belonged to France, was the Elsassischer Bote, as German in contents as in title. In Paris it was always the fashion to laugh at the Alsatians as typical of the most ludicrous extreme of pro- vincial. Lorrain-Vilain was a common phrase, and it was a favourite joke to mock at the Stras- bourgeois who spent their time in making pies and drinking beer. The Strasbourgeois resented this ; they resented also the centralization scheme of the Second Empire; Paris was too far for them to take pleasure in its glory ; they were almost envious of it ; Paris seemed to be exalted at the expense of Strasburg. Busch has narrated how Bismarck when he began the war had no desire to annex Alsace- Lorraine. It was to be a neutral border-land. 120 Alsace- Lorraine since 1871. The notion to make it a part of Germany he scouted as merely a scholar's dream. But, ten years before, that dream had been unfolded with considerable force in a lengthy pamphlet 3 anony- mous, but possibly inspired by the Government of Prussia. The pamphlet insisted that it was the solemn duty of the writers of the press and of schoolmasters to inspire the people with a de- sire to recapture the provinces. ' No doubt/ says the pamphleteer, ' it is easier to wait and weep ; you make a tragic grimace, and then feel relieved from doing your duty and your share of the work ; draw the cap of resignation over your eyes, and you will see and hear nothing of Ger- many's disgrace/ This resignation had been, says the unknown author, most disastrous in its con- sequences, and cannot be allowed to endure. When, he asks, will Alsace-Lorraine be ours ? and he answers, c When we are again united. Everything that brings us nearer to unity brings us nearer to the retaking of Alsace-Lorraine/ No doubt, as the victories of 1870 came in faster succession and with greater decisiveness, the old desire waxed stronger. Professor von Treitschke, writing two days before Sedan, spoke of the taking of the provinces as an imperative duty. In the beginning of the war it had seemed only a phantasmagoria, it seemed now that the reward was in the very hands of the victors. In the history he has recently published (1879) he declares that by the annexation in 1870 the Ger- Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 121 mans wiped out the ugly sins of omission their fathers had committed in 1815. Alsace before the war of 1870 had been the scene of bitter party strife between Imperialist and Republican, Protestant and Catholic factions. Matters were strangely confused ; to condemn the rule of Napoleon was of course to be a traitor; to hate the priests was to be a Prussian. A Strasburg Ultramontane journal, in a shrieking protest against a Liberal journal, put the question, ' Why does our contemporary object to the pre- fects of the Empire ? ' and then it went on to supply the answer, ' Perhaps in place of the French prefects it would prefer to see Prussians/ Was there truth in this ? Four years before (1866), when the victories of Prussia over Austria had made France feel uneasy at the prosperity of her neighbour, General Ducrot had reported as follows : ' Numbers of Prussian agents traverse depart- ments near the frontier, especially the district between Moselle and the Vosges. They sound the spirit of the people and bestir themselves among the Protestants, who are numerous there and who are much less French than is generally supposed. These Protestants are the sons and grandsons of the people who in 1815 desired that Alsace should be German again, and sent depu- tations to the enemy's camp to say so. All this should be carefully borne in mind, for it very probably shows the real designs of the enemy. 122 Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. [Curious that M. Ducrot spoke in 1866 of the Germans as the ' enemy/] The Prussians pro- ceeded in the same way in Bohemia and Silesia, three months before hostilities were commenced against Austria/ If one can believe the reports of the Imperial prefects, M. Ducrot's warnings were probably true enough. When the documents of the Second Empire were opened at the Tuileries (among which documents were found reports of the strength of the German forces on the border-land addressed to the Minister of War, but with seals unbroken by him or anyone else!), a singular telegram from the Prefect of the Lower Rhine Department was discovered. It was this : 1 From the Prefect of the Lower Khiiie Department to the Empress Regent. 1 Strasburg, August 9, 1870, 1.15 night. ' The situation in Alsace grows worse every hour. The Protestants make common cause with the Prussians. To defend Strasburg with a few hundred men is impossible. 'I beg your Majesty to send me reinforcements which will restore confidence here and frustrate the designs of Prussia/ M. Schneegans, who quotes this despatch in his admirable work, La Guerre en Alsace, says it was significant of that ' administration per fide ' which called the assistance of the Government of the coup d'etat not against Prussians but against Frenchmen. It is certainly true that, following Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 123 the example of most despotisms, Napoleon III. had never hesitated to call the enemies of his Government betrayers of their country, and in the crisis of 1870 a betrayer of one's country meant of course a man with Prussian sympathies. We shall see soon that the Alsatians, however they may have detested the regime of the Second Em- pire, hated the Prussians as bitterly as the Pari- sians did. But if Paris went to war with a light heart, Alsace did not. She had better knowledge of the strength of Germany; she knew that in the terrible struggle she herself was the stake that would belong to the victor in the fray. The siege of Strasburg commenced on August 10. On the 15th the bombardment began. It continued for four weeks. It was made up of peculiarly painful incidents ; shells struck the organ of the cathedral, the library, the beds of the sick and dying. 'What sympathy had existed in Strasburg for Germany before/ says M. Schneegans, ' now vanished altogether ; the bombardment seemed a piece of cruelty alto- gether unnecessary, and therefore impossible to forgive/ One week before the surrender, a French peasant who spoke German with great fluency had managed to make friends with the besiegers. He had found out that the Prussian fire was weakest between one and two o'clock in the day. At that time, on September 22, he passed through the Prussian lines and plunged into the moat 124 Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. before the French soldiers, who saw him and fired at him continually. He shouted to them to allow him to land and then to arrest him. They, however, continued to fire. Their bullets missed him, and at length he landed, and at once yielding himself prisoner, asked only to be brought before General Uhrich. It was done, and standing before the General in his rough peasant shirt, the prisoner drew from his sleeve an official document. General Uhrich, glancing through it, saw at once that it was genuine. The peasant was no other than M. Valentin, Prefect of the Lower Ehine in 1848, and now again appointed Prefect of the Lower Rhine by the new-born Republic. A children's story relates how the bandage over the eyes of a child who had been operated on for cataract was removed too soon. It was in the night. There came a flash of lightning. The child saw for one moment, and all was dark to it again. The story of Strasburg is not unlike this. After the darkness of the Empire there came for one little moment the ray of freedom. For one moment only. And then the darkness of des- potism spread over the land once more. The Republic could not save the fate of Alsace- Lorraine. I need scarcely relate the history of the surrender of the provinces; a surrender compared to which the payment of the milliards was as nothing. Alsace-Lorraine herself spoke through the voice of M. Keller, an Alsatian deputy, in words of supreme pathos : ' France Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 125 cannot abandon those who will not be separated from her ; we hold forth our hand to you, do not refuse to hold forth yours/ But Prince Bismarck was inexorable, and M. Thiers gave way; to have held out would only have meant in all human probability harder terms after more years of bloodshed. The feeling of the mass of the people as to the change in their nationality was probably not very deep. The infinite sufferings which the war had brought on them had numbed their faculties they could scarcely think of anything more than bread for themselves and their children. There was certainly no ill-feeling to the Germans when the victorious troops entered Strasburg. An English eye-witness has told me how very quickly and apparently cordially the besieged and be- siegers made friends, and even cracked jokes to- gether. The town was of course in the most lamentable confusion. The rapid way in which the Prussians brought something like order into the ruins of the town excited the admiring ap- proval of the Strasbourgeois. Six months after the transference of Alsace- Lorraine to Germany the new provinces were asked to elect municipal officers. It was then that a secret league was formed in Alsace, with a very peculiar policy. This policy was abstention the league tried to persuade the electors not to vote. Sullen and persistent refusal to be con- cerned in any way with politics under the new 126 Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. regime was the line of policy by which the league hoped in time to achieve the aim which had called it into being. That aim was the reunion of the provinces with France, not by force of arms, but by public opinion. The instrument of the league was a journal the Ingue d } Alsace which was printed with the utmost secrecy. The league boasted how the police at Strasburg had orders to search every nook and corner to find the directors, the presses, and the cash-box of the maudite association. The police made every endeavour, there were plenty of domiciliary visits ; houses, cellars, granaries were ransacked, but all in vain. The efforts of the league were successful: according to its own statistics, an average of only one -twentieth of the electors came to the poll. In some communes there were absolutely no voters whatever, a fact which the leaguers of course hailed as a moral victory. The league exists still : the secret has never yet been discovered. For nine years it has continued to print and distribute its bitter and mysterious protests. Through open windows or underneath closed doors, sheets that invisible presses have printed are thrown by unseen hands. People read them in silence and burn them in haste. To be known to be the possessor of the firebrand literature might involve a long term of imprisonment. The league published an account of its work in a volume dated Paris, 1873, which contained Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 127 the complete series of the journal it had issued. It steadily pursued the same policy. At the end of 1871, when the German Government endeavoured to persuade the old magistracy to continue its functions, because that magistracy was cognizant as no one else was of Alsatian laws and customs, it met with almost universal refusals. This was partly, no doubt, owing to the influence of the league, which had no words bitter enough for those who consented to serve under the new masters. Indeed its language about these men was so unmeasured that, in the reprint, asterisks necessarily take the place of many of the original statements. But we can still read how S. (the league gives names in full, but in that we need not follow it) is ' a mixture of false bonhomie and cunning uneducated * * *;' how D. has betrayed his fatherland for greed; how M. was educated by a father, whose misanthropy reached brutality, to love and admire all that was not French ; and so on in varied tirades of virulent denunciation. This league did not represent the view of all Alsace. In the very year 1871 a tract appeared called La Vraie Ligue d' Alsace, signed ' Un Alsa- cien,' which may very possibly have been written by an Alsatian, and not, as its enemies suggested, by some one inspired by Prussia. This tract ad- vanced many arguments against France; de- nounced the ' light heart ' with which Ollivier had begun the war, and the treachery of the 'pret, cinq fois pret ' of Le Bo3uf. It declared 128 Alsace- Lorraine since 1871. that Paris could expect no gratitude from Stras- burg whom she had made no effort to save. Paris noted during the siege of Strasburg that Strasburg had deserved well, but she had not sent a contin- gent of aid. She and the south seemed to have forgotten then that Alsace was a French pro- vince. 'Alsace has not forgotten. She knows that Strasburg does deserve well of France, but France deserves not well of Strasburg. Alsace has not forgotten how Strasburg was always in- sulted by Paris ; how it was called the town of beer and sauerkraut, and its people betes. France has made the Alsatians almost forget that Stras- burg, Colmar,and Miilhausen existed ; she wanted us all to think only of the brilliant Capital of Europe. Shall we forget all this ; and forget how we were abandoned in the hour of peril ? No ! we will not be French again : we will not combat (as the Ligue d' Alsace suggests) the Germanization of our provinces. We will not be Germans, but we will simply remain what we are, Alsatians. Prince Bismarck says he wants to consult Alsace and govern it by its own people. Let us take him at his word. We will not be a battle-field we will be a free province.' The conquerors had fixed a date by which every inhabitant of Alsace-Lorraine was to determine whether he would be Frenchman or German. To adopt either resolution meant to lift up a heavy burden. To be a Frenchman, a Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 129 man must leave his home : he must go, that is, from Alsace-Lorraine, from the new Beichsland, across the borders into France. To be a Ger- man, he must not only accept the new rulers and the new order of things, the German language and German justice ; he must do far more than this: he must serve as a German soldier, and he must serve soon. By September 30 the choice must be made. By October 6 the drum would sound, and the new recruits must present them- selves before the new colours. It was necessary, perhaps, but it was a cruel law. Did not every- one think in those days that a new war between Germany and France might break out before the grass had grown thick over the graves of those who had fallen at Sedan ? Was Alsace not still French in her sympathies ? Had her sons not snatched up the sword as the Marseillaise had sounded in 1870 ? Nay, were there not still in the army of the new Republic hundreds of men whose homes and kindred were in Alsace-Lor- raine ? And how were men to forego the ties of memory and blood, and to swear fealty to a banner which, probably enough, might soon again flaunt defiance to their own ? It was a horrible decision to have to make. There is a story well authenticated and no doubt typical of a hundred others of a man who protested in agony against two of his sons becoming German soldiers. 'I have two sons/ he said, ' in the French army ; are my children 130 Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. to fight with one another ? ' And thus, at all sacri- fices, men determined to leave their birthplace, to go forth from the metamorphosed Alsace to soil that was France, though it was strange. Never did the feeling of nationality show itself more curiously than in that wonderful exodus of the year 1872. Fifty thousand persons, taking the very lowest figures, crossed the boundaries with such of their goods as they could carry with them. Charity came to their aid; from all parts of Europe, from Mexico and elsewhere in America, subscriptions poured in; New York alone sent 40,000 francs; but the misery was horrible never- theless. Every train was crowded, the highways were blocked with wagons, carts, horses, and way- farers ; there were men in every condition of life ; for many had hesitated till the fatal September 30 came and the rigorous Prussian executive allowed them to hesitate no longer. No matter then if a man were old or young, sick or well ; if he stopped in Alsace he paid for his delay by his loss of nationality ; and so they went forth to- gether, old and young, strong and weak. One man fell down on the boundary, just reaching French soil to die upon it. There had been some ambiguity as to the clause which dealt with the nationality of minors. To interpret the ambiguity rested of course with the con- querors, and, as was indeed to be expected, they interpreted it to imply the severest conditions. Minors were to be Germans, and liable to mili- Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 131 tary service unless their parents had crossed the borders to France. The Times, which was at that time highly favourable to Prince Bismarck, acknowledged that the terms of the option were somewhat harsh, though it believed the harshness necessary. But the Liberal papers of the time denounced the measure. The Spectator very properly com- pared the cession of Alsace-Lorraine in 1870 to the cession of the Rhineland in 1814; then the Iloly Alliance had stipulated that six years should pass before there should be a conscription for the Prussian army. The Ligue d' Alsace reproduced in its mystically published paper a translation of this article of the Spectator. The German journals could not refrain from remarking on the mighty exodus, but naturally could see it only from the victors' standpoint. ' Germany sees the long trains of exiles who have turned their backs on her domain and their faces to France sees them, but regrets them not/ Still she could hardly deny the injury that the depopula- tion had done to many towns. ' You have made not peace but desolation/ said the now almost triumphant Frenchmen. The statistics of the emigrants are exceedingly various; by a compari- son of the figures, the most probable estimate seems to make the loss of population sustained by Alsace about 100,000 persons, and that by Lorraine 5,000. This estimate may be con- sidered to be certainly below the mark, but it is 132 Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. impossible to say exactly how much ; with regard to the exodus from Alsace it should be noted that about 50,000 persons departed before the time of the option ; with regard to the individual towns, Miilhausen and Metz suffered most, Col- mar and Strasburg considerably. Miilhausen seems to have lost almost all the richer portion of its inhabitants j the streets are silent, rows of houses are to let, manufactories are closed. In Metz the scene is not very different. Accord- ing to the official census in 1875 the population of Alsace-Lorraine had diminished rather more than one-fifth per cent. ('23 per cent.) from 1871 to 1875. It must be remembered that in that period the other portions of the German Empire, with the sole exception of the district of the two Mecklenburgs and the minute Waldeck, had al- most uniformly increased. In 1874 Alsace-Lorraine was to send deputies to the Reichstag. The candidates were of two parties. There was the party of Autonomists, whose desire was to agitate in the German Parlia- ment for self-government for Alsace-Lorraine, a party represented most ably by M. Schneegans. ' We must be content/ he said, ' to advance little by little/ Then there was the party of Pro- testers, those who desired that Alsace-Lorraine should steadily refuse to share in the least in the councils of Germany, and who thought it base to ask for anything less than that which would never be granted restoration to France. Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 133 The attitude which. Prince Bismarck had as- sumed towards Rome made it obvious which side the Ultramontane interest would take. Alsace being in great part Catholic, and Lorraine all but completely so, it is impossible to over-estimate the influence in these provinces of the clerical party. By that influence the elections were carried almost entirely in favour of the ' Protest- ing ' party, to which four-fifths of the successful candidates belonged. The clerical party wrote of their opponents with that fierceness common to Ultramontane strife. They were heretics, traitors, Germans. The other party deplored the existing condition of the provinces, but agreed with much good sense that as the circumstances were, for the present at least, unalterable, it was the aim of true patriots to make the best of them. Arguing from the standpoint of common sense, the newspaper of the Autonomist party, the Journal d' Alsace, tried to show that the material interest of the poorer classes must not be allowed to suffer, as it inevit- ably would, if that policy of sulky abstention which their opponents the ' Protesters' desired were pursued. The fact of the alliance of the Ultramontanes and protesting party was of course not lost sight of by Prince Bismarck, who indeed affected to believe that the < protestation ' had no other source than Rome. This was by no means the case; 'nothing/ says M. Cohen, 'could be less "clerical" than the advanced Republicanism of 134 Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. Miilhausen or the patriotism of Metz.' But many of the deputies themselves were clerical, clerical in those ample folds of black so hateful to Prussia. The members for Alsace-Lorraine inveighed with equal bitterness against the wrongs done to their homes and to their Church. In 1873 the Bishop of Xancy in his pastoral letters had urged that prayers should be offered for the French recovery of Alsace-Lorraine. Heavy punishment was of course inflicted on those Alsatian priests who obeyed this command. The Bishop himself was of course beyond the power of Germany, but all that diplomacy could effect was done to procure him a severe reprimand from his own Government. A still more curious incident in this struggle with the Ultramontanes was connected with cer- tain miracles. ' There was an overstock of them in France/ says the Bismarckian historian Bulle, ' and so some were transferred to the province (Alsace-Lorraine). There were apparitions of the Virgin, of bleeding hearts and crosses ; . . . . it became necessary at last to check these things by a military occupation of the miracle-bearing toums.' When, on October 16, 1874, the dele- gates of Alsace-Lorraine first took their seats in the Reichstag, they at once assumed a most implacable position ; so implacable, indeed, that it appeared simply ludicrous. They presented a petition which prayed permission to circulate for signature in Alsace-Lorraine a ' round-robin ' Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 135 which, should express the unwillingness of the signers to the annexation of 1871. This was the prologue to a drama that could hardly be thought of as serious. When the Reichstag met, Teutsch, the presenter of the petition, asked permission to address the chamber in French which was re- fused as a point of order he then ('in fluent German/ says Bulle) inveighed against the injury done to the province and the injustice of the an- nexation, and so forth. When he declared that the peace of Frankfort was no peace, the Bishop of Strasburg interrupted, and declared in the name of his co-religionists that he could not in this matter agree with the speaker. From that time the Alsatian deputies were divided, and shortly afterwards a number of them left Berlin before the debate itself had commenced. When the time came for this, the remaining Alsatian deputies complained, first of the persecutions of the Church and the mismanagement of the schools, and then of the law which gives permission, in special circumstances, for domiciliary visits and the seizure of all weapons. Those German deputies who discharged the various offices under the new regime in Alsace-Lorraine answered the various charges, and then Prince Bismarck discussed the whole position of Alsace-Lorraine in very great detail. There were no great hardships done to them, he said, none which could be avoided after a great war ; were not twenty-eight departments of France still in a state of siege, and if Alsace and 136 Alsace- Lorraine since 1871. Lorraine were French now, they would have been placed in that same state of siege. This was no doubt true enough. He desired to see the pro- vinces happy, but still here came all the Bis- marckian grimness their happiness was not exactly the purpose he had borne in mind when he had annexed them to Germany. The Chancellor's speech was greeted with loud applause, and the various resolutions of the Alsatians were thrown out by large majorities, although the powerful Centrum (Ultramontane) party voted with them. Three years later, that is in 1877, there was another election for the Reichstag. The two parties in Alsace-Lorraine again contested the seats with feverish eagerness. The protesting or abstaining party was again numerically ahead of the Autonomists, but with a diminished majority. In Lower Alsace Protestantism is stronger, and the connection with Germany closer, and there the Autonomists returned many of their candi- dates. Lorraine and Upper Alsace remained in the hands of the protesters. The Germanization of the provinces was car- ried on very powerfully by means of education. This, of course, had previously rested entirely in the hands of the Catholic clergy ; from these the Chancellor determined to remove it. There was ground enough for dissatisfaction with the old teachers. To German notions, it was prepos- terous that any one should teach without having Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 137 obtained by examination a certificate for capa- bility in teaching. Of the 606 schoolmistresses employed in Upper Alsace, only three possessed such a certificate. Such a condition of things the Chancellor declined to tolerate. He insisted in the first instance that the schoolmasters and mistresses should become members of some re- cognized German Catholic order, and in the second place, that they should pass an exami- nation (May 14, 1874) . This regulation meant nothing else than forcing almost the whole exist- ing educational staff to resign. Strenuous exer- tions had been made to supersede the old teach- ing agents by persons better qualified. It was necessary to do so, for the work had been greatly increased by the passing in 1871 of a law which made attendance in schools compulsory. Poor as Germany is, she has always been able to find money for her army and her schools. In Alsace- Lorraine the salaries of all teachers were (in the year 1872) raised fifty per cent., and a normal school was founded for future masters and mis- tresses. Education was evidently not to suffer at the hands of the new lords of Alsace-Lorraine. It was this growth of education which the Ger- mans very naturally pointed to with great pride. They maintained that they had done incalculable good to the provinces by fighting for them the Kulturkampf, ridding them of priestly school- masters. In a doggerel pamphlet, written no doubt by order of the Chancellor, and circulated 138 Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. extensively in Alsace-Lorraine, the rhymester points out thus the glories of the fatherland : Tears ago the Trench could fight For liberty and people's right, But nowadays in Germany Reason dwells ; and liberty There makes daily safe advance, Better than in fickle France. Freedom never dwelt there long, For the monks were always strong. In their schools the Jesuits teach, Ignorance the text they preach. In later couplets the author says that as surely as the battle of Sadowa was won by the school- master, the battle of Sedan was lost by ignorance. Was it not a disgrace when French officers did not know the way in their own country ? Such a state of things is past now, for the Germans have given every child the opportunity of excellent education. Literature of this kind, disseminated as widely as that of the Ligue d' Alsace, had no doubt a considerable effect in reconciling the provinces to the new order of things. Five French faculties had been closed at the Uni- versity of Strasburg, now changed into a German Imperial University; it was richly endowed, and a library of 300,000 volumes was presented to it by contributions which came from all parts of the Fatherland. It was some sort of recompense for the destruction of the old library by the bom- bardment of 1870. Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 139 Another point of great interest, in the process of change, is the language. In April, 1871, a de- cree was passed which enjoined that all instruc- tion in the schools was to be in German, except in those districts where French was absolutely the language of the people. In the latter, how- ever, five hours a week were to be apportioned to instruction in the German language. At first French was taught in the German districts, but after 1873 this was discontinued except in schools of a higher grade. In some districts these changes were acceptable, in others they were distasteful, but to the majority of the people they were, probably, not of great importance. In Strasburg itself I noticed in 1874 that persons of all classes spoke both French and German about equally fluently. In many places the Ger- man language preponderated. While Alsace was still a French province, a paper had existed with a German title ; the rhymester whose verses I quoted above extols greatly the advantage to the people of the more extended use of the Ger- man language. A jury in the old days, says the verse, swore in ignorance ; now it knows what it swears, for German, the language of the people, is now the language of justice. It is no secret that writings of this kind are frequently inspired by Prince Bismarck, but the verses are interesting because they show the kind of argument in use. More than this, insincere as the writer probably was, there can be no doubt that among some of 140 Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. the poorer classes the change of flag is not un- popular. The feeling, however, is divided, and the priests, exasperated by the Falk laws, seek to excite the faithful to hatred of Prince Bis- marck. Such, then, has been the history of Alsace- Lorraine since the occupation. What will be the outcome of that history ? Will the provinces remain German, or will the purpose of the Ligue d' Alsace be attained, and the tricolour wave once more over Strasburg and Metz ? What does the last act of Prince Bismarck signify ? Why did he consent to the removal of the seat of Govern- ment of the provinces : why did he allow it to be transferred, that is, from Berlin to Strasburg ? Does this point to the beginning of the end of the German regime ? That the German Government is unpopular in Alsace-Lorraine is true enough, but a return to France may be looked upon as nearly an impossi- bility. In any arrangement following on a future struggle between France and Germany, the wishes of the border-land provinces, if not formally consulted, would, at least, be of some influence ; and Europe would welcome a measure calculated to secure a permanent peace. Such a measure might well be the conversion of Alsace- Lorraine into a neutral border-land. We have seen already how the writer of the Vraie Ligue tf Alsace passionately asserts that his country shall be in the future 'a. free province, not g, Alsace-Lorraine since 1871. 141 battle-field/ We have seen also how Prince Bismarck had early in the war hoped for nothing more than this. The Allgemeine Ze'dung in 1871 spoke of this desire as particularismus, separa- tism, and while it called it a malady, expressed hope it might lead to a love of the Fathcrlaod ; and in so far as an Alsatian patriotism was not French patriotism or direct hatred of Germany, the Chancellor was inclined to support it. Alsa- tian patriotism has now existed a very long time; it existed before the war, when it was assuredly the hatred of the centralization of Paris, and since then it has been kept awake by the centralization of Berlin. It remains to be seen whether it will be removed by the transference to Strasburg of the seat of executive. It is possible, but highly improbable, that this limited concession and others of a similar kind will remove a very deep- seated feeling of angry discontent. It is far more likely that Alsace-Lorraine will one day be formed into a free State, the independence of which will be guaranteed by the Powers. FREEDOM IN GERMANY. 1 To the Editor of The Times. SIR, Germany has just entered upon a new phase of her constitutional history, and to the ordinary Englishman it appears a very unfortunate phase. An Englishman, indeed, who resides in Berlin for the first time, is as much astonished at the nature of the existing regime as at the change that is about to be introduced. The Germans themselves have, since 1848, grown so accustomed to a government which appears to us almost an impossible one, that the new law which has just been signed by the Crown Prince and accepted by the various members of the Bundesrath, creates among them very little excitement. When the King of Prussia, in 1850, swore to rule constitutionally, to allow freedom of meeting, freedom of speech, and freedom of press, previous experience of royal oaths had taught his sub- jects to take what he said cum grano. When the Press Law of 1864 was pressed, Jacoby contented himself with publishing in the form of a pam- phlet the oath of the king and the new law which 1 The Times, October olst, 1878. Freedom in Germany. 143 expressed its violation. This was,, perhaps, the loudest protest which was made with regard to that very great encroachment on liberty. Any one who has followed German history since 18G4, will know how the continual interference with constitutional precepts has since then been the keystone of German home politics. It is often asserted by Germans that since 1870 freedom has been practically assured. Let us see what this freedom really is. There is a freedom of meeting, but not of ex- pression at that meeting. During the recent election at Frankfort-on-the-Main, a candidate inveighed against the present military system ; it meant, he said, the inevitable ruin of Ger- many. He had no sooner made this remark than a Government official who was present (Govern- ment officials, or persons to whom Liberal Anglo- Saxons might give a grosser name, always are present at political meetings) stepped forward and declared that the speaker had insulted the State, and that the meeting must be dissolved . Through all Germany the same restraint was put on Socialist meetings ; and though every conceivable courtesy was shown in the Reichstag to Socialist deputies, every conceivable hindrance was put in the way of Socialist candidates at the elections. In fact, the tactics which were pursued at the last elections in France were imitated to perfection at the recent election in Germany. Since the second attempt on the life of the 144 Freedom in Germany. Emperor William, liberty of speech may be said to have vanished in Germany. Nothing can give any notion of the wanton absurdity in which the pettiness of Government spite has wreaked its revenge on the most insignificant persons. I will mention two examples, and they are but types of two thousand. A cabman at a public-house, a few days after Nobiling's attempt, expressed his opinion that kings and emperors were not much good to anybody ; they cost a deal of money, he said, and none of us are the better for it. This was the substance of a speech which was enough to procure two years'imprisonmentforthespeaker. A policeman in plain clothes pounced upon the cabman, as soon as he had uttered his awful senti- ments, and he is now in prison, and will, as I said, remain there for two years. The second example an Alsatian deputy told me of a few days ago, and he vouched for the truth of it, and gave me permission to publish it. It was as follows : A little time after the attempt of Nobiling, a boy of sixteen said, 'I wish the Emperor had been shot in 1870, then we in Alsace should not now be Germans/ The boy was condemned to im- prisonment for two years and a half. As to the freedom of the press, that has been tempered, as is well known, by the law which pro- vides for the punishment of anyone who 'insults majesty/ No criticism was permissible that dealt with the action of the king or his ministers. De- spite this law, however, it cannot be denied that Freedom in Germany. 145 the press in Germany has hitherto been, on the whole, very unshackled. There have been prose- cutions, and many have resulted in the imprison- ment of the offending editors. Dr. Guido Weisz, for instance, was imprisoned a year ago ; but as a rule the press has been free. Now, however, by the law against the Socialist, the liberty of the press is gone. It is manifest that a very little ingenuity will be able to find, in any article not written from a Bismarckian standpoint, tendencies to upset the existing conditions of society, and this will be enough to bring the newspaper in which the offending article appears to a speedy end. The appeal provided by the law is to a court made up of judges appointed entirely by the central Government and the smaller Govern- ments. Such an appeal will, of course, end, in almost every case, with a confirmation of the de- sires of the Government officials. The law against the Socialists, is, it cannot be denied, very popular in many parts of Germany. The peasant proprietors and the smaller capita- lists of the towns look upon the Socialists as robbers who desire to plunder them of their hardly-earned savings. The law against the Socialists they regard as the protection of them- selves and their goods against the dangerous enemy, and they only regret that its provisions are not even more stringent than they are now. But if once the Socialists should succeed in al- laying the distrust of these classes very powerful 146 Freedom in Germany. classes, I need not say, if they should modify their tenets till they exclude from their pro- gramme the partition of earthly goods, a very different judgment might be passed upon the reactionary law. Much divinity hedges the Emperor at Berlin, and no doubt there is reason enough for his popu- larity. His great military achievements have made his countrymen proud of him ; the simplicity of his life has made them fond of him, and his recent dangers have endeared him to them still more. But personal popularity cannot extend beyond a certain measure. The theory of divine right is published in Germany beyond endurable limits, and the sanctity of the monarch is attri- buted to every hireling of his government. It is treasonable to insult him, and it is highly punishable to insult one of his policemen. An organ-grinder was a short time back sentenced to two months'imprisonment for having addressed a few words of Berlin Billingsgate to a policeman. Children are taught at the German national schools how God gives the State authority : how, indeed, every instrument of government is almost directly inspired by the Supreme Being. One form of the reaction against this teaching has been the spread of atheism, which is very con- siderable in Germany. But there may be other results at no very distant date. By a system of wholesale bribery (the Reptilien fond, or moneys from which the agents of the Government are paid, Freedom in Germany. 147 is common talk in Germany) learning 1 has lent ita help to the powers of reaction, and the professors, liberal in the days of Luden and Gorres, and later in the time of Wirth, are now, almost to a man, the allies of Prince Bismarck. But with their independence their reputation has almost gone, and the writers who will influence German thought of the future will probably come from very different sources. The system of the espionage, the corruption of justice, and suppression of liberty of opinion lasted in France in the days of the Second Empire for nineteen years. In Germany it has virtually prevailed since the decrees of Karlsbad that is to say, nearly sixty years. But the tension is now very great. If the Opposition learns at last from its repeated defeats to sink small differences and to unite to present a determined front against the reactionary spirit, a mighty change may be in store for Germany. The National Liberal party is played out, and Lasker's alliance with Bismarck has probably cut off all chances of his further political importance. But Socialists, Ultramon- tanes, Radicals or Fortschritts-partei and Alsatians may form an opposition of very grave importance. Nor can one say how much later years of discon- tent may weaken the Government, and, lot defeat once overtake the arms of Germany, it is more than possible that the outcry against the all-de- vouring military system an outcry heard now only in nooks and corners may be shouted 148 Freedom in Germany. loudly on every market-place, and that then, as in France after Sedan, the whole Government may be swept away before the at length aroused spirit of freedom. I remain, Sir, Your obedient servant, AN ENGLISH LIBERAL IN BERLIN. BERLIN, October 23rd. FREEDOM IN GERMANY. 1 To the Editor of The Times. SIR, Since the date of my first letter to you the law against the Socialists in Germany has been put into effect. If you will allow me a little more space, I should like to give some account of the manner in which it has been interpreted. I will begin with its working as regards the press. About a dozen newspapers have been suppressed, and about as many more have com- mitted suicide, preferring death by their own hand to execution by the Government. On the first day in which the law came into force a list of thirty-three forbidden works was published, and that list has been daily augmented by an average of six books or pamphlets. Now, in these pro- ceedings, the Executive has displayed most egre- gious stupidity, which is, of course, most unfor- tunate for the Government, for stupidity, as we all know, is a most unpardonable crime. Of that stupidity I will cite the following instances : On the first large Index Expurgatorius stood a 1 The Times, November 28, 1878. 150 Freedom in Germany. French work, Lessagarai/s Histoire dela Commune. The classes against whom the law is chiefly directed are not, with very few exceptions, able to read a word of French, and they would, no doubt, only have known Lessagaray's work in a German translation, which has, indeed, I am told, been widely read. This translation was not on the first forbidden list, and was only included in the prohibited literature one whole week afterwards. Secondly, the Executive has often been unwise enough to give its reasons for suppressing one work or another. These reasons have continually been ludicrous. In declaring a certain song in- terdicted, the song was spoken of as aiming, in words and also in melody, at subverting the exist- ing conditions of society. "Wagner himself would, I imagine, find difficulty in composing or defining a melody which had such revolutionary tendencies. On another occasion the Executive suppressed a history of the plebeian discontent in Rome, ad- ducing arguments for the act not less absurd. This is in no way surprising, for everyone in Berlin knows how splendidly stupid the Prussian police force is, from its humblest to its highest constituent. A short time ago, I was talking to a Conservative deputy who had been one of the framers of the Anti- Socialist Law, and one of its warmest defenders. I asked him why some of the energy of the police was not directed towards suppressing the vast masses of indecent literature offered for sale in the most public thoroughfares Freedom in Germany, 151 and the most brilliant shops of Berlin. He an- swered that the police were really too incapable to be entrusted with such a task. Damaging as this charge is, the opponents of the present regime will have yet graver accusation to make against it when the day of reckoning comes and they are suffered to speak once more, for they will be able to show that the Government is not acting according to its own laws. When Count Eulenburg, the Minister of Home Affairs, was speaking in favour of the Anti-Socialist Law, he explained with great clearness how principles, and not persons, were combated by the measure which he was advocating. Let the Socialists, he said, put forward their opinions in new journals which were not revolutionary in tone, and the law would place no difficulties in their way. In strange contrast with these words was the action of the Executive in regard to the staff of the late Berliner Freie Presse. That newspaper having been sup- pressed, reappeared as the Tagespost, and was again confiscated. Its confiscation meant the ruin of a large number of persons, namely, of those who had shares in the undertaking, and of those who were employed at the press ; and the Freie Presse had over 12,000 regular subscribers. It then appeared (on the 1st of November) as the Berliner Nachrichten. The one existing number of that journal is now before me. It contains no single word which could be interpreted by the utmost in- genuity to imply and aim at subverting the exist- 152 Freedom in Germany. ing conditions of society. Yet the Berliner Nach- richten was also prohibited. My second example of the unlawfulness of which the Executive is now guilty is a recent edict pro- mulgated at Hamburg. There, the police, in their zeal to stop Socialist meetings, have an- nounced that all political meetings whatsoever are forbidden. Now this is a direct violation of the German constitution. A third example may be found in the action of the police towards Socialist deputy Kayser. On his release from prison a few days ago he was forbidden to reside in Dresden in any circumstances whatsoever. One can scarcely gather any reasons for the prohibition, which was conveyed in language of a studiously offensive nature. A fourth example I might quote was the breaking up by the police of a concert simply be- cause some Socialists were among the performers. Perhaps there, however, music was to be per- formed which aimed at subverting the existing conditions of society. There is another charge, too, which will one day inevitably be again brought against the Government. It is that they have pursued a policy which, if wise or unwise, has at all events been dishonest. They once were the secret sup- porters of Socialism. It is useless for Prince Bismarck to represent his communication with the Socialist faction to have consisted of a pleasant chat with Lassalle. It is well known that as early as 1849 the reactionary party made overtures to Freedom in Germany. 153 Carl Marx to write Socialist articles in one of their own newspapers. Marx declined, for he was not willing that Socialist writing should be employed as the Government desired, as a means of diverting the bourgeoisie from liberalism. Nor is it a secret that as late as 1869 a Socialist paper received help from the Government which still hoped to play off the Moderate Opposition by the aid of the extreme faction. These charges, and those which Liebknecht brought against the Government in the recent debates in the Reich- stag, are very grave charges; they have never been answered. In the courteous leader in which you com- mented upon my letter of October 23rd, you spoke of the 'astonishing severity' of the ex- amples of punishment for insulting Majesty which I cited. I fully concur in the justice of the remark, but the examples, I must add, were by no means exceptional. The German newspapers of June and July furnish abundant instances of equal or greater severity; I will quote three only. A number of labourers in Strasburg were sentenced to five months' im- prisonment each because they had sung a song which had been in fashion during the war in 1870, and which spoke, as may well be imagined, unflatteringly of the German princes. An ap- prentice in Berlin was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment for saying that he thought the Em- peror no better than a sergeant, and a woman 154 Freedom in Germany. named Niemeyer was sentenced to four years* imprisonment for expressing regret that Xobiling had aimed so badly. Your leader concludes by expressing a belief that the German Government is secure so long as the German fancies he hears the ' cry across the Yosges ' ringing in his ears. With that opinion I fully coincide, but the ques- tion arises, How long will that bugbear sit upon the Teutonic mind ? Prince Bismarck makes Na- tionalism the keynote of all his arguments, and the worst charge he brought against his bitterest opponent, Sonnemann, was that he was a French- man. But is this feeling of Nationalism not fast fading away ? The early Burschenschaften rested, as you say, on this sentiment ; on the Wartburg Teutomania raged rampant. But the would-be reformers of 1832 and 1833 adopted a different tone ; they spoke, to quote Heine, ' the libe- ralism of France, and uttered words of brotherly greeting to all mankind/ It is remarkable enough that Socialism has already passed through the same changes. The Socialism of Lassalle was German and exclusive ; the Socialism which is now being wrestled with is international and cosmopolitan. The German people will, in time, probably refuse to look upon France as their natural enemy, and it will be seen how Heine, the purpose of whose life was, as he himself said, to teach Germany to care for France, has, indeed, not lived in vain. In common with most Liberals, I look upon Freedom in Germany. 155 most of the teaching of Socialism as unwise, and even pernicious ; but I cannot, therefore, be re- conciled to the manner in which the German Government is contending against these doc- trines. To any one who cares at all for the exis- tence of liberty of expression and thought, the present condition of Germany must be extremely sad, and sadder still is the indifference to it of the large majority of the people. But one has good ground for hoping that this regime, and the sufferance it meets with, cannot be endured for long ; for the regime rests on the spirit of Nationalism, on the glorification of war, on protection, and on narrow religious teaching, and the people submit to the regime because they accept all these as gospel truths. We know that they are the falsehoods of past days, and that cosmopolitanism, the glorification of peace, free trade, and broad church teaching must inevitably displace them at no distant date. Constitutional liberty must come then, if a defeat of the Prussian arms has not brought it about before. I remain. Sir, Your obedient servant, AN ENGLISH LIBERAL IN BERLIN. FREEDOM IX GERMANY. 1 To the Editor of The Times. SIR, Those Germans whose sympathies for Eng- land continue unabated hail every word that helps to remove existing 1 prejudices and mis- understandings, just as they deplore every act that tends to diminish good feeling between the two nations. We have, therefore, felt obliged to you for cautioning your ' English Liberal in Berlin/ in a late leader of yours, from forming too hasty judgments on a country still unknown to him, and on institutions to which it would be unfair to apply a measure taken from English conditions. Your correspondent has, I fear, not sufficiently taken the hint, and so I should like to assure English friends through The Times, that we, the Radical Liberals of 1848 to 1866, the Liberal Conservatives of to-day, retire to rest every evening without the slightest apprehension of finding ourselves either exiled on the morrow or sentenced to a few years' imprisonment. Surely English readers know too much of modern history to take in the astounding fact that a reactionary 1 The Times, December 26th, 1873. Freedom in Germany. 157 movement feebly started at the Karlsbad Con- ference in 1819, has gradually been growing until, in 1878, arbitrary despotism has succeeded in extinguishing the last traces of freedom in Ger- many. They remember how the liberal aspira- tions, coinciding more or less with the national rising against a foreign usurper, Napoleon I., were crushed shortly after the Congress of Vienna by a combination of Austria and the petty tyrants of Germany ; how, notwithstanding Metternich's intrigues, Constitutionalism was introduced in some of the minor States in the period between 1819 and 1831, but in Prussia not until after the revolution of 1848. They know that excesses of the revolutionary party, the fathers of the Com- mune and of present Socialism, were partly the cause and partly the pretext for an ultra -Con- servative reaction which restored a nearly arbi- trary power x to government, and reduced the im- portance of parliaments and the freedom of the individual to a deplorably low pitch under Man- teuffel's ministry. A new era began when our present Emperor became Regent of Prussia in 1857-8, and King on the 2nd of January, 1861. Liberals came into office, but, unfortunately, met with a grievous stumbling-block in the shape of a plan for reorganizing the Prussian army. Will- ing enough they would have been to grant the increased estimates and not to demur at the tremendous tribute exacted from the people by the State in the form of personal military service, 158 Freedom in Germany. if they had been told that Prussia would fulfil her mission, and for the cause of German unity challenge its two most immediate adversaries Denmark and Austria. But, not trusting the Government for sufficient patriotism, pluck, and independence from Austro-Russian influence to make use of the army for the benefit of Germany, they refused to augment the burden weighing already so heavily on the poor taxpayer. This brought Bismarck into office, who promised King William to carry out the army reorganiza- tion, and who had probably made up his mind to drive the King soon into necessity of using the army, not only as a weapon of defence, but of offence. After two successful campaigns he ap- plied, on the 13th of August, 18G6, for a bill of indemnity, made peace with the people, and began to be the de facto head of the National and Liberal parties, whose vigorous opponent he had shown himself for four years and more. Thus constitutional life in Prussia has had its first trials and beginnings from 1847 to 1849, its continuation after what we may call nine years' abeyance, from 1858 to 1862, and a struggle for life and death from 1862 to 1866. Since then, we have had five years under a North German constitution and six under the constitution of the German Empire, with a statesman at the head of affairs whose immense popularity as the contriver of national unity has not quite had the effect of destroying the despotic bias of his nature. Freedom in Germany. 159 In these eighteen years (3-4-5-6) of constitu- tional life we might, no doubt, have made more considerable advance towards complete political enfranchisement had the only true foundation for liberty, local self-government in the English sense of the word, existed. But between 1808, when Baron Stein endowed a town with a municipal franchise, and the years 1872 to 1876, when the first of a series of important laws were passed aiming at autonomy for parishes (Gemeinden\ counties (Kr&ise), and provinces, not a step had been taken towards self-government. On the contrary, universal suffrage was introduced in Germany by Bismarck, a principle which, if not rooted out in time, cannot fail, sooner or later, to prove fatal to self-government and liberty in the sense in which these terms are now understood and valued in England. To be better than a good bureaucratic government, local administra- tion must be in the hands of the best men of the nation, having independent means and a stake in the country. But will such men not prefer a life of ease and intellectual luxury in the capital to an ungrateful drudgery in the country, unless they are compensated both by increased estima- tion and by the feeling of belonging to a ruling class, to those wielding the highest political in- fluence, constituting the props and buttresses of their fatherland and dispensing a certain amount of patronage ? I say, no ! and if squires will refuse to undertake duties without remuneration 160 Freedom in Germany. in a country where the landed gentry is no more preponderant because universal suffrage sends its nominees into parliament, will not the leaders of the masses at the same time insist on turning honorary appointments into salaried offices in order to obtain both local influence and emolu- ments ? Not unless self-government on a some- what aristocratic basis, and less fettered by bureaucratic superintendence than at present, has been fully carried out in every direction, and has struck firm roots, producing on all sides the necessary offshoots of self-reliance and inde- pendence of character, can constitutional liberty in Germany ever become similar to its English model. At the present day nine-tenths of the youth of the country are drilled for fourteen years in the school and in the army, and, may be, for their whole life, if they remain in military service; of the intellect of Germany seven-tenths at least are enticed to join the ranks of the omnipotent bureaucracy, which, one by one, has swallowed up and assimilated to itself the judicial body, physicians, engineers, professors, schoolmasters, railway and telegraph officials, &c., by subjecting them all to a strictly defined and well-devised process of training, to a series of examinations, and by rewarding them by a gradation of rank and titles and decorations. Consequently, the question at issue with us is neither to diminish the prerogatives of the Crown of the Hohenzollern, who have made us a nation, Freedom in Germany. 161 nor to abolish the army, without which we should fall a prey to our neighbours to-morrow ; nor to cavil at a man whose withdrawal from the head of affairs might at this moment signify the victory of papacy over enlightenment, of the syllabus over liberty ; nor, finally, to resent a severe and even rough use of the powers of the law to cut out the cancer of social democracy. What we have to try for is to finish the groundwork laid for local and provincial self-government; to keep our schools free from Jesuitical influences ; to lessen the administrative pressure on our education viz., the over-tasking of the brains and neglect of the physical development of our youth ; to dimi- nish red-tapeism, and especially its abuse of pen and ink ; to teach every man to look to himself and not to the State for aid ; and, above all, to promote goodwill between north and south, east and west, so as to engender everywhere the same all-pervading patriotism which England as well as France possesses as a necessary result of a high culture, and of a community of institutions, historical recollections, and present aims between the component parts of each country. Social democrats may seem rather harshly dealt with. The judges who, influenced by the pre- vailing doctrinal sentimentalism of this age, have been but too long guilty of inflicting minima of a few weeks' prison as penalties on misdemeanours which, eighty years ago, were punishable by death, have at length, roused to indignation by repeated 162 Freedom in Germany. attacks on their Emperor's life, lately often im- posed the maximum admitted by law as penalty on persons publicly insulting Majesty. But they have strictly adhered to the law, and if the law were positively contrary to the sentiment of the coun- try, it is to be supposed an amendment would have been proposed in parliament and carried. Should the police in one or two cases have carried matters with a high hand, there exists a special committee to receive petitions against such abuse, and since the newspaper on my table contains an account of the proceedings of this committee (Reicksbesch- iverde Commission) parliament and the press are at liberty to protest in favour of injured innocence. German Liberals are by no means of opinion that the present treatment of Socialists will prevent a violent outbreak; on the contrary, they con- template with some concern the emeutes or acts of violence which may be the direct consequence of the present repression. But it is too late to remedy the harm that has been done. A large portion of the labouring class has listened to ignorant demagogues, instead of to well-meaning friends. Many were estranged by the selfishness of their employers, the money-making set of the ' Griinderzeit,' and followed the example of their betters in adoring the golden calf. They claim equality in comfort, pleasure, and self-indulgence generally a very natural sequence of the barren egalite of 1789. The Junker and the truly pious at the helm of the State encouraged them, and Freedom in Germany. 163 finally universal suffrage turned their heads and made them believe that constituting the majority of the nation, and yet not being permitted to carry out their projects by legislative means, they were justified in attempting violently to overturn so- ciety. The nation, perceiving the danger, turns, according to ancient habit, to the all-powerful State to preserve her from it ; Government can think of no better means than law and police ; a dissolution offers the electors an opportunity to give parliament an express mandate to put an end to such a volcanic condition of society, and thus Bismarck has very extensive powers granted to him. If he has made a larger use of them than we expected, it is supposed he either really be- lieves in a grave international conspiracy to threaten sovereigns and society, or that he is desirous of provoking an emeute while the army can yet be relied upon to do its duty and put it down. We ought, I suppose, to have perceived sooner that Socialism was growing silently above our heads ; but just as the signs of the Indian Mutiny were not understood in time by your countrymen, so we only realized how much gunpowder had been strewn, and that burning matches were being carried from place to place, when Nobiling hit the Emperor. We are determined to stem the ad- vance of this current, because we not only look upon ' most of the teaching of Socialism as un- wise,' like your late correspondent, but on the 164 Freedom in Germany. whole set of present Socialist theories as void of common sense and as a mere pretext devised by inordinate covetousness for transferring property and power from the present possessors to these lowest in the social scale. We are by no means convinced that this cutting out of the cancer will insure a permanent cure. But we feel confident that our system will, at any rate, support the operation, and, as for our Government using the knife we have placed in their hands for making incisions and wounds right and left on our body, instead of confining themselves to the prescribed surgical operation, they have done nothing lately to deserve such mistrust, and we believe that ' liberty of expression and thought/ if the latter be not communistic, is not endangered in Ger- many. When we shall have overcome the dan- gers from within and without that threaten our new-born unity, we shall be able to allow indivi- dual liberty to expand more and to approach a little closer to the idol of our English and American friends. But, in the meantime, we should be sorry if they took it for granted that our Government was an almost impossible one, and that our professors were fast losing both in- dependence and reputation, or if they were to look upon Lasker as a mere tool of Bismarck, upon the National Liberal party as played out, and upon a defeat of our army as either probable or desirable. If English Liberals condemn our system of govern- ment as ultra-Tory, while English Conservatives Freedom in Germany. 165 cannot divest themselves of a horror against those revolutionary Prussians who destroyed the salutary influence of conservative Austria on European affairs, what are we to do to keep alive a good un- derstanding between those two Protestant powers whom Providence has evidently destined jointly to maintain liberty of thought and conscience in the world ? Present circumstances are rather unto- ward, I must confess ; they oblige us to avoid a rupture with Russia for reasons too evident to be dwelt upon, and thus they give us the appearance of an antagonism to England from which a very considerable part of the nation is free, at all events; as I can prove by pointing to our two best papers, the Kolnische and the Augsburger Allgemeine Zei- tung. Few of us approved England's non-partici- pation in the Berlin Memorandum and in the summons to Turkey to hasten the execution of the Berlin Treaty, and nobody in Germany, I may confidently assert, understands the hesitation of the Liberal party in stopping the advance of Russia on Constantinople and India, either by propitiating her or by fighting her. As to those who would have refrained from hurting Shere Ali's feelings by sending an envoy to his court, we are utterly unable to see the point of their joke, for a joke it must surely be. T. BERLIN, December 15th. FREEDOM IN GERMANY. 1 To the Editor of The Times. SIR, If you could spare me a little space, I should like to make some comment on the letter from your correspondent ' T/ which appeared in The Times on the 26th inst. With most of ' TVs ' facts as regards past history, I have no desire to quarrel. In common with, I dare say, many of your readers, I felt obliged to him for a skilful summary of the story of rebuffs which makes the history of the constitutional struggle in Prussia. But I must beg to dissent from the account he gives of the years 1847-49 a period which, with the sole exception of the short-lived revolutionary triumphs, must be looked upon as a period of re- action, or, rather, of continued despotism. Nor do I understand what he means by the ' excesses of the revolutionary party in 1848.' The real revolutionary party was guilty of no excesses. The barricade building was a necessity thrust upon the people by the capricious tyranny of Frederick William IY. I know that he, when 1 The Times, January 2, 1879. Freedom in Germany. 167 restored to the fulness of his power, spoke of the 'March days' as a time which every right-minded man would long to blot from out the records of his country ; I know that he denounced the men before whose dead bodies he had once pretended to feel bitter regret for bloodshed he himself caused ; but then I know also that this was the same King who wrote to his intimate friend that Liberalism was a disease of the spine. Moderate historians, in relating the history of 1848 and 1849, have told us that the only 'excesses' com- mitted were those committed by the reactionary army (headed by the present Emperor) in sup- pressing the democratic movement. As to the ( March days ' themselves, Frau Buckner has de- scribed in her admirable history, how a joy that was greater than the joy after Sedan then filled the breast of almost every German. Your correspondent has spoken of those ' re- volutionary excesses ' as the parents of the ' pre- sent Socialism.' Is he aware that Socialism itself had then begun to show itself, and how William Marr and others were agitating for a division of worldly goods? Is he aware, too, how at that very time the Government he so warmly defends made overtures to the Socialist party ? Bribes to forsake their doctrine ? Not at all ; the Government offered them money to write Socialist articles so as to frighten the people from Liberalism ; so as to furnish authority with a grand excuse for reactionary measures. Yes, 168 Freedom in Germany. this was the same Government which now coquets with the Liberal party, and receives from that party constant support; the same Government which now finds in Socialism teaching directly opposed to the mandates of the Most High. ' T/ if he lives in Berlin, is probably aware that Schweitzer, wildest of Socialists, received money from the Government as late as 1869 to publish some of those ' poisonous ' papers which Prince Bismarck has suddenly discovered aim at sub- verting society. I can quite believe that 'T.' is in no fear of being apprehended or sentenced to a few years' imprisonment. But I deny that such feeling of security is universal in Berlin. A political litterateur whom I know in Berlin told me, not jokingly, but in very sober earnest, that he feared expulsion from the capital any day, because it might be pretended that his views were dan- gerous. I will not mention his name, because Prince Bismarck reads The Times, and if he were to see my friend's name in this letter, I might refresh his memory in a way I do not at all desire. I will only say that this man is a Radical truly, but no Socialist ; indeed, that he views the Socialist ideal as I do, as impossible and unde- sirable. Nor is he alone in such fear of expulsion. Others with similar sentiments know also that the caprice of a despotism may any day drive them from their homes. Your correspondent may say that expulsion is not imprisonment. Is he right Freedom in Germany. 169 in saying that there is no fear of the latter ? I think not. I know that men are afraid to talk politics in a public conveyance, such as train or omnibus, lest some detective sitting by should report them for expressing some opinion 'in- sulting to Majesty/ and long incarceration should follow conviction for so terrible an offence. A short time ago I read in a German newspaper how some fellow had tried to extort money from two men who had been talking in a trarncar, by threatening to say that he had heard them ex- pressing sympathy for Nobiling. I think this is sufficient to show how far we can credit your correspondent's statement that expression in Germany is free. As to what constitutes 'in- sulting Majesty/ let me remind your readers of what I have before related in your columns, to say that 'the Emperor was no better than a corporal ' was an insult to Majesty punishable with eight months' imprisonment. As to writ- ten ' insults to Majesty ' I shall come to that by- and-by. 1 TV admits that Social Democrats have been * rather harshly dealt with/ It is to be hoped, for the peace of Germany, that they will take the same mild view of long terms of imprisonment, heavy fines, and sudden banishment from their homes. "IV thinks such measures justified by the repeated attacks on the life of the Emperor. He has, so I will presume, persuaded himself into believing that Hodel and Nobiling were the out- 1 70 Freedom in Germany. come of Socialist teaching, but I doubt that he will get any one outside of Berlin to believe this. Hodel, most people know, was a man of weak in- tellect : Nobiling, a person whose vanity reached madness. There are, I have heard on high authority, papers now extant, which prove that Nobiling was bitterly angry with Lord Beacons- field because he refused him the long interview Nobiling asked, to explain to the Premier the true solution of the Eastern Question ; in short, Hodel and Nobiling were, to put it plainly, simply madmen. ( TV may retort that Socialism had driven them mad; but, even granting that, I cannot see in the fact a justification for sup- pressing Socialism by brute force. ' TV would, I suppose, not desire to exterminate all religious teaching because it has often led to madness and suicide. Now, as to the liberty of the press in Germany, your correspondent ' T.' would have us believe that the press is free so long as it expresses no 'communistic' doctrines. But it was only two days before his letter appeared, that we read in your columns how Ultramontane papers had been forbidden in Alsace and Lorraine ; the Government, that is, contrived to stretch the new law into one which gave power to suppress papers containing any doctrines it happened to dislike. Your correspondent, perhaps, thinks that a little tyranny may be necessary in newly- acquired provinces. That is, indeed, the doc- Freedom in Germany. 171 trine which Machiavelli urged in the Prince a few centuries back. But it is not in these provinces only, that the press is not free. If it cannot be attacked elsewhere by so liberal an interpretation of the Socialist law, it can be bullied by the invariable Prussian resource, ' insult to Majesty/ It is not very many weeks since, that the Frank- furter Zeitung contained an amusing fable, which compared Prince Bismarck to a schoolmaster who was perpetually asking for new whips with which to beat the pupils he somehow or other could never manage to keep in order. This fable was adjudged to be ' insult to Majesty/ and a heavy fine followed its publication. Is this what your correspondent understands by liberty of expres- sion ? As to the appeals which the proprietors of a newspaper can make to a Supreme Court if they believe their journal has been unjustly suppressed, a little consideration will show how barren a con- cession such a right really proves to be. For, on the first issue of the Government mandate, the newspaper is suppressed, and much time must elapse before the appeal can be lodged and heard. Meanwhile, the journal in question has vanished from the scene ; its place knows it no more ; its subscribers will probably have forgotten its exis- tence before the Supreme Court has determined its innocence or its guilt. The fact which every man who owns a newspaper in Germany has to face is this, ' If I do not avoid saying in my paper anything which is very disagreeable to the 1 72 Freedom in Germany. existing Government, the Government can ruin me, and probably will.' To what a condition of servility this reduces the press every one can easily imagine. 'TV thinks it possible that Prince Bismarck is now so cruelly oppressing the Socialist because he is desirous of provoking an emeute while the army can yet be relied upon to put it down. Knowing that it was by the help of Prince Bismarck that Socialism grew to its pre- sent dimensions, I can quite believe him capable of so tortuous a policy as your correspondent sug- gests. But it is possible that the Socialists are wise enough to play a waiting game. It is more than probable that the teaching of Socialism teaching which, I repeat, I condemn as heartily as ' TV does is daily gaining stronger and stronger hold on the German army. Early in the sixteenth century, the Swiss soldiers in the employ of Ludovico the Moor refused to fight against their compatriots who marched under the banner of Louis XII. of France. It is not im- possible that late in the nineteenth century the Socialists in the German army may refuse to fight against compatriot Socialists out of it; WrangeFs old motto, ' soldiers are the only cure for democracy/ may be found at last to be false. Then all Germany may wish that her Government had followed the English Government in the mode of dealing with men who hold strange opinions ; that is, to allow them to express them as often as they please, feeling certain that the Freedom in Germany. 173 people at large, though they may listen for a while to any wild nonsense, will, in the end, infallibly recognize the difference between truth and falsehood, between practical schemes for alle- viating distress and Utopian ideals and quack remedies. As far as I know there is no ' misunderstand- ing' between England and Germany, though some ' prejudice ' may soon exist if Prince Bis- marck can again defy his parliament and carry his protective measures. Those of us who have read Herr Busch's diary are well aware that the Chancellor is no friend to England ; he has never forgiven us for having refused the ' benevolent neutrality' Prussia asked us to assume in the war of 1870. We know also that Prince Bismarck and the Emperor of Germany ego et rex meus are warm friends of the court of Russia; but we know, too, there would be little fear that Ger- many could injure us if we were to find ourselves at war with Russia. Count Moltke has told his countrymen that they must guard for half a cen- tury the land they gained in half a year, and we know that France and Austria are ready to avenge, whenever opportunity presents itself, their defeats in 1866 and 1870. And, above all, we have no distrust of Germany, because we do not consider her as one and the same with her Chancellor. It is, indeed, not because we dislike Germany, but because we care for her, that we desire for her the same liberty that we ourselves enjoy. 174 Freedom in Germany. Your correspondent has strangely misunderstood me if he thinks I look upon a defeat of the Ger- man arms as desirable. All that I said was a defeat of the Prussian arms would probably ex- terminate despotism in Germany, just as a similar defeat exterminated despotism in France. Then, indeed, such a defeat would be the salvation of Germany, just as the day of Sedan was the day of regeneration of France. Why should an English- man wish ill to Germany ? We are too grateful to her to be able to wish her aught but good. She has given us all that is best in thought, in knowledge, in poetry, and in music. Her philo- sophers, her historians, her poets, and her mu- sicians have made us feel that cosmopolitanism which Prince Bismarck so cordially detests ; we have nothing but sympathy for Germans, kinsmen of our own and the countrymen of Kant and Hegel, Mommsen and Eanke, Goethe and Heine, Beetho- ven and Mozart; we wish them a share of that liberty which we value as our dearest possession, which we know has made us, above all other things, respected among the nations. And it is much for Englishmen to think that, though many Germans, like your correspondent ' T/ not only tolerate the new regime of despotism, but even exult in it, there are yet many others who still cherish hopes of freedom. I cannot do better than conclude this letter by quoting a passage from one of the greatest authors living in Ger- many, written before this strange despotism was Freedom in Germany. 175 inaugurated (I will not mention the name of the author, lest his works, too, might be suppressed, though he is no Socialist, and they contain no communistic teaching) : ' We must work and toil in the weary commonplace labour of every day, for tyranny never sleeps. We must labour and never rest, so that the night may not enfold us again .... that long night of long disgrace, from which the thunder of revolution delivers us at last, and brings us with the blood-red morn- ing cloud to freedom and to light/ These words are found in a novel which is rightly considered a German classic, and which is very widely read, although f TV doubtless dis- approves it. Not being at present in Berlin, I cannot use the signature I employed in the letters you were good enough to insert before. Accord- ingly, I sign the present letter with my own name. Your obedient servant, LEONARD A. MONTEPIOEE. COLDEAST, SOUTHAMPTON, Dec&mbev 29th, 1878. LITERATURE. HEINE IX RELATION TO RELIGION AND POLITICS. 1 THERE has been much difficulty in assigning to Heine a nationality. Does he belong most to Germany, to France, or to Judgea ? Born in Dus- seldorf of Jewish parents, he passed the first part of his life in the Vaterland, and most of his later years in Paris. He understood the genius of all three peoples ; he loved them all, and he mocked them all. With all of them he has claimed kin- ship ; and while he has vilified them one by one, not as a mere outstander, but as a foe, he has at other times upbraided or praised them in patriot tones, and extolled their greatness in his song. Some difficulty has been felt also in fixing his place as a writer. What is he, poet or satirist ? ' I have/ says Heine, ' God forgive me, tried every sort of thing in literature/ and he goes on to an enumeration as detailed as that which Polonius gives of the players' capabilities. In England he is known almost only as a poet. Most persons have read the Such der Lieder 1 Fortnightly Review, September, 1877. 1 80 Heine in Relation to dainty as Horace, subtle as Shakespeare either in the original German or in some one of the numerous translations. In Germany his prose works, especially the Reisebilder, excited as much admiration as any of his verse, and are now read almost as widely. No translation of any of Heine's prose works has, however, as far as I know, ever been published in England, and very few readers in this country have read more of them than such portions as relate to Heine's own life. Yet there is in his prose much of that fascina- tion which makes his verse absolutely unlike that of any other poet. It is the blending weird and audacious of grave and gay. It is this which has enchanted many of his readers and incensed as many more. He leaps from sarcasm to smiles, or to tears almost womanly in their gentleness, and then flies back to mockery again. Words with which he described one of his feminine cha- racters give a very good notion of himself: ' A hot volcano of enthusiasm, over which there would fall occasionally a snow-avalanche of laughter/ In his dealings with the most serious subjects it is always the same, the smile will come. It is this that has earned him the reproach so often laid at his door, that he was a mere scoffer. But his smile is the smile of a man, not of Mephistopheles; and I shall try to show how tenderly he felt for what he had once loved, and how gravely and wisely he could write of weighty things. Religion and Politics. 181 There was nothing that he abandoned more utterly than Judaism, and yet nothing that he loved better. He became a Christian, as every one knows, against his better self, to qualify for preferment which he never obtained. He had never believed in the doctrines of Judaism, but he had loved its exquisite customs, and he ceased not to speak of them with reverent affection. True that he once said of Judaism that it was not a religion but a misfortune ; true that he laughs loudly at the unwashed ugliness and the gorgeous rainbow clothing of many of the chosen people of his time. But in his Story of the Rabbi of Ba- charach (a fragment only), there is a glowing and sympathetic description of the celebration of the incoming Passover, when the family affections are drawn more closely together by the celebration of the God-fraught fates of ancestors in ancient story, when gentle and kind hospitality is offered to the stranger by those who remember how they too are but sojourners in a foreign land. There is a poem in which he describes how the money- getting, grovelling, animal Jew becomes tender and human as he seta his house in order for the Sabbath as for a princess at whose good coming all should bear the appearance of a joyful holiday. As a poet he could hardly fail to be touched by these. But it was not only because of their beauty that they appealed to him. These obser- vances he commended because they were family observances, and Heine held that it was the pro- 182 Heine in Relation to vince of religion to cherish them. He turns again and again to the religion of the Greeks, and speaks of it as his ideal of what religion should be 'holy stories and the guarding of memories and mysteries ancestors had taught/ The Jewish religion is more than all others a family religion. At the greater holidays the members of a family invariably assemble ; at the incoming of the Sabbath or of the Passover, at the Feast of Booths, and at the end of the Fast, family greetings are a sine qua non. Thus those festivals have a value quite apart from any re- ligious meaning that may be attached to them, and it was in this, its family character, that the Jewish creed was praised by Heine. Nor did he fail to see the gentle beauty of that creed most apart from Judaism the Roman Catholic Church. In an exquisite poem, called The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar, he describes how the Virgin, with mercy and wisdom, answered the prayer of a mother whose heart-broken son death alone could heal. In this poem is a sort of refrain, ' Gelobt seiest du Marie,' which is used with all tenderness, and the whole might well have been written by the most faithful believer. But why did Heine assume at other times, in verse and in prose, his well-known aggressive attitude to religion ? In the first place, to use his own words, because of his * affection for rea- son/ Reason, he declares, has been the passion inalheureuse of his life, and in his happiest Religion and Politics. 183 manner he explains that ' just as Solomon, King of the Jews, exalted in his song the Church of Christ, and pictured her as a dark-eyed rapturous maiden, so that the Jews might not guess his true intent, so have I in countless songs glorified Reason the full contrary of the Church of Christ/ With Eeason blazoned on his shield, Heine tilts boldly at many of the more extravagant teachings of some revealed religions notably at the Trinity in Unity, and at the hell where stupid devils can ' make no exception ' in the case of Socrates, though he did live and die in the cause of justice and truth, and where by pouring cold water on roasting Jews the merry imps prove to them that baptism is a truly refreshing thing. Judaism makes fewer demands on credulity than Christianity does. The Trinity and the Re- surrection of the Body the two largest stum- bling-blocks, perhaps, in the way of the would-be believer in Christianity Judaism, of course, does not assert. It has occasionally been made the boast of Judaism that a belief in the Divine Unity is the sole necessary article of its creed, and there is a well-known story of a rabbi who declared that the sentence, ( Love your neighbour as yourself/ summed up the whole law, the rest being merely commentary. But the creed that has been usually taught from the pulpits of our synagogues is one much more easy to attack. It has, for instance, included among the ' holy books/ at least, the Book of Joshua, which represents the God of in- 184 Heine in Relation to finite mercy as the instigator of wholesale and de- testable massacre ; and it has often thrown a halo of sanctity round the entire array of extraordinary commands which the Talmud founds on its own extraordinary expositions of the Mosaic code. One can understand, then, why it was that Reason, ' the maiden pale and chill/ bade Heine first doubt and then deny. He asks of what value are such and such writings, and what authority attaches to their commands. No one can attempt to give him a satisfactory answer, for orthodoxy and free- thought cannot have the same stand-point, and so no reply that one can make will satisfy the other. In time he himself answers his own questions by determining that anthropomorphism is a thing apart from the spiritual sanctity of religion, and that dogma is the cancer of religion and not the armour that hedges it about. But Heine's fiercer attacks on the orthodox are not levelled against them because of the demands they make on credulity. The bitterest reproach which he lays at their doors is the aggressive atti- tude they assume towards reason and towards those whose opinions, as unreasonable as their own, are founded on other traditions, and conse- quently not identical with theirs. He represents himself as holding an argument with one Mathilde (of course this is not to be mistaken for the real Mathilde, Heine's wife), a lady who insisted on scoffing at religion. Heine rebuked her, saying he liked no religion-haters. Fair women without Religion and Politics. 185 religion, he added, were like flowers without scent, like rigid, frigid tulips, who, could they but speak, would explain to us how naturally they developed from the original onion. Then Ma- thilde, in self-defence, told him a story of her childhood. Her mamma had explained to her that the old moons were chopped up in order to make stars of them ; a little friend of hers had learnt from her grandmother that the old moons were eaten as melons in hell. They came to blows about the question of the truth of these explana- tions ; for Mathilde was sure her mother was right, and her friend was as confident in the excellence of her grandmother's theory. Then a little boy who had learnt mathematics ran up to them. He separated the combatants, and loftily remarked that the arguments of both were very silly. He proceeded to give a scientific exposition of the phases of the moon. Both little girls now grew angrier than before, and they joined their strengths to thrash the young mathematician. So by the old plan of putting one's own argument into the mouth of another, and taking oneself the attitude which a moderate opponent might as- sume, Heine explains two of his points of variance with religion. First, it proselytizes ; secondly, it casts the first stone at science and reason. - Judaism, as far as I am aware, has never been guilty of assuming towards science an attitude of execration. Nor can Judaism be charged with proselytizing, from which it has at all times dis- 186 Heine in Relation to tinctly held aloof. Judaism has never spoken of heresy outside its own fold. ' There are no infidels among the nations/ says the Talmud. 1 But Heine attacks Judaism on the strangest ground. He accuses it of being the originator of proselytizing in so far as it was the parent of Christianity. f A Greek/ he says, ' would have thought it an abomi- nation to force any one by oppression or by cun- ning to give up the religion of his birth and to adopt a new one in its stead. But a people came forth from Egypt, the home of priests and of crocodiles, and it brought with it a positive religion. . . . Thence arose proselytizing, that plague of humanity ; thence arose compulsory creeds, and all those loathsome holy things that have cost mankind so much bloodshed and so many bitter tears/ In considering his favourite ideal, the Greek mode of religion, Heine asked himself this ques- tion: Would it have been possible or desirable for mankind to have had always a religion and a wor- ship akin to the Greek, and no other ? It was pitiful enough that when the gods were assembled together, feasting and singing in utter merriment, a poor bleeding Jew should have come along with a crown of thorns on his brow and a heavy cross of wood on his shoulder, and that he should have thrown the cross down on the banquet-table with 1 Tractate Cholin folio 13. I am informed by the Rev. A. L. Green that this passage is based on the Mischna, date about A.D. 120-160. Religion and Politics. 187 a crash so terrible that the gods grew paler and paler, until at last they faded away into darkness. Yes, he says, this was tragical enough, for the new religion was one that yielded no joy, it yielded comfort only. It was a mournful religion, blood-stained, and fit for sinners alone. But he admits that it was necessary, ' necessary for hu- manity that was crushed and suffering. The gods of olden days knew nothing of woe ; poor man in his anguish could not turn his eyes to them for help no one ever loved them with all his heart. For one must suffer to gain such love as that. Pity is the final consummation of love, perhaps love itself: so Christ is the most loved of all the gods, especially by women.' He thus, then, ex- plains the raison d'etre and the value of Chris- tianity. ' To see one's God suffering makes one bear one's own suffering more readily ;' the suf- fering of men made a religion necessary which represented a suffering God, and the continuance of human suffering gave to that religion, with its indubitable power of consolation, a claim to the gratitude of mankind. There was, however, a feature of religion common to Judaism and Christianity which Heine detested. That feature was public worship, with its necessary concomitant, a paid clergy. Pro- bably many persons of all creeds have joined him in doubts as to the real value of public worship. He granted that it gives some persons periods of spiritual rapture, but does that, he urged, com- 188 Heine in Relation to pensate for the disgust with which tedious services inspire many others for all that is connected with religion, and for the premium that it offers to all sorts of hypocrisy ? And he seems to have an- swered the question by a pretty outspoken nega- tive. Heine hated all the clergy rabbi, priest, and Protestant clergyman. He preferred, he once said, 'the fierce hell-threatening priest to the molly-coddle homoeopathic soul-doctor who pours the thousandth part of a pint of reason into a gallon of morals, and sends people to sleep with it on Sundays/ ' The pfaffen,' he says elsewhere (pfaffe is a sort of generic and contemptuous term for any sort of clergyman) , ' fear God less than other men do they use him for their own purposes. Like showmen at a fair, they exhibit God for money. They extol him with absurd panegyrics, blow a trumpet to glorify him, wear a smart uniform in his honour, and all the time they despise in their heart the poor, credulous, staring mob, and ridicule the creature they lauded so highly. He is tedious to them, for they see him every day. . . . Will God long suffer the priests to exhibit a monster in lieu of him, and to earn money by it ?' Heine contrasts, as many of us have done, the proud State- supported Church of our own time with Christianity as it appeared in its early his- tory. ' How lovely was the Christianity of the first centuries the Christianity that was like its Divine Founder in the heroism of its suffering ! It Religion and Politics. 189 was the exquisite legend of the secret God who wandered under the palms of Palestine in the guise of a fair youth, and preached the love of humanity, liberty, and equality the creed of the greatest thinkers of later days the creed that came to us from France to be the Bible of our own time/ ' I like Christ best of all the gods/ he says elsewhere, ' not because he is a legitimate God, whose father ruled the world since time im- mortal ; but because he, born as he was Dauphin of Heaven, loves no courtly ceremony, and is a democrat at heart ... a bon dieu citoycn.' ' Look at that religion/ he continues, ' Christ's religion, and then look at the Christianities set up as State religions in different countries the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, for instance, or that Catholicism without poetry, the High Church of England hollow, miserable skeleton that it is, lacking all life and vigour. Religion is injured by monopoly just as trade is. Free competition and nothing else can make faiths strong, and po- litical equality among creeds free trade, so to speak, among the gods will make religions glo- rious as heretofore/ ' Religion can never sink so low as when she is elevated to be a State re- ligion. Her innocence vanishes she becomes as arrogant as a declared mistress/ ' It is not the altar/ he says, ' which I hate, I hate the snakes that lurk beneath it, smiling sweetly as flowers while they poison the very springs of life. . . . It is because I am a friend of religion and a friend 1 90 Heine in Relation to of the Church that I loathe that abortion called the State-Religion, that monster born of the in- trigue between temporal and spiritual power/ Piercing outcries of this kind, justified, as it seems to us, by facts but too bitter not to be misunderstood, have probably gone far to earn for Heine the reproach with which he has com- monly been covered. ' "Who was Heine ? ' a child of Mr. Kingsley asked him. ' A wicked man/ was his only answer. 1 Yet Heine does not merit such blame from a man of Kingsley's breadth of view. We have seen how well Heine knew the value of the family tie, and how he sought to cherish all such ritual as would strengthen it, pro- vided that observing such ritual was considered as a privilege for those to enjoy who could do so, and not as a law to be imposed upon all, however much they detested obedience thereto. Such ritual and such observance seemed to him part of religion, and so far he was on the side of religion. Those other things so often associated with the name of religion he emphatically condemned exclusiveness, coercion, and the alliance of Church and State. And Heine was no utter denier. He clung to a belief in the existence of a spiritual element, the existence of the Being Faust spoke of in those wonderful lines ' Feel'st not thronging To head and heart the force, 1 Life of Charles Kingsley, vol. i. p. 224. Religion and Politics. 191 Still weaving its eternal secret, Invisible, visible round thy life ! Vast as it is, fill with that force thy heart, And when thou in the feeling wholly blessed art, Call it then what thou wilt, Call it Bliss! Heart! Love! God!' 1 ' I may not/ says Heine, ' be over- partial to an- thropomorphism, but I believe in the glory of God/ His is that great creed which asserts the existence of a Divine and Benevolent Element, and the possibility of the improvement of man ; and which does not deny that the Divine Spirit may have rested on men in the past, but does deny that it rested only on a chosen few of one particular race and at one particular time. The creed of Heine rested chiefly on the phi- losophy of his fellow- Jew, Spinoza, whose tenets, Heine said, were a distinct landmark in the his- tory of religion. This he explained in an account of the course of religious thought in Germany, first published in the Revue des deux Mondes. It is a vigorous sketch, brilliant and sympathetic in tone. The value historically is, of course, small ; it is, indeed, the work of a poet rather than of an historian. But its interest is very great, for it shows how Heine connected together the succes- sive phases of religious thought to lead up to the creed which seemed to him the logical outline of the past, and the true and beneficent belief for the present generation of man. 1 Bayard Taylor's translation. 192 Heine in Relation to The doctrine of Christianity, says Heine, was originally this. There are two principles one good and one evil. One is Christ and one is Satan. The body is Satan's, the soul is Christ's. All visible creation is fundamentally evil ; Satan uses it to lure us on to destruction. The right aim of life is to forego all bodily pleasures to mortify the body so that our soul may the better arise to the brilliant Heaven the glorious king- dom of Christ. Elsewhere he points out how this teaching was beneficial to Europe : it was ' a wholesome reaction to the horrible, colossal mate- rialism that spread abroad in the Roman empire, and threatened to destroy all spiritual glory. The flesh had grown so insolent in the old Roman world that the discipline of Christianity came to it as a necessary chastisement/ But in his sketch of the history of religion he goes on to quote with a little malice a story which he declares is most characteristic of the final outcome of this anti-carnal teaching. The story is the following: A number of priests in the year 1433, at the time of the Council of Basle, were walking about in a wood discussing theology. A nightingale began to sing. They grew silent and listened, enchanted, to the exquisite music. Then one of them began to think that this was an attempt of the Evil One an attempt to tear them from their righteous work to self-gratification. So he began to exorcise the nightingale. ' Adjuro te per eum,' he began, and the bird said, ' Yes, I am an evil Religion and Politics. 193 spirit' and flew away. And all who had lis- tened to its song fell sick that day, and they died. With this, says Heine, contrast the pantheism that had been the national belief of Europe, and especially of Northern Europe. That creed saw a godhead in every tree a divine essence in every element. Christianity inverted this. Chris- tianity said, ' Nature is permeated not with God but with the Devil/ The first great change was the Eeformation. He contrasts very strikingly the Reformation in Germany and the Eeformation in France Luther with Voltaire, that is to say, not with Calvin, for Voltaire he considers as the French equivalent to Luther. In Germany the Reformation was the assertion of the spirit in- terest against the flesh, for the spirit was de jure in power, the flesh de facto, and against this state of things the spirit interest protested. In France it was different. Sensualism there began the war, feeling that it reigned de facto, and wishing to be acknowledged de jure; and its weapons were chiefly satire and abuse. That Heine wrote most sympathetically of Lu- ther is not surprising. Luther, the poet, and the assertor of, at least, a kind of freedom, was much to Heine. ' Luther/ says Heine, * was a complete man, in whom body and soul were not parted. He was full of the glory of God, and could lose himself in pure spirituality; but he knew the excellencies of this world, and he could care for o 194 Heine in Relation to them/ And then Heine quotes joyfully Luther's own merry couplet 1 Who loves not woman, wine, and song, A fool remains his whole life long.' With Luther, Heine said, religion became Ju- daic and deistic. Miracles vanished. The new creeds could boast of one only, viz. the payment of St. Simon's tailor's bill by his pupils ten years after St. Simon himself had died. All teaching, said Luther, must rest on the Bible or on reason. He passes from theologians to philosophers, with the remark that German philosophy is the fruit of the Reformation. Elsewhere he asserts that German philosophy, being the daughter of the Protestant Church, owes her a certain filial piety. Then he comes to Spinoza, whose teaching he so sums up: There is only one Essence, and that is God. This Entity is infinite and absolute. All finite entities are derived from and contained in this one. The infinite Entity is revealed in thought and in space, and these are the two at- tributes of God. There may be more, but we know them not. Non dico me deum omnino cog- noscere, sed me qiicudam ejits attributa ; non autcm omnia, neque maximam intelligere partem. ( Only ignorance and malice/ says Heine, ' could call this teaching atheistical. No one has spoken of God more sublimely than Spinoza. He denies man rather than God ; all finite things are to him but a part of the Infinite Entity ; the hu- man mind is only a ray of the infinite thought; the Religion and Politics. 195 human body a mere atom of the infinite space. God is the cause of both of spirits and of bodies natura naturans.' Heine distinguishes this from deism, though he maintains that both assert alike the Divine Unity. How emphatically all this proclaims the Jew in Heine ; how it reminds one of the phrase the Jew learns from his mother's lips and murmurs on his death-bed, the Shemah Israel ' Hear, Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is One.' Still Heine does not throw in his lot with the general Jewish creed. ' The Jews/ he says, ' represent God as a tyrant thunder-clad ; the Christians as a loving father; the God of the Deist is above the world and rules it from on high. But the God of pantheism is in the world, for pantheism identifies God and the world.' Heine's creed, much as it changed through his life, had always pointed to a vast inclusive belief of this kind. Once it had appeared to him that Hellenism was the direct contrary of Judaism and Christianity. I have already quoted a pas- sage where he extols the privacy and the domestic nature of the Greek creed and worship, and con- trasts them with the intrusive proselytizing of the later beliefs. Elsewhere he declares that the Greek worship was the worship of the beautiful, while the Christian Church opposed all beauty, calling it devil-born. And with enthusiasm Heine asserted his own allegiance to the Greeks. Nor could he well as a poet do otherwise. Yet we have seen how he saw all this while the beauty 196 Heine in Relation to of Judaism and of Christianity, and even showed in his song what there was in them that was lovely. But in his Confessions, written from his sick- bed in Paris, he declares that he has learnt at last that, the Jews were after all greater than the Greeks ' the Jews were men, the Greeks were always youths/ He did not, however, like a vul- gar convert, attack his old allies. For that beauty, which the Greek creed set forth as the ideal for all endeavour, he learnt to reconcile with that which he now appreciated in all its fulness the spiritual essence of religion. Beauty he felt was a form merely, in which the Divine Being made himself manifest. Just as David had sung that the heavens declared the glory of God, so it appeared to Heine that there rested in all things the Divine Spirit the Ruacli Hakadoscli of Hebrew phrase. This, then, was the creed of Heine : There is a Divine Being, and He is pre- sent in all things. But this must, of course, be construed differently from the meaning the words would bear in the mouth of a believer in revealed religion. Further, he insisted on the necessity and beauty of maintaining the family tie, and re- cognized the value of the feasts and festivals of religion, although he denied that Divine inspira- tion belonged exclusively to any one book. With reference to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, Heine, as far as I am aware, enunciated DO precise belief. Religion and Politics . 197 Heine's literary and political opinions were no doubt the result of independent thought. But in one remarkable passage he shows that, holding the religious views that he did, he could hold no others in politics. ' God is manifest in plants that pass unconsciously their cosmic magnetic lives in animals that are more or less conscious of their existence in their sensual dream-lives. But God is most gloriously inanifested in man .... and in man divinity attains again to self- consciousness and by man manifests itself. This is done not by one man but by the community of mankind. Every man is only a part of the Divine Universe ; all men together compose it and represent it in conception and in reality. The political revolution that rests on the principle of the French Revolution will find no enemies in the ranks of the pantheists. They are its allies, but their convictions have come to them in an- other way they are grounded on religious doc- trine. We demand the material well-being of man, the material happiness of the people, not because we, like mere materialists, despise the spirit, but because we know that the divinity of man is revealed also in his bodily substance, and that misery destroys the body, which is the pic- ture of God, and when the body is destroyed the mind too will perish. St. Just's great dictum, which was the watchword of the Revolution, " Le pain est le droit du peuple," we read thus, " Le pain est le droit divin de I'homme" ' 198 Heine in Relation to Heine's admirable sense of humour showed him always both sides of the argument. Just as in one of his poems the romance and the absur- dity of a sea voyage are pictured in neighbouring verses, so in the case of republicanism and the rights of the many he saw the way in which his ideal might be wrecked. He feels that the danger will come as usual from the indiscreetness of foolish friends or the lies of false foes. ' The court lackeys of the people praise its excellencies and virtues unceasingly; they commend its beauty, its virtues, and its intelligence. But the masses are ugly, and will be ugly, till you give them the wherewithal to wash and to be clean. The masses are wicked, but their wickedness is the outcome of hunger; give them bread to eat and they will smile and be gracious like their rulers. The masses are stupid ; they love the man who speaks or shouts to them in the vile jargon of their own passions, and hate the honest man who talks to them the language of reason that they may grow wiser and nobler. This is the result of ignorance, and ignorance we must uproot by free schools for the people/ There is another noteworthy feature in the passage I have quoted. Heine speaks not of anarchy, but of the sovereignty of the people. He felt that the two things were in no way iden- tical. He desired, indeed, that the power of the people should be as strongly exercised as the power of a ruler. He knew the advantages of a Religion and Politics. 199 government under a strong ruler, and to his poetic mind there appeared a fair vision of the people, many, yet one, bearing 1 a sceptre and crown. Now he told them that is, in the year 1830 'they were in prison, as Charles V, once was in Tyrol. To Charles came his jester, with news that the time of his delivery from prison was at hand. The jester had torn the bells from his cap it was now the red cap of liberty, and nothing else. When his King had regained his liberty the jester would make merry again. ' Oh, German Vaterland ! ' says the poet, ' oh, German people ! I am your jester. I, the man whose real office was but your amusement, I come to you in your prison, in the hour of your need ; for thou, oh my people ! art the true emperor, the true lord of the land ; thy will is sovereign, mightier than the I'd est noire plaisir, which rests on right divine.' Dcnn du, o mein VoJk ! bist Kaiser ! Kaiser I The word was to him always enwrapped with a mystic halo of fascination. It was associated in his miiid with the name of the great hero-king, Napoleon I. Heine had sung of Napoleon ; he felt his greatness and the deep tragedy of his exile. When in the Reisebilder the scene comes to the field of Marengo, he falls into a rhapsody about the poor emperor who woke at St. Helena out of the dream in which he had pictured himself lord of the world. ' We too/ says Heine, ' have now awakened, and sorrowful are the reflections wo make in the sadness of our sobriety. We think 200 Heine in Relation to that the glory of war is out of date .... and that Napoleon was perhaps the last of the con- querors/ Then he goes on to show how, when the people is everywhere Kaiser, the feeling of nationality will decline, and then wars will cease. Elsewhere 1 he attributes the decline of nation- ality to Vernunft, Reason, the maiden pale and chill. 'There are no nations in Europe now; there are only two factions. One is called Aris- tocracy : it thinks itself privileged by birth, and monopolizes all the glories of the commonalty. The other faction is called Democracy : it vindi- cates the rights of man, and in the name of Rea- son demands the destruction of the privileges of birth. . . . This faction is the faction of heaven, the eternal home of Reason. How ominous the word " Reason " must be to you aristocrats ! As ominous as to Reason's old antagonists, the clergy, who became your allies in the hour of your peril. And Reason will make an end of your power and of theirs/ Here the change is asserted with the audacity of a journalist ; in the Reisebilder it is predicted with the passion of a poet. ' There seems to be a change coming ; things spiritual rather than material will be the subjects of future controversy ; the history of the world is to be a history of master spirits, not of master robbers as heretofore. The feeling of nationality, with the vanity and the bigotry that belong to it, was once the most powerful lever with which ambitious 1 Franzosiche Zustilnde, Vorrede zw Vorrede. Religion and Politics. 201 and greedy kings could lift their own private in- terests on high. But that feeling of nationality is now rotten and out of date. Silly prejudices that separate different races are vanishing faster and faster every day ; ungainly peculiarities are fading in the universal growth of European civili- zation. Europe has now no different nations; in their stead are different factions; and it is wonder- ful to see how these factions recognize each other, despite differences of colour, and understand each other too, though their languages are many and various.' With that change, he elsewhere repeats, wars will cease : ' When it has come about that the masses of the people can understand the cir- cumstances in which they live, the people will not allow the hack-writers of the aristocracy to whet them on into hate and war. A holy alliance will unite the 1 nations; we shall have no need to maintain standing armies of many hundred thou- sand murderers ; we shall attain to peace, to well-being, and to liberty/ Another feature of Heine's political creed was an intense aversion to the nobility, who were then in Germany more powerful than kings. Heine declared that nobles used kings for their own purposes, just as priests used the God they pre- tended to serve. This would end, he said, with the spread of knowledge, which would bring with it ' the emancipation of kings/ ' Never until, as Voltaire has it, they have proved to us that the millions are born with saddles on their backs, and 202 Heine in Relation to the thousands with spurs on their feet, will we believe that the millions are created to be the beasts of burden of a few thousand privileged knights The inequality which the feudal system brought into Europe was once, perhaps, a necessary condition of the advance of civili- zation. But now it retards civilization ; it out- rages the hearts of civilized men. It was natural that France felt the lack of equality more deeply than any other nation, for France is the nation of society, and society rests chiefly on the principle of equality. So France tried to enforce equality by simply cutting off heads that projected unduly, and the Revolution became the signal for the war that aimed at the emancipation of mankind/ Elsewhere he says, thinking of the aristocracy in another relation, ' Jlonne societe will cease to be bonne societe as soon as the good citizen leaves off being good enough to think it so/ In 1832 England was as interesting to the politician as any other country in Europe. Heine, writing in that year, has much to say of the position of parties and the characters of the leaders of those parties. Wellington he had always hated, but ' till now/ he says, ' I never knew how contemptible he was. People have been blinded by his stupid victories, they never guessed how dense he was. He is a blockhead, as all men are who have no heart. For thoughts come from the heart not from the head/ Of Joseph Hume he writes : ( A short stolid person, Religion and Politics. 203 with a great square head covered with rough, ugly, red hair It is the sort of face that should be put on the title-page of an arithmetic book. . . . But when King William broke his word, Joseph Hume arose great and heroic as a god of freedom, and his voice rang loud and clear as the bell of St. Paul's/ How bitterly Heine hated Englishmen is well known. He allowed them scarcely any excellence save in their roast meats. But one page of English history touched him so nearly that his aversion changed to admiration. The passage is well worth quoting : ' Queer devils those Eng- lish, I can't bear them. To begin with, they are tiresome, and then they are unsociable and selfish. They croak like so many frogs, and then they are sworn enemies of all good music. They go to church with gilt prayer-books, and they despise us Germans because we eat sauerkraut. But when the English aristocracy, by help of the court bastards, succeeded in winning over to their councils the German consort the " nasty frau," as they called her when King William IV., who had promised Lord Grey one evening to make as many new peers as were necessary to pass the Reform Bill, broke his word next morning at the instigation of the queen of the night when Wellington and his Tories seized the State power with their liberty-crushing hands then these English were not at all tiresome, but very interesting j they were not unsociable, 204 Heine in Relation to they were leagued together in hundreds of thou- sands they were indeed united. Their words were not croaks, but full of noble harmony ; their utterances were more soul-stirring than all the melodies of Rossini and Meyerbeer; they spoke no pious priest-taught speech, but they asked one another boldly, Shall we not march King William and his sauerkraut friends back to Germany and send our bishops to the devil ? ' There are many Englishmen who will feel how great and true is all that he has written about the position of the peers in England. He writes of nothing more bitterly, and of what can we feel more bitterly ? We in England need have no fear of our kings. They may rule in Rotten Row, they cannot at Westminster ; we need not grudge them command in the Solent, they cannot exercise it in the Channel. But there may be danger if our peers one day again find their own private interests come into violent contact with the in- terests of the people and the welfare of liberty. Then we shall do well to be angry. And will anger show itself in some practical form ? Shall we rid ourselves of our hereditary legislature, the greatest stain and reproach in our English constitution, and remove the stumbling-block from the path of progress ? Of the peers Heine wrote bitterly indeed. One passage is almost revolting in its outspoken- ness, but the occasion and the time (1832) justi- fied the outcry. Opinion, as often with Heine, Religion and Politics. 205 is heralded by a personal recollection : ' George IV. sleeps in the abbey in the same row as his ancestors, whose stone images lie on their stone tombs with stony heads on stony cushions, globe and sceptre in their hand. In high coffins round and about them are the English peers, great dukes and bishops, lords and barons, pressing in death, just as they did in life, as close as possible to the kings. If you want to see them in West- minster you pay one shilling and sixpence. A poor little custodian takes your money ; it is his livelihood to show these dead grandees ; and the while he relates their names and deeds, as though he were showing you a cabinet of wax-work figures. I like shows of this sort, they convince me that the great of this world are but mortal. I did not grudge my one and sixpence, and I said to the custodian when I went away I am content with your exhibition; I would gladly pay you twice as much if only your collection were completed.' This is the same sentiment that he had before expressed in more impassioned words, ' What is the great lesson of our time ? Emancipation. Emancipation, not only of Greeks, Irishmen, Jews, negroes, and other oppressed races, 1 but the emancipation of the world, and especially of Europe, that is now old enough to be its own master, and is breaking away from the iron leading-strings held once by the privileged aris- tocracy/ 1 This was written in 1830. 206 Jffeine in Relation to These passages are but a few that could be cited from many luminous with the light of know- ledge, glowing with the fire of liberty. But enough have been quoted to show that Heine was truly among the noblest of the later-born sons of the Revolution. His acts have been quoted against him time after time. But details of personal weakness may be left to the gossip- mongers of literature. His writings will be remembered by the wise, and his writings tell of a man whose life was filled with rapturous love for humanity, of a man angry until death with the shallow forms and conventionalities possessed no longer of any spiritual import. Yet the reader of Heine's prose will turn from it again and again to take up the book of his magical verse. And wisely. For it is only by reading the two together that the full merit of either one can be grasped. Graetz 1 shows how a spirit akin to the spirit of the prose works runs through many of his poems. But that is a point of merely minor importance. It was natural that he could express the same thoughts in verse as in prose, being a consummate master of both. The supreme greatness of Heine springs from the completeness of his humanity. Who is there like him? Citizen Heine, with all the bitterness of Rousseau, laughs at the shallow- ness of society, and inveighs against the tyranny of the few, and Heine the poet listens to 1 Geschichte der Juden, vol. xi. chap. 8. Religion and Politics. 207 that star -language, which he alone can under- stand 'I have learnt their language For ever and a day, My grammar was my love's sweet face. It taught me all they say.' l There is much to learn from this that concerns the best interests of to-day. We have amongst us devoted sons of the Revolution spirit, unselfish, strong, eager to fight for liberty to the end. But against many of them there has justly been raised the reproach that they have excluded from their Utopia the element of beauty. Many of them have condemned as useless the subtle joys of art and poetry, scorning what they cannot under- stand. To these Heine proclaims that poetry, beauty, and tenderness are all to be welcomed as worthy allies in the war for liberty. And to those before whose earnest gaze the glory of the old faiths has grown dim or vanished altogether, Heine comes as a beacon of light, unfolding noble aims and goodly hopes. He has shown us how the sanctity of the spirit essence must remain despite the death of forms and of creeds. He has taught us how, in the complexity of our own hearts, in the thrill that rushes through us at the sight of a woman's beauty, in the tenderness that maintains for us our home as the high altar for the daily sacrifice, there is an assertion of the Divine Goodness filling heaven above and earth 1 Lyrisches Iidevniezzo, 8. 208 Heine in Relation to Religion,