Decrees worked smoothly, Germany was not likely to be troubled by revolutions.
The period that followed was one, outwardly at least, of political stagnation. The Mainz Commission, though hampered by the jealousy of the governments (the king of Prussia refused to allow his subjects to be haled before it), was none the less effective enough in preventing all free expression of opinion; while at the universities the official “curators” kept Liberal enthusiasts in order. The exuberance of the epoch of Liberation gave place to a dull lethargy in things political, relieved only by the Philhellenism which gave voice to the aspirations of Germany under the disguise of enthusiasm for Greece. Even the July revolution of 1830 in Paris reacted but partially and spasmodically Revolutions of 1830. on Germany. In Hanover, Brunswick, Saxony and Hesse-Cassel popular movements led to the granting of constitutions, and in the states already constitutional Liberal concessions were made or promised. But the governments of Prussia and Austria were unaffected; and when the storm had died down Metternich was able, with the aid of the federal diet, to resume his task of holding “the Revolution” in check. No attempt was, indeed, made to restore the deposed duke of Brunswick, who by universal consent had richly deserved his fate; but the elector of Hesse could reckon on the sympathy of the diet in his struggle with the chambers (see Hesse-Cassel), and when, in 1837, King Ernest Augustus of Hanover inaugurated his reign by restoring the old illiberal constitution abolished in 1831, the diet refused to interfere. It was left to the seven professors of Göttingen to protest; who, deprived of their posts, became as famous in the constitutional history of Germany as the seven bishops in that of England.
Yet this period was by no means sterile in developments destined to produce momentous results. In Prussia especially the government continued active in organizing and consolidating the heterogeneous elements introduced into the monarchy by the settlement of 1815. The The Prussian system. task was no easy one. There was no sense of national unity between the Catholics of the Rhine provinces, long submitted to the influence of liberal France, and the Lutheran squires of the mark of Brandenburg, the most stereotyped class in Europe; there was little in common between either and the Polish population of the province of Posen. The Prussian monarchy, the traditional champion of Protestant orthodoxy, found the new Catholic elements difficult to assimilate; and premonitory symptoms were not wanting of a revival of the secular contest between the spiritual and temporal powers which was to culminate after the promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility (1870) in the Kulturkampf. These conditions formed the excuse for the continual postponement of the promised constitution. But the narrow piety of Frederick William III. was less calculated to promote the success of a benevolent despotism than the contemptuous scepticism of Frederick the Great, and a central parliament would have proved a safety valve for jarring passions which the mistaken efforts of the king to suppress, by means of royal decrees and military coercion, only served to embitter. Yet the conscientious tradition of Prussian officialism accomplished much in the way of administrative reform.
Above all it evolved the Customs-Union (Zollverein), which gradually attached the smaller states, by material interests if not by sympathy, to the Prussian system. A reform of the tariff conditions in the new Prussian monarchy had been from the first a matter of urgent necessity, The Prussian Zollverein. and this was undertaken under the auspices of Baron Heinrich von Bülow (1792–1846), minister in the foreign department for commerce and shipping, and Karl Georg Maassen (1769–1834), the minister of finance. When they took office there were in Prussia sixty different tariffs, with a total of nearly 2800 classes of taxable goods: in some parts importation was free, or all but free; in others there was absolute prohibition, or duties so heavy as to amount to practical prohibition. Moreover, the long and broken line of the Prussian frontier, together with the numerous enclaves, made the effective enforcement of a high tariff impossible. In these circumstances it was decided to introduce a system of comparative free trade; raw materials were admitted free; a uniform import of 10% was levied on manufactured goods, and 20% on “colonial wares,” the tax being determined not by the estimated value, but by the weight of the articles. It was soon realized, however, that to make this system complete the neighbouring states must be drawn into it; and a beginning was made with those which were enclaves in Prussian territory, of which there were no less than thirteen. Under the new tariff laws light transit dues were imposed on goods passing through Prussia; and it was easy to bring pressure to bear on states completely surrounded by Prussian territory by increasing these dues or, if need were, by forbidding the transit altogether. The small states, though jealous of their sovereign independence, found it impossible to hold out. Schwarzburg-Sondershausen was the first to succumb (1819); Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt (1822), Saxe-Weimar and Anhalt-Bernburg (1823), Lippe-Detmold and Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1826) followed suit so far as their “enclaved” territories were concerned; and in 1826 Anhalt-Dessau and Anhalt-Cöthen, after several years’ resistance, joined the Prussian Customs-Union. In 1828 Hesse-Cassel entered into a commercial treaty with Prussia. Meanwhile, alarmed at this tendency, and hopeless of obtaining any general system from the federal diet, the “middle” states had drawn together; by a treaty signed on the 18th of January 1828 Württemberg and Bavaria formed a tariff union, which was joined in the following year by the Hohenzollern principalities; and on the 24th of September 1828 was formed the so-called “Middle German Commercial Union” (Handelsverein) between Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, the Saxon duchies, Brunswick, Nassau, the principalities of Reuss and Schwarzburg, and the free cities of Frankfort and Bremen, the object of which was to prevent the extension of the Prussian system and, above all, any union of the northern Zollverein with that of Bavaria and Württemberg. It was soon, however, found that these separate systems were unworkable; on the 27th of May 1829 Prussia signed a commercial treaty with the southern union; the Handelsverein was broken up, and one by one the lesser states joined the Prussian Customs-Union. Finally, on the 22nd of March 1833, the northern and southern unions were amalgamated; Saxony and the Thuringian states attached themselves to this union in the same year; and on the 1st of January 1834 the German Customs- and Commercial-Union (Deutscher Zoll- und Handelsverein) came into existence, which included for tariff purposes within a single frontier the greater part of Germany. Outside this, though not in hostility to it, Hanover, Brunswick, Oldenburg and Schaumburg-Lippe formed a separate customs-union (Steuerverein) by treaties signed on the 1st of May 1834 and the 7th of May 1836, and to this certain Prussian and Hessian enclaves were attached. Subsequently other states, e.g. Baden and Nassau (1836), Frankfort and Luxemburg (1842), joined the Prussian Zollverein, to which certain of the members of the Steuerverein also transferred themselves (Brunswick and Lippe, 1842). Finally, as a counter-move to the Austrian efforts to break up the Zollverein, the latter came to terms with the Steuerverein, which, on the 1st of January 1854, was absorbed in the Prussian system. Hamburg was to remain outside until 1883; but practically the whole of what now is Germany was thus included in a union in which Prussia had a predominating influence, and to which, when too late, Austria in vain sought admission.[1]
Even in the earlier stages of its development the Zollverein had a marked effect on the condition of the country. Its growth coincided with the introduction of railways, and enabled the nation to derive from them the full benefit; so that, in spite of the confusion of political powers, material prosperity increased, together with the consciousness of national unity and a tendency to look to Berlin rather than to Vienna as the centre of this unity.
- ↑ The best account, in English, of the development of the Zollverein is in Percy Ashley’s Modern Tariff History (London, 1904).
