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at the present moment. The first and third related to the competency of the diet to entertain the complaint, and in the first, Prussia and Austria with their adherents were outvoted; the consequences of a declaration that the diet could not interfere in a case of dispute between a sovereign and his subjects, appearing too hazardous to the majority of the states. The third and most recent decision has been declarative of the incompetency of the diet to decide on points of domestic policy "in the present state of the federal union.” Can Austria and Prussia have voted in a contrary sense with the sincere intention of letting the king of Hanover arrange the matter unaided with his subjects? We are saved the necessity of replying to this question by the avowed interest which the Prussian monarch has taken in the question, by the public expression of the opinion entertained by his ministers, and by the orders of knighthood with which that sovereign has decorated the Hanoverian minister Von Schele, as a reward for his meritorious exertions in undermining the constitution. There can be no doubt that the decision on this part of the question was only intended to pave the way for a more unfettered intervention in the affairs of Hanover, when the Prussian monarch should deem the opportunity ripe for seizure; and such policy can alone explain why Prussia wished that the Hanoverian question should be treated exceptionally, and as not coming under the jurisdiction of the diet. The vote given by Austria was in conformity with the usual policy of that court, which cannot easily allow of an assumption of independence of the diet.

The united efforts of the agents of these two courts, stimulated by this unexpected defeat, procured a small majority in their favour on the second decision, by which the complaint of the citizens of Osnabrück was rejected, on the ground of their not being qualified to prefer such complaint before the diet.

We will not here enter into the question of the competency of a constituency to resume the functions which they had entrusted to representatives, as soon as those representatives, by the dismissal of the Hanoverian chambers, were dispossessed of their authority. We shall confine ourselves to pointing out the part which the Prussian government has evinced a

desire to play in this affair, and here only express our hope that the Hanoverians may be allowed to derive every advantage which can be drawn from the turn it has taken.

In opposition to the anxious display of sympathy which the king of Prussia has deemed proper to hold out for the encouragement of the violent proceedings of the Hanoverian government, we have the recorded and unanimous opinion of the people of Germany in every state in which they had an organ for expressing their wishes. Since July 1837, the legislative bodies in nearly all the smaller states have been assembled, and not one has omitted to express abhorrence of the proceedings of the Hanoverian government, and the warmest sympathy with the people of that country. At Dresden, Munich, Carlshruhe, Stuttgardt and Brunswick, addresses were voted by large majorities of the second chamber, expressing the confident hope of those houses, that their respective governments would use every exertion in support of the Hanoverian constitution. In Cassel, In Cassel, a motion to the same effect was dropped, after the president had assured the chamber that the government would do its duty, because matters of delicate negotiation were pending between the chambers and the court, and it was thought better to mix no extraneous matter up with them. The outrageous violation of every compact upon which harmony between a king and his people can be founded, by the king of Hanover's decree, seemed to rouse the lethargic spirit of freedom in every constitutional state. And yet was the Prussian cabinet fearless enough to disregard these intelligible symptoms of awakening energy in an enlightened mass of the people-a mass not inferior in number, and far superior in resources, as we shall presently see, to the entire population of Prussia, even supposing that she could calculate upon the cordial co-operation of all classes of her inhabitants.

We can readily conceive how the constant glitter and parade of military armament, may, after a time, produce a conviction in the minds of its beholders, that an array of the best organized troops, such as Prussia has at her disposal, must be invincible. But, as a portentous series of events, of much too recent occurrence to be forgotten, placed the importance of the co-operation of public feeling to the success of warlike

undertakings in the strongest possible light, we shall be permitted to inquire, What the Prussian government of late years has done to secure the attachment of the people of that country? what brilliant measures of state policy have emanated from the Prussian cabinet, on the successful issue of which they found their claim to step forward as arbiters of the rights of neighbouring states? In making this inquiry we shall confine ourselves to the events of the last two years, and shall be careful to let German authorities everywhere speak for themselves.

The observation which struck us the most forcibly, in perusing the published debates on the Hanoverian dispute, in the German legislative bodies, is one of an influential member of the second chamber at Stuttgardt, who declared in that assembly that the arrest and forcible abduction of the archbishop of Cologne was an occurrence of greater importance, and of a more ominous nature for the liberties of Germany, than the annulling of the constitution of Hanover. To all those who have had to deal much with the intelligent classes of Germans this remark speaks volumes. The decrees of the king of Hanover are looked upon as the ravings of a man accustomed all his life to the indulgence of violent passions. By the publication of his edicts he disappointed no hopes which his former course of life had raised. On the contrary, he only fulfilled the expectations of all who knew him, but especially of those who knew that his first burst of fury would fall upon a charter which the people had extorted as a shield against his tyranny.

But the Prussians and the Germans at large who looked to Prussia as the leading power of Germany, which, on emergencies, was to give the tone to, or perhaps even in time to absorb, the other less efficient sovereignties of that nation, had resigned themselves for nearly twenty years to the delusive hope, that, notwithstanding the despotic form of the Prussian government, its ruler sincerely wished the welfare of the land and the improvement of the material no less than of the moral condition of its citizens. As in no country the dependence of the former upon the latter species of progress is better understood than in Germany, the attention of the people was wholly engrossed by the measures so long successively pur

sued by the government to create a powerful nation out of very discordant elements. Under the enlightened exertions of a succession of distinguished men, from 1808 to 1830, Prussia had seen her population doubled, the financial credit of the state raised, and industry encouraged by comparative freedom of trade; these advantages were accompanied, too, by the blessings of free discussion and sound institutions for education, which promised to ensure their duration; and the nation, therefore, willingly accepted them in the form of a gift from the sovereign, as it was more interested in the matter than in the manner of the acquisition. The change which was first remarked after the July revolution in France, but which in reality had been long secretly preparing, opened the eyes of the Prussians to the real character of their sovereign and of his more recent advisers. They saw their king, to whom fortune had offered so many opportunities of gaining the hearts of the Germans, who, in the course of a long reign, had so often been called upon to step forward as the guide and the protector of a powerful and enlightened nation, once more throw the boon, thus proffered perhaps for the last time, from him, and content himself with the part of an obsequious ally of a foreign power, in preference to that of the representative of German independence. The restraints to which the press was then subjected, and which now go so far as seriously to interfere with the liberty of even scientific discussion*; the influence attempted of late to be exercised on the universities; and the despotic authority arrogated by the sovereign over the churches of the various creeds within his dominions, were so many successive blows, under which the fabric of hope, to which the Germans had so long and so willingly clung, gradually gave way. The king of Hanover has thus not produced any greater measure of disgust and disappointment by his display of violence, than has followed the arbitrary breach of the privileges of the Rhenish provinces, by the illegal arrest of the archbishop of Cologne.

The provinces of the Rhine were left in possession of the grand boon of public trials by jury, which the French had

* We allude to the list of prohibited works in Prussia, which has grown to the size of an Index, and in which the works of Rotteck, Gervinus, and other authors of high repute in Germany are denounced.

introduced, when it was incorporated with the kingdom of Prussia. How deeply the enlightened classes feel the security which these institutions afford them, is shown by the earnestness with which the inhabitants of the Rhenish provinces, not only of Prussia, but also of Bavaria and Hesse, have ever clung to them. This attachment, too, is not, as many writers have endeavoured to show, a mere predilection for French forms and a desire to retain any outward sign which savours of democracy. The trial by jury never had a fair trial under Napoleon either in France or in any of its dependent kingdoms, and at that time could offer but little that was likely to captivate their affections. The arbitrary manner in which the lists of jurymen were constructed, and the thousand means of oppression which a state of war affords, precluded all hopes of a fair verdict when the French government showed any interest in the result of judicial proceedings. But, with the establishment of peace and a more tranquil domestic administration, public opinion regained its due ascendency and operated as a salutary check on the officers of justice. We need only appeal to the evidence of a man who will not be accused of too great a leaning to democratic principles, we mean the late minister of Greece, Von, Rudhardt, to show how well these institutions work where they are fairly treated, and what the opinion of intelligent men is respecting them in other parts of Germany.

Herr von Rudhardt, in his highly-interesting work on Bavaria, concludes his view of the administration of justice in that kingdom with the following remarks :

"The form of judicial proceedings in the Rhenish circle is not altogether without its faults; among which we may reckon the overloading of the proceedings in civil cases with unnecessary forms; the pecuniary advantage drawn by the state from the fees; the overweening influence of the officers of the courts, who are often both unskilful and interested; the undefined nature of the secret initiatory proceedings in criminal cases, with some other regulations. But the substance of the administration of justice, equality of all ranks before the law, the purification of the judicial office from all extraneous duties, the collegial form of the courts, publicity of proceedings, and the active part allotted to his fellow-citizens in matters where the citizen has most at stake, are the means of affording security both to persons and property."

This is a spontaneous tribute to the excellence of these in

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