346 First session of the Diet [1815-6

kept Liberalism at bay and escaped the ravages of constitutional government.

The Federal Act fixed September 1, 1815, as the day on which the Diet should be opened; but first Napoleon's return from Elba, and then the threat of civil war in Germany, postponed the execution of this clause. Bavaria was the cause of the latter disturbance ; she rebelled against Austria's appropriation of Salzburg and the Innviertel on the one hand, and on the other set up a claim to Baden's share of the Palatinate. The dispute with Austria, which nearly led to war, was, however, settled by the Treaty of April 1-1, 1816, which compensated Bavaria for her losses to Austria hy giving her the Palatinate west of the Rhine and some districts in the Odenwald. At length the Diet was opened by Count Buol in the Thurn and Taxis palace at Frankfort on November 5, 1816. The business awaiting its consideration was as extensive as its powers were circumscribed; for the Act of Federation was a programme rather than a constitution. The Diet was to determine such questions as the freedom of the Press, the nature of the constitutions to be introduced into the various States of the Confederation, the formation of a federal army, the regulation of commerce, and in fact the whole range of internal and external relations of Germany. But, before it had even approached a solution of any one of these problems, it was to afford public proof of impotence. The Elector of Hesse was perhaps the most arbitrary of German Princes ; and his determination to regard as invalid every act done in his territories since their incorporation in the kingdom of Westphalia involved his subjects in intolerable hardships. In the eyes of the Liberals one of the chief functions of the Diet was to guarantee German subjects against the tyranny of Princes; and the grievances of the Hessian people were soon brought to its notice. The Elector at once repudiated the Diet's right to interfere, and the Diet replied by ostracising Hesse's representative at Frankfort and requesting Austria and Prussia to withdraw their envoys from Cassel. Even Buol denounced the Elector's attitude, and asserted the Diet's supremacy; and the Prussian representative Goltz concurred. But both Buol and Goltz had acted without consulting their Cabinets. Metternich read Buol a lecture on the impropriety of belittling the dignity of sovereigns; Prussia remained inert; and the Diet was compelled to swallow its indignation and leave the Elector to do what he liked with his own.

The Liberals did not always lose by the Diet's incapacity. The Duke of Saxe-Weimar had promptly redeemed his promise by granting his dominions a Constitution in May, 1816, before the opening of the Diet. He was acting in the spirit of the original draft of Article 13 of the Federal Act, which had pledged every member of the Federation to grant his subjects a representative constitution within a year. But this promise had been emasculated by the omission of the time-limit, and the substitution of " will " for " shall" ; the clause became a prophecy

1816-9] Saxe- Weimar. — The Press 3-17

and not a command; and, as Gorres complained, it was mangled and maimed until it guaranteed to the German people no more than an "unlimited right of expectation." The Diet, however, regarded the fullilment of this pledge as a matter for its own discretion, and resented Saxe-Weimar's precipitancy as a bid for popularity or a claim to superior virtue. It was still more annoyed when a petition for the execution of this article was presented to itself. On this point the Cabinets were almost unanimous ; and even those which, like Wurttemberg, made a show of Liberal sentiments to win the favour of the Tsar, secretly intrigued against the Liberals at the Diet. The promise had been made on the eve of Waterloo ; there was no such hurry now; and sovereigns began to doubt whether the popular energy, which had been evoked to destroy Napoleon, should be perpetuated as a check upon themselves. Meanwhile the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar was being hailed in the press as the only German sovereign who kept his word; and a prompt and formal repudiation of the pledge would produce a bad impression. The Diet, therefore, must neither affirm nor deny, but leave this as a matter to be decided by the individual wisdom of princes.

A like fate befell the eighteenth article of the Federal Act, which required the Diet to draft a uniform law dealing with the freedom of the Press and the limits of copyright. In the summer of 1817 Hardenberg had a memorial on this subject prepared for discussion with Metternich. In it he made a distinction, afterwards adopted by Metternich, between learned and scientific works and journals or newspapers. Complete freedom for the former was to be combined with an effective censorship of the latter. The Austrian Chancellor again thought this a question for individual sovereigns to settle ; and, although the Diet appointed a commission to deal with the matter, it came to no decision until other events had led Metternich to modify his attitude towards that body. So long as Liberal sentiments found favour in the Diet, Metternich considered it necessary to hold it in check. When in 1819 the reactionary spirit became supreme, the Diet might be allowed the exercise of its powers. The one conclusion of importance at which the Diet during these years arrived was to deny to the " mediatised " princes those collective votes in the assembly of which the Federal Act had held out hopes. That achievement was not enough to invalidate Gorres' description of the Diet as " a central power which does not rule, but is ruled by, the separate parts; an executive wholly destitute of authority, which cannot proceed against the refractory, and is not in a condition to execute anything whatever because it can never obtain the requisite unanimity ; a legislature which will never investigate its own competence ; a judiciary which no one is bound to obey; an assembly which ever seeks but never finds authority for its acts in an interminable weaving of diplomacy."

348 Prussian particularism [1816-7

Prussia was not so obstructive as Austria, but she refused the lead against Metternich; in Bismarck's words, " an open quarrel between their representatives at the sessions of the Confederation was something unheard of, and was avoided under all circumstances as endangering the existence of the Confederation." Prussia's aggrandisement at the expense of the other German States had made her unpopular; and there was no Prussian party at Frankfort. Her influence was further weakened by the injudicious action of Hanlein, who, on Stein's refusal, had been appointed Prussia's first representative at the Diet. Convinced of the futility of the Federation as organised by the Federal Act, Hanlein drew up a scheme by which the Habsburg was to be always German Emperor and the Hohenzollern German King; the two Great Powers would thus dominate Germany and give substance to the Federation. Buol had only to communicate this project to the smaller Courts to ensure its failure and Hanlein's recall. He was succeeded by William von Humboldt, who sought in vain to foster Prussia's credit and soon retired in disgust. Prussia's chief object was the organisation of a strong federal army. The military resources of the Confederation were considerable, and a scheme was drawn up showing that the various States could furnish contingents amounting to 300,000 men. But this was only a paper army, and there was no guarantee that it would develop into an efficient fighting force in the field. Prussia's efforts in this direction were in vain ; the minor German States, and especially those in which Liberalism was strong, favoured a peaceful cosmopolitanism. They feared that war would inevitably encourage the preponderance of one or other of the two great military Powers, and consequently advocated the neutrality of the Federation in European questions.

Particularism and cosmopolitanism were natural allies against nationalism ; but Prussia herself was by no means free from the particularism with which she charged all the other German States. It was Prussia's fault that two at least of the unifying schemes which came before the Diet failed. One was the Austragalordnung by which all the members of the Confederation were to submit their mutual differences to arbitration — a provision which might have avoided the wars of 1864 and 1866. But Prussia would only admit the principle of arbitration so far as legal questions were concerned; political interests must be determined as hitherto by diplomacy or the arbitrament of arms. The other conflict arose over the article of the Federal Act which guaranteed to Germans the right of Freizugigkeit; that is, that citizens of one State should become citizens of any other State to which they might choose to migrate. Prussia objected on the ground that civil and political rights could only be acquired in Prussia by long service, and that it was impossible to concede to immigrants greater advantages than those enjoyed by Prussian natives. Finally, the Prussian Government — in spite apparently of Frederick William's opposition — withdrew East and

1815-8] Liberalism in Prussia 349

West Prussia and Posen from the Confederation. The object was to assure to Prussia an international position independent of the Bund, and to remove her foreign policy from Confederate control. Hardenberg even desired to exclude all Prussia's provinces east of the Elbe. Prussia, indeed, could not make up her mind which policy to pursue — whether to identify herself so far as possible with the Bund, or to hold aloof; and, while Prussian statesmen pursued in some respects a separatist policy, they bitterly denounced the indifference of other German Powers to their schemes for a Federal army and Federal regulation of commerce. So early as 1816 Humboldt had come to the conclusion that Prussia could entertain no hopes of the Diet; that her policy must in future be to interweave her north-German neighbours into her political and administrative system; and that Berlin, not Frankfort, must be the centre of her efforts.

Humboldt was right in regarding Berlin as more important than Frankfort: not merely because the administrative activity of Prussia was destined to bear more fruit than the debates of the Diet, but because Berlin was in reality the pivot of the constitutional question. Whether Germany was to become constitutional or not depended far more upon the action of Frederick William's Government than upon the votes of the Frankfort delegates. Austria, it was certain, would oppose to the last any and every step in the direction of popular representation or of parliamentary control over the executive; but the Tsar Alexander was still in 1815 what Metternich called a Jacobin. Frederick William, who had not the strength of mind to pursue a policy of his own, always oscillated between Russia and Austria ; but until 1818 Russian influence was greater than that of Austria, and the probability seemed to be that Prussia would adopt a Liberal rather than a reactionary course. In Germany Prussia was in 1815 regarded as the champion of Liberalism. Hardenberg, who shared with Stein the glory of Prussia's regeneration, was still Chancellor; he was generally supported by moderate Ministers like Niebuhr and Humboldt, while there were some as advanced as Beyme who advocated a single-chamber parliament, publication of debates, representation of peasants, and trial by jury. The army was thought to be a hot-bed of radicalism, and the landwehr a garde nationale. The terms of peace had added to its discontent; Bliicher threatened to resign ; Gneisenau's headquarters at Coblenz were described as a Wallenstein's Lager; Wellington said that Prussia was in no sounder a condition than France; and the Tsar thought he might yet have to rescue Frederick William from his own troops. The liberation of Germany was ascribed to the enthusiasm of the people and not to the wisdom of Governments, to the Freischaaren rather than to the regiments of the line; and loud were the demands that these services should be recompensed by the grant of popular representation and constitutional liberty.

350 Conservative Opposition. The Estates [1815-8

On the other hand there was a no less determined Opposition. This party originated in the resistance to the abolition of serfdom ; it was at first feudal and aristocratic ; and, so long as Stein and Hardenberg controlled the Government, was anti-monarchical. It was also particularist in its resistance to the national aims of the Liberals ; " a man cannot," wrote Ferdinand Buchholtz, " be both a patriot and a feudal aristocrat." But their common enmity to the national German Liberals drew the aristocracy and the monarchy together; and, while the Liberals grew ever more republican and democratic, the aristocrats captured the Government and became monarchical in sentiment. Their leader was Prince Wittgenstein, the confidant of Metternich ; he was supported by General Job von Witzleben, who shared with Prince Charles of Mecklenburg-Strelitz the intimacy of Frederick William, and by Ancillon, who was half a Frenchman and had been a protege of Queen Louisa and Stein. Their great objects were to prevent the fulfilment of Frederick William's repeated promise of a representative system, and to interpret in the narrowest sense the thirteenth article of the Federal Constitution.

Both these engagements contained various ambiguities; and the sharpest distinction was drawn throughout the whole controversy between popular representation, such as that long enjoyed in England and introduced into France by the Revolution, and the old system of Estates which had existed in Germany since the Middle Ages. These Estates had invariably been provincial, not national, in character ; voting par ordre and not par tete had been the rule; and their most extensive privileges had been limited to the right of granting certain taxes. Generally the Orders in these Estates had been close corporations, but there was every variety in the numerous provinces, new and old, which Prussia possessed in 1815. In a few the peasants were represented ; in some only the prelates, the knights, and the cities on the royal domain ; in Vorpommern the Swedish system of four Orders prevailed. In the provinces which had come under Napoleon's sway, all these Estates had been abolished; in others they had fallen into abeyance; in some they had never existed; in a few they still dragged out an ineffective being. Did the promise of Frederick William and the article of the Federal Act merely mean that Estates were to be confirmed where they existed, and created where they did not ? Did it further imply that a central national parliament was to be constructed out of these disjecta membra ? Or, finally, was a tabula rasa to be made, and a new system to be evolved, based on the abstract rights of individual men and not on the territorial privileges of narrow corporations ?

There was a fairly general agreement, in Berlin at least, that if there was to be such a thing as German Liberalism, it must be historical and not abstract, and that the constitutions, if ever they were to exist, must be linked with what had gone before. On this point Stein and Gorres were of one mind; and Liberals of the French school, like the Freiburg