The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
sudden, such pleas for more time and a more gradual process may appear affected, if not puerile. It must be remembered, however, that to a genuine German nothing is more precious than a process of development. Whatever is not the result of a due course of Entwickelung, is a suspicious object. Anything which seems to break abruptly in upon the prescribed course is abnormal. Whatever is produced before the embryonic process is complete is necessarily a monster, from which nothing good can be hoped. The same idea is often advanced by the Conservatives in another form. The Liberals, they say, are trying to break loose from history. A prominent professor, in an address before an assembly of clergymen in Berlin, defined the principle of democracy to be this: 'The majority is subject to no law but its own will; it is therefore limited by no historically acquired rights; history has no rights over against the sovereign will of the present generation.' By historically acquired rights is meant in particular the right of William I. to rule independently because his predecessors did so. By what right the great elector robbed the nobles of their prerogatives, and how, in case he did wrong in thus disregarding their 'historically acquired rights,' this wrong itself, by being continued two hundred years, becomes, in its turn, an acquired right, is not explained in the address to which we allude. The principal fault to be found with such reasoning as this of the Prussian Conservatives, is that it is altogether too vague and abstract. There can be no development without something new; there can be, in social affairs, nothing new without some sort of innovation. Innovation, as such, can therefore not be condemned without condemning development. Moreover, development, as the organic growth of a political body, is something which takes care of itself, or rather is cared for by a higher wisdom than man's. To object to a proposed measure nothing more weighty than that it will not tend to develop the national history, has little meaning, and should have no force. The only question in such a case which men have to consider is whether the change is justified by the fundamental principles of right, be it that those principles have hitherto been observed or not.
What makes the arguments of the Conservatives all the more impertinent, however, is the fact that the question is no longer whether the constitution ought to be introduced, but whether, being introduced, it shall be observed. This is for the stiff royalists not so pleasant a question. Prussia is a constitutional monarchy; the king has taken an oath to rule in accordance with the constitution. It may be, undoubtedly is, true that none of the kings have wished the existence of just such a limit to their power; but shall they therefore try to evade the obligation which they have assumed? The Conservatives dare not say that the constitution ought to be violated, for that would look too much like the abandonment of their fundamental principle; they also hardly venture to say that they would prefer to have the king again strictly absolute, for that would look like favoring regression more than conservatism. Yet many have the conviction that an absolute monarchy would be preferable to the present, while the arguments of all have little force except as they tend to the same conclusion. The point of controversy between them and their opponents is often represented as being essentially this: Shall the king of Prussia be made as powerless as the queen of England? Against such a degradation of the dignity of the house of Hohenzollern all the convictions and prejudices of the royalists revolt. Such a surrender of all personal power, they say, and say truly, was not designed by Frederick William IV. when he gave the constitution; to ask the king, therefore, in all his measures to be determined by the House of Delegates, is an unconstitutional demand. It is specially provided that the king shall appoint and dismiss his own ministers; to ask him, therefore, to remove them simply because they are unacceptable to the House of Delegates, is to interfere with the royal prerogatives. The command of the army and the declaration of war belong only to the king; to binder him, therefore, in his efforts to maintain the efficiency of the army, or in his purposes to wage war or abstain from it, is an overstepping of the limits prescribed to the people's representatives.
We have here hinted at the principal elements in the controversy between the opposing political parties of Prussia. It is not our object to enter into the details of the various strifes which have agitated the land during the last sis years, but only to sketch their general character. The query naturally arises, when one takes a view of the whole period, which has elapsed since the constitution was introduced, why the contest did not begin sooner. The explanation is to be found in the fact that until the present king began to rule, the Liberals in general did not vote at the elections. It will be remembered that the previous king absolutely refused to deal with the assembly which met early in 1849 to consider the constitution, and ordered a new election. At this election the Liberals saw that, if they reflected the old members, another dissolution would follow, and they therefore mostly staid away from the polls. Afterward, when the constitution had been formally adopted, the Government showed a determination to put down all liberal movements; consequently the Liberals made no special attempts to move. The Parliament was conservative, and so there was no occasion for strife between it and the king. Not till William I. became regent in place of his incapacitated brother, in 1859, did the struggle begin. The policy of the previous prime minister Manteuffel had produced general discontent. The people were ready to move, if an occasion was offered. It is therefore not to be wondered at that, when the new sovereign announced his purpose to pursue a more liberal course than his brother, the Liberal party raised its head, and sought to make itself felt. The new ministry was liberal, and for a while it seemed as though a new order of things had begun. But this was of short duration. The House of Delegates, consisting in great part of Liberals (or, to speak more strictly, of Fortschrittsmänner—Progress men—Liberal being the designation of a third party holding a middle course between the two extremes, a party, however, naturally tending to resolve itself into the others, and now nearly extinct) urged the Government to adopt its radical measures. The king began to fear that, if he yielded to all the wishes of the House, he would lose his proper dignity and authority. He therefore began to pursue a different policy: the more urgently the delegates insisted on liberal measures, the less inclined was the king to regard their wishes. He had wished himself to take the lead in inaugurating the new era; as soon as others, more ambitious, went ahead of him, he took the lead again, by turning around and pulling in the opposite direction. The principal topics on which the difference was most decided were the ecclesiastical and the financial relations of the Government. Although the constitution provides for the perfect freedom of the church from the state, the union still existed, and indeed still exists. The House of Delegates attempted to induce the Government to carry out this provision of the constitution. There is no doubt that the motive of many of these attempts to divide church and state is a positive hostility to Christianity. The partial success which has followed them, viz., the securing of charter rights for other religious denominations than the Evangelical Church (i.e., the Union Church, consisting of what were formerly Lutheran and Reformed churches, but in 1817 united, and forming now together the established church), has given some prominence to the so-called Freiegemeinden, organizations of freethinkers, who, though so destitute of positive religious belief that in one case, when an attempt was made to adopt a creed, an insuperable obstacle was met in discussing the first article, viz., on the existence of God, yet meet periodically and call themselves religious congregations. There are, moreover, many others, regular members of the established church, who have no interest in religious matters, and would for that reason like to be freed from the fetters which now hold them. There are, however, many among the best and most discreet Christians who, for the good of the church, wish to see it weaned from the breast of the state. But the great majority of the clergy, especially of the consistories (the members of which are appointed by the Government, mediately, however, now, through the Oberkirchenrath), are decidedly opposed to the separation; and, as they speak for the churches, the provision of the constitution allowing the separation is a dead letter. There is no denying that, if it were now to be fully carried out, the consequences to the church might be, for a time at least, disastrous. The people have always been used to the present system; they would hardly know how to act on any other. Moreover, a large majority of the church members are destitute of active piety; to put the interests of religion into the hands of such men would seem to be a dangerous experiment. Especially is it true of the mercantile classes, of those who are pecuniarily best able to maintain religious institutions, that they are in general indifferent to religious things. This being the case, one cannot be surprised at the reluctance of those in ecclesiastical authority to desire the support of the state to be withdrawn. Neverheless it cannot but widen the chasm between the established church and the