who had fought by their side against the invader, and had saved them from the abject condition of vassals to a foreign suzerain. These were the days of the persecution of men who were called demagogues, in the classic barbarism of bureaucratic phraseology, though, in truth, they were good patriots, but growing daily more exasperated by the stupidity of absolutism directed against their best and most loyal intentions. Thus the hopes of a satisfactory development of the federal constitution were blighted, and a revolutionary party was created, which aimed directly at a reestablishment of the German empire by the destruction of the existing polyarchy.

Such was the condition of things in the period following the Congress of Vienna. But in the new system of German states three great divisions were to be distinguished—Austria, Prussia, and the general collection of smaller states. In each division the antagonism between the existing order and the national wish took a different form. The smaller states were simply considered as a national disgrace and public nuisance, which ought to be abated. That this view was erroneous and unjust has been shown by the subsequent development of political life. Besides their achievements in literature and the arts, the smaller states were destined to become the nursery of constitutional freedom, which was transplanted from their soil into Prussia and Austria. But at the period of which we are now speaking, this development had yet to declare itself. In Prussia the case was quite different, and offered considerable advantages to the government. That kingdom had nothing depending upon the question of nationality, except in its Polish provinces; while, if it chose to adopt the principle, it might do so to its own advantage, and to the satisfaction of the national party, the views of which were based on that theory. Prussia had little to lose and much to gain thereby, while to Austria it seemed to be destruction. Like Austria, Prussia also was derived from a colonial origin, and had a certain right to the character of an independent power. But it had the advantage over Austria in never having been charged with the highest national trust. It could call upon the nation to bear witness that it never had been the guardian of the empire; that it had done its duty in the struggle for national independence; and that its pretensions to the character of a European power-a position which it had long occupied de facto, and only now sought to make de jure-were, after the annihilation of the empire, perfectly justifiable. Austria and the nation might reply, that Prussia had ever been a rebel against the empire. But the empire, in its later period of decadence, had fallen so low in public opinion, that such a

reply would have been nugatory, and the cause of Prussia would still have had a better standing before a national jury than that of Austria, in spite of all the wrong she had done to the cause of national unity by the civil wars so frivolously begun by Frederick II. Public sympathy is accorded to life and action, albeit directed to wrong-doing. For this cause men like Napoleon I. and Frederick II. have had their admirers even among those who suffered from their deeds. To do wrong is more popular than to neglect to do good. Prussia was pardoned for her sins of commission, while Austria found no excuse for the sins of omission of her conservative policy. The German empire had perished through weakness; life, power, activity for right or wrong, began to appear the means of their salvation to the German people. The national party had to choose one of the two great states as the nucleus and instrument of unification; and the preference was given to Prussia. For since the Confederacy had once become the national law of Germany, and had been incorporated into the international law of Europe, the traditional fidelity of Austria to treaties and engagements, and the conservative, inactive character of her policy, precluded all hopes of her lending any support to a movement which, however advantageous to herself or to the nation, was still thoroughly revolutionary. But Prussia was held back by no such traditions; nay, her model king, Frederick II., had been the first revolutionist of his

time.

The idea of uniting Germany by the instrumentality of Prussia has, ever since, had its partisans; and there has always existed a certain connection between the Prussian government, or at least some of the representatives of the dynastic interests of the Hohenzollern, on one side, and the revolutionary unionists of Germany on the other, by which the direction of the national spirit has been much influenced. The idea has gained or lost ground with the alternations of boldness and cowardice in the Prussian government and dynasty. It seemed near being realised in 1848 and 1849; and its failure then has just been repeated in the fall of the party which had encouraged the Nationalverein. But the partisans of the idea are still numerous; and it is only the irresolution of Prussian policy, composed in equal parts of greediness and cowardice, that has lessened their numbers and weakened their influence.

The regeneration of Germany under the lead of Austria was never contemplated during the period of Metternich, who considered the restoration of the German empire under the house of Habsburg to be a mere Utopian dream.

"No

romance, if you please," he said to a German politician who had ventured to touch upon the question. Austria left the field open to Prussia, and Prussia fully availed herself of the opening. When the revolution broke out in Berlin in 1848, it was not without the connivance of very high Prussian authorities, who aimed at making Frederick William IV. emperor of Germany. The democrats on one side, and Austria on the other, crossed the plan in an unexpected manner. The promoters and partisans of the Prussian intrigue were unprepared to meet a republican party, and equally unprepared to encounter a change of system in Austria; and thus their plan came to nothing.

It was not long before preparations were made for attaining the same end by different means; but by this time Austria had become wide awake to her German interests. The system of Metternich, which Count Bismarck lately praised as having given free scope to Prussia in German politics, had given place to a very different one. "I wanted to show the imperial double-eagle once more on the shores of the Baltic," was the remark of Schwarzenberg on the appearance of Austrian troops in the Schleswig-Holstein quarrel. That which had been a mere romance to Metternich had become a practical idea to Schwarzenberg; and, however the internal policy of Austria may have changed since his death, the government since 1848 has never ceased to consider the position of Austria in Germany as a problem of the most vital importance.

To the question whether this is a sound view of Austrian interests, Prussia and her party reply in the negative. Austria, they say, ought to attend to her internal development, and direct her power towards the East. In the West she ought to leave Prussia free to perform the work of German unification. For the extension of her territory and influence Austria ought to look to the regions of the Lower Danube and of Northern Turkey. Her calling is to carry civilisation to the East, and a glorious destiny will be the reward of the noble efforts which she makes in that direction. Either Austria or Prussia must perform the work of German unification; and of the two, Prussia is more fit for it, and is moreover forced to claim the task for herself, because in her present condition she cannot continue to be one of the great European powers. The duties which that character imposes upon her overstrain her strength. By the necessities of her situation Prussia is committed to a policy of extension and domination in Germany. She must either become more powerful or perish. Now, she can become stronger only by obtaining the control of the united forces of

Germany, or of so much of them as may be possible. But Austria lies under no such necessity. She is powerful enough to exist alone in her present extension. There is room for two great empires in the centre of Europe, the Prusso-German and the Austrian. Sprung from the same root, they will ever remain faithful allies, when once the rivalry which now divides them is rendered objectless. If Austria would secede from the German Confederation, Prussia would soon reduce the affairs of Germany to order.

To this programme of the Prussian party that of Austria replies, first of all, that the German Confederacy is the form in which the German nation is recognised by the law of Europe as a political entity. Its territory is national property, and the nation as a whole has a right to it. Moreover, the federal act binds the members of the Confederacy for ever. Secession would be a double treason-treason against the nation, and treason against the confederate states. Austria has no right to secede, even if it were for her interest to do so; for by doing so she would a second time expose the German nation to the danger of extinction. The weight of responsibility thrown upon her by the resignation of Francis II. would be enormously increased by the repetition of the selfish act, to atone for which the nation requires of her a double devotion to the national interests. But, besides this breach of positive obligations, the secession of Austria would be a most ungenerous betrayal of the weaker states of the Confederacy, which would be left entirely at the mercy of Prussia. No one has a right to expect that Austria could be induced to act so meanly. But if we supposed, for argument's sake, that Austria had overcome the scruples of justice and generosity, we should still have to enquire what would be the consequences to herself of secession-whether the wrong would be likely to benefit the wrong-doer?

The moment secession took place, the decomposing tendencies of the nationalities would begin to work with double power, and the central attraction would prove insufficient to keep the monarchy together. The system of representative self-government and constitutional liberty, which during the last two years has gained for Austria the sympathies of Europe, devised to give additional attractive power to the nucleus of the monarchy, would have precisely the opposite effect after secession. The German element is the general cement of the political conglomerate which constitutes the Austrian monarchy, and the principal vehicle of all its centripetal tendencies. This element now forms the majority in the Reichsrath, where its influence is exerted in favour of parliamentary cen

tralism; there are German members of that parliament who are so extreme in their centralistic views as even to advocate, against the real interests of their own cause, secession from Germany, because the position of Austria as a member of the German Confederacy appears to them to hinder the realisation of their system. But the German element in Austria, though the great material of cohesion, is still numerically weak in comparison with the total of the other nationalities. Its strength consists in its superior intelligence, industry, application, and spirit of order and economy, in the circumstance that the ruling dynasty is German, that the monarchy takes the first rank in the system of German states, and, in spite of the moderate proportion of its German population, is pervaded by the spirit of German culture, and ruled by the German mind in all the essential elements of its life. Austrian literature, for instance, is but a branch of German literature. The publication by Austrian writers of books in other languages spoken within the empire is a fact exactly of the same kind as the publication in France of a few German books of Alsatian authorship, or of some literary curiosity in the Erse or Caldonach tongue in England. The language of Arpad can make no literary claims comparable to those of the language of Fingal and Ossian. Thus the German element of Austria, which forms the cement by which the monarchy is kept together, and the soul by which it is moved, has only an intellectual predominance. Such a state of things can only be maintained by an intimate political connection with the main body of Germany. Reduced to its own resources, the German element of Austria, with all its good qualities and active force, would be unable to keep its position, and would soon see its influence dwindle down to the ratio of its numbers. Then the colonial character of Austria would once more come to the surface. The German would soon find himself in a position similar to that which he has in Russia, or to that of the Spaniard in Mexico or Peru. And the monarchy itself, deprived of the continual immigration of skill and intelligence, by the uninviting position which alone it could offer to the foreign settler, would soon begin to retrograde under the influence of the laziness, dirty habits, wastefulness, and pride of ignorance, which are so much at home in the eastern half of the empire. Throughout the provinces here referred to, the middle classes, so far as they are not Jews, are almost exclusively German. Neither the Poles of Galicia nor the Magyars have any middle classes of their own. To counsel Austria to secede from Germany is to advise her still further to reduce her middle classes, the low numerical, moral, and intellectual standard of which, as com