citizenship, and the shaping forth of some sort of political unity for a free Germany. And the then king, Frederick William III. — who was a thoroughly honest man, and a most excellent private character — no doubt sincerely intended, as soon as possible after the blood had been washed from the hands of stern warriors and the tears wiped from the cheeks of weeping mothers, to inaugurate a system of social policy, which should in its salient features be exactly the reverse of that whose woful weakness had mainly caused the downfall of 1806-7. Accordingly, in the articles agreed to by the diplomatic gentlemen who, in 1816, were found assembled round a green table at Vienna, to attempt such a political reconstruction of Germany as seemed possible under the circumstances, we find one which distinctly states that there shall be introduced into all the States of the Fatherland a constitutional government, with freedom of the press. This, for internal liberty; and to secure the common action of all the German States against any future encroachments of France, or other ambitious neighbor, the States were constituted into a board, diet, or confederation, of which Austria was perpetual president. The presidency of Austria did not promise much for the cause of popular freedom; and the action of a body composed as the Diet was, to those who could look beneath the surface, afforded no sure guarantee for the future existence of a strong and a united Germany; but with good-will on the part of the minor States, and a touch of manly decision on the part of Prussia, important movements, both in respect of social progress and political position, might rationally have been looked for.
But this touch of manly decision was just the very thing that was not found. It was not to be expected, indeed, that fair general promises of liberalism and constitutionalism, made at Vienna, under the wing of Prince Metternich, would be in any hurry to ripen into sweet fruits. On the contrary, the great law of reaction, of which the operation can be traced everywhere, so potent in the flow and ebb of social movements, set in almost immediately after the green table, round which the diplomatists had deliberated, was left vacant. The hopeful anticipations of a flaming enthusiasm were met by a host of obstinate old habits in a stout army of official people not to be abolished in a day. Behind and before, and all around the throne of the well-meaning old king, not the prophets of the future, but the office-bearers of the past, were encamped. And not the old men only were there, but the old machinery (for new machinery could not be made in an hour); and so public government in Prussia returned with perfect ease into its old grooves; and the old bureaucracy of red tape, whose motto was stolen from the magnificent French Louis of the seventeenth century, to do everything for the people and nothing by the people, began forthwith to display a most fussy activity in plugging up the vents of the great political volcano, and plastering the rents which the sudden military earthquake that had recently shaken the old foundations of things had left in their old smoothly appointed and trimly furnished domiciles. Bones, after all, are firmer than blood; and so, having the reins in their hands, they contrived with very little trouble at Berlin, and with nods of assenting approval from Vienna, to have things their own way, to make the liberal articles of the Congress of Vienna a dead letter, and to prove to the world once more that the promises of politicians, like the vows of lovers, are made only that Jove may laugh at them. The liberal dog had indeed entered into the house; but it was possible to pull out his teeth, to flog him when he barked loudly; and if he dared to bite, strangle him outright. The pious old king also, who was not made for bold independent action, in the face both of old kingly traditions and a plausible amount of reputable proprieties, on reflection found that in an evil hour he had promised to raise the democratic devil; and, after considering the whole affair seriously, came to the conclusion that it was more pious in this case to break his word than to keep it.
The existence of this pious weakness on the part of the king was soon publicly indicated by some events of a rather grotesque character, but of a very sad significance. An assembly of enthusiastic young students, fresh from the wars, assembled in the Wartburg, where Luther had made his translation of the Bible, and with the imperial tricolor of gold, black, and crimson floating about their caps, and billowing forth patriotic songs about Hermann and Charlemagne, delivered over to the Moloch of a great jubilee bonfire some odious manifestoes of pamphleteering literary police inspectors in Berlin and Vienna. The popular dramatist Kotzebue, also, who had the character of being employed as a Russian spy, was, about the same time, foolishly shot by an excited young student named Sand; and this was
