Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

A hundred Frankforts or Leipsics in Germany would not spread wealth and national prosperity; for look at the country a couple of miles from the gates of either of these cities, and you find the roads as impassable, the country people as non-consuming and non-exchanging, and industry as dead, as if these cities had no existence. It is a change in the social economy of Germany that is needed, more than an increase of her class of capitalists. If they are already driven to manufacture for the foreign consumer, before the home consumers are half supplied with what they might consume, it is clear there is something unsound in the project of beginning to build the national prosperity of Germany under the commercial league, upon a basis which is without and not within the country. Such a change in the social economy of 26 millions of people who have but one principle at present in common that of producing as much of what they consume individually, by their own time and labour, and buying as little of it as possible, is not to be accomplished suddenly. It must be the gradual operation of time, of unrestricted intercourse among men, and of civil and political liberty, as it has been in England. The German commercial league, if carried on with the haste, and to the extent, and for the objects which the excited minds of even prudent people in Germany call for, and are eager to rush into, will prove a delusion as ruinous as the Mississippi scheme, as devoid of any solid basis, and which the first blast of war will dissolve.

According to every true German, the league is to be the grand restorer of nationality to Germany, of national character, of national mind, national greatness, national every thing, to a new, regenerated German nation. They are to spin and weave themselves into national spirit, patriotism, and united effort as one great people. They are to have colonies, if a continent can be discovered for them to colonise—an independent flag for their commercial league, if the naval powers agree to recognise a nonentity as an effective neutral power on

the high seas and a navy too, if the Rhine would breed seamen, and Cologne build ships of the line, instead of a dozen or two of river barges. These are innocent evaporations of a foggy atmosphere of mind often found among Germans, through which small things appear great, and ideas are taken for realities. Yet the most sensible of the newspaper editors of Germany lend their columns to such day-dreams. The stern reality amidst these childish fancies of the German patriots who ever look to the ideal future, and never to the real present, is, that at no period in modern history have the civil rights and free agency of men in their moral, religious, and industrial relations been more entirely set aside in Germany-at no period have their time and labour been taken from them by governments and local authorities so uselessly and unreproductively for the people, as since the conclusion of the last war. While all that forms the spirit, independent feeling, and moral existence of a nation, and all that forms the wealth and industrial prosperity of a nation, are kept down by military organisation and interference by edictal law, regulations, and functionarism, to a kind of Chinese state of society, German writers dream of national independence, national spirit, national action in European affairs, for the German population. The emancipated negro population in our West India colonies enjoy in reality more civil and political rights, more free agency, as moral beings, in their religious, social, and domestic relations-have their time and labour more entirely to themselves, and at their own free disposal without the interference of government through its civil or military functionaries, than the great mass of the labouring class in Germany. The German commercial league may produce a decided alteration in this abject social state; but it begins at the wrong end with its renovation of Germany, if it only encourages the increase of a body of commercial or manufacturing capitalists, on the one hand, supplying the foreign consumer, and a mass of helpless operatives,

on the other hand, thrown into misery whenever the foreign consumer cannot or will not take the usual supplies; and does not begin with laying a sound foundation for a home German market and home consumpt for German production, by setting free the industry of the people, and by abolishing the military restraints on their free agency and productive powers. There are good seeds sown by this great movement. It is a powerful demonstration of the will of the people for a common object, and of the people of capital and experience of the weightiest people of a society. It can only fail of attaining the object, of raising German industry and well-being, by aiming at such an impracticable object as that of making the league an acknowledged political power, and by such impracticable means as that of getting a flag, a fleet, colonies, and all the idle fancies which scholars and newspaper writers pin upon the one wise and attainable object of the leaguethe raising a home market for industry first, and a foreign market afterwards as a secondary outlet for the products of a manufacturing body of operatives.

CHAP. VI.

NOTES ON THE PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.-ITS EFFECTS ON THE MORAL CONDITION OF THE people.

THE educational system of Prussia is admirable — admirable as a machinery by which schools, schoolmasters, superintendence of them, checks, rewards both for the taught and the teachers, and in a word education - that word being taken in the meaning of the means of conveying certain very useful acquirements to every class of society, and to every capacity of individuals— are diffused over the country, and by law brought into operation upon every human being in it. The machinery for national education is undoubtedly very perfect. The military organisation of the whole population, and the habitual interference of government in all the doings and concerns of every individual - his very outgoing and incoming being, from the nature of his military service, matter of leave, licence, superintendence, and passport make it as easy to establish an admirable system and regulation in every object government undertakes throughout the kingdom as in a barrack yard. But great statesmen and politicians, especially of the military and nobility, who see only one class or one side of society, are very apt to mistake the perfection of the means for the perfection of the end. The mistake is common with our own parliamentary philosophers. An admirable machinery is constructed, which with its various and well-considered regulations and checks improved on perhaps by the experience and ingenuity of successive generations, is in reality a masterpiece of human wisdom and contrivance - such for example was our own excise system with its salt laws, and such is the same excise system now, in all that comes under its superintendence and in the

regular working and wise adaptation of all the parts of this beautiful and perfect machinery, we forget that the object itself may not be worth all this wisdom, may be attained in a more easy, natural, and effective way, or may be even not worth attaining. The wisdom and perfection of the machinery of the laws, and arrangements for attaining the end, are confounded with the value and wisdom of the end itself. The educational system of Prussia is no doubt admirable as a machinery; but the same end is to be attained in a more natural and effective way— by raising the moral condition of the parents to free agency in their duties; or if not if education, that is, reading, writing, and arithmetic, cannot be brought within the acquirements of the common man's children but upon the Prussian semi-coercive principle of the state, through its functionaries, intruding upon the parental duties of each individual, stepping in between the father and his family, and enforcing by state regulations, fines, and even imprisonment, what should be left to the moral sense of duty and natural affection of every parent who is not in a state of pupilage from mental imbecility—then is such education not worth the demoralising price paid

could be done if a He told me he had

* I asked an intelligent Prussian what parent refused to send his child to school? lately been at the police-office when a man was brought in for not sending his girl to school. She could not read, although advancing to the age to be confirmed. The man said his girl was earning her bread at a manufactory which he named, and he could not maintain her at school. He was asked why he did not send her to the evening schools established for such cases, and held after working hours, or to the Sunday schools. He said his wife had a large family of young infants, and his girl had to keep them when she came from her work, while her mother was washing for them and doing other needful family work, which she could not do with a child in her arms. The man was told that he would be committed to prison if he and his wife did not send their girl to school.

In such a case, would the school-learning be worth that learning which the girl was receiving at home in household work, or in taking care of children?

« НазадПродовжити »