"An otherwise free-thinking man in Nuremberg who was not at all insensitive to the new had a monstrous hatred of democratic intrigues. He was a devotee of Ronge, whose portrait he had in his room. But when he heard that Ronge had sided with the democrats he removed the portrait to the lavatory. He once said: 'Oh, if only we lived under the Russian knout, how happy I would feel!' He died during the disturbances and I presume that although he was already old, it was despondency and grief at the course of events that led him to the grave." (Vol. II, pp. 321-22.)
If, instead of dying, this pitiable Nuremberg philistine had gleaned his scraps of thought from Correspondent von und für Deutschland, from Schiller and Goethe, from old schoolbooks, and modern lending-library books he would have spared himself the trouble of dying and Herr Daumer the hard work of writing his two volumes of "combinatory and aphoristic foundation". We, of course, should not then have had the edifying opportunity to become acquainted with the "religion of the new age" and at the same time with its first martyr.
Herr Daumer's work is divided into two parts, a "preliminary" and a "main" one. In the preliminary part the faithful Eckart of German philosophy expresses his profound concern that even thinking and educated Germans have let themselves be led astray for the past two years and have given up the inestimable achievements of thought for mere "external" revolutionary activity. He considers the present moment appropriate to appeal once more to the better feelings of the nation and points out what it means so light-mindedly to abandon all German culture, through which alone the German burgher was still anything at all. He summarises the whole content of German culture in the pithiest sayings that the casket of his erudition contains and thus discredits German culture no less than German philosophy. His anthology of the loftiest products of the German mind surpasses in platitude and triviality even the most ordinary reading book for young ladies in the educated walks of life. From Goethe's and Schiller's philistine sallies against the first French Revolution, from the classic "Dangerous it is to rouse the lion"a
down to the most modern literature, the high priest of the new religion zealously digs up every passage in which German pedantry stiffens with sleepy ill-humour against the historical movement it loathes. Authorities of the weight of a Friedrich Raumer, Berthold Auerbach, Lochner, Moriz Carrière, Alfred Meissner, Krug, Dingel-stedt, Ronge, Nürnberger Bote,h Max Waldau, Sternberg, German Maurer, Luise Aston, Eckermann, Noack, Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung, A. Kunze, Ghillany, Th. Mundt, Saphir, Gutzkow, a certain "née Gatterer" and the like are the pillars on which the temple of the new religion rests. The revolutionary movement, which is here declared anathema in so many voices, is confined for Herr Daumer on the one hand to the tritest prattle about politics as carried on in Nuremberg under the auspices of Correspondent von und für Deutschland, and on the other hand to mob outrages of which he has the most fantastic idea. The sources on which he draws are worthy of being placed on a par with those already mentioned: side by side with the oft-named Nuremberg Correspondent figure the Bamberger Zeitung, the Munich Landbötin,c the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung and others. The same philistine meanness that sees nothing in the proletarian but a disgusting, corrupt ragamuffin and which rubs its hands with satisfaction at the Paris massacres in June 1848, when more than 3,000 of those "ragamuffins" were but-chered — that same meanness is indignant at the raillery of which sentimental societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals are the object.
"The frightful tortures," Herr Daumer exclaims on page 293 of Volume I, "that unfortunate beasts suffer at the cruel, tyrannous hand of man are for these barbarians 'trifles' that nobody should bother about!"
The entire class struggle of our times seems to Herr Daumer only a struggle of "coarseness" against "culture". Instead of explaining it by the historical conditions of these classes, he finds its origin in the seditious doings of a few malevolent individuals who incite the base appetites of the populace against the educated estates.
"This democratic reformism ... excites the envy, the rage, the rapacity of the lower classes of society against the upper classes — a fine way of making man better and nobler and founding a higher stage of culture!" (Vol. I, p[p]. [288-] 289.)
Herr Daumer does not even know what struggles "of the lower classes of society against the upper classes" it took to bring forth even a Nuremberg "stage of culture" and to make possible a Moloch-fighter à la Daumer.(1)
The second, "main", part contains the positive aspect of the new religion. It voices all the annoyance of the German philosopher over the oblivion into which his struggles against Christianity have fallen, over the people's indifference towards religion, the only object worthy to be considered by the philosopher. To restore credit to his trade, which has been ousted by competition, all our world-wise man can do is to invent a new religion, after long barking against the old. But this new religion is confined, in accordance with the first part, to a continuation of the anthology of maxims, album verses and versus memoriales(2) of German philistine culture. The suras of the new Koran[183] are nothing but a series of phrases morally palliating and poetically embellishing the existing German conditions — phrases which, though divested of the immediately religious form, are none the less interwoven with the old religion.
"Completely new world conditions and world relations can arise only through new religions. Examples and proofs of what religions are capable of are Christianity and Islam; most clear and palpable evidence of the powerlessness and futility of abstract, exclusive politics are the movements started in the year 1848." (Vol. I, p.313.)
This weighty proposition immediately brings out the shallowness and ignorance of the German "thinker" who takes the small German and specifically Bavarian "March achievements" for the European movement of 1848 and 1849 and who demands that the first, in themselves very superficial, eruptions of a gradually developing and concentrating major revolution should bring forth "completely new world conditions and world relations". The "world-wise" Daumer reduces the whole complicated social struggle, the first skirmishes of which were fought between Paris and Debrecen, Berlin and Palermo in the last two years, to the fact that "in January 1849 the hopes of the constitutional societies of Erlangen were postponed indefinitely" (Vol. I, p. 312) and to fear of a new struggle that could once more be unpleasantly shocking for Herr Daumer in his occupations with Hafiz, Mohammed[3] and Berthold Auerbach.
The same shameless superficiality allows Herr Daumer to ig-nore completely that Christianity was preceded by the total collapse of the ancient' "world conditions" of which Christianity was the mere expression; that "completely new world conditions" arose not internally through Christianity but only when the Huns and the Germans fell "externally" on the corpse of the Roman Empire; that after the Germanic invasion the "new world conditions" did not adapt themselves to Christianity but that Christianity itself changed with every new phase of these world conditions. We should like
Herr Daumer to give us an example of the old world conditions changing with a new religion without the mightiest "external" and abstract political convulsions setting in at the same time.
It is clear that with every great historical upheaval of social conditions the outlooks and ideas of men, and consequently their religious ideas, are revolutionised. The difference between the present upheaval and all earlier ones lies in the very fact that man has at last found out the secret of this process of historical upheaval and hence, instead of once again exalting this practical, "external", process in the rapturous form of a new religion, divests himself of all religion.
After the gentle moral doctrines of the new world wisdom, which are even superior to Knigge(3)" inasmuch as they contain all that is necessary not only on intercourse with men, but also on intercourse with animals — after the Proverbs of Solomon comes the Song of the new Solomon.
"Nature and woman are the really divine, as distinct from the human and man.... The sacrifice of the human to the natural, of the male to the female, is the genuine, the only true meekness and self-externalisation, the highest, nay, the only virtue and piety." (Vol. II, p. 257.)
We see here that the superficiality and ignorance of the speculating founder of a religion is transformed into a very pronounced cowardice. Herr Daumer flees before the historical tragedy that is threatening him too closely to alleged nature, i. e. to a stupid rustic idyll, and preaches the cult of the female to cloak his own womanish resignation.
Herr Daumer's cult of nature, by the way, is a peculiar one. He manages to be reactionary even in comparison with Christianity. He tries to restore the old pre-Christian natural religion in a modernised form. Thus he of course achieves nothing but Christian-Germanic-patriarchal drivel on nature expressed, for example, as follows:
"Nature holy, Mother sweet,
In Thy footsteps place my feet.
My baby hand to Thy hand clings,
Hold me as in leading strings!"[3]
"Such things have gone out of fashion, but not to the benefit of culture, progress or human felicity." (Vol. II, p. 157.)
We see that this cult of nature is limited to the Sunday walks of an inhabitant of a small provincial town who childishly wonders at the cuckoo laying its eggs in another bird's nest (Vol. II, p. 40), at tears being designed to keep the surface of the eyes moist (Vol. II, p. 73), and so on, and finally trembles with reverence as he recites Klopstock's Ode to Spring(4) to his children. (Vol. II, p. 23 et seqq.) There is no mention, of course, of modern natural science, which, with modern industry, has revolutionised the whole of nature and put an end to man's childish attitude towards nature as well as to other forms of childishness. But instead we get mysterious hints and astonished philistine notions about Nostradamus' prophecies, second sight in Scotsmen and animal magnetism.[184] For the rest, it would be desirable that Bavaria's sluggish peasant economy, the ground on which grow priests and Daumers alike, should at last be ploughed up by modern cultivation and modern machines.
It is the same with the cult of the female as with the cult of nature. Herr Daumer naturally does not say a word about the present social position of women; on the contrary it is a question only of the female as such. He tries to console women for their civic destitution by making them the object of a rhetorical cult which is as empty as it would fain be mysterious. Thus he seeks to comfort them by tell-ing them that marriage puts an end to their talents through their having to take care of the children (Vol. II, p. 237), that they retain the ability to suckle babes even until the age of sixty (Vol. II, p. 251), and so on. Herr Daumer calls this the "devotion of the male to the female". In order to find the necessary ideal women characters for his male devotion in his native country, he is forced to resort to various aristocratic ladies of the last century. Thus his cult of the woman is reduced to the depressed attitude of a man of letters to respected patronesses — Wilhelm Meister.[3]
The "culture" whose decay Herr Daumer laments is that of the time in which Nuremberg flourished as a free Reichsstadt, in which Nuremberg's industry — that cross between art and craftsmanship —played a role of importance, the German petty-bourgeois [Kleinbürgertum] culture which is perishing with the petty bourgeoisie. If the decline of former classes such as the knighthood could offer material for great tragic works of art, philistinism can achieve nothing but impotent expressions of fanatic malignity and a collection of Sancho Panza maxims and rules of wisdom. Herr Daumer is the dry, absolutely humourless continuation of Hans Sachs. German philosophy, wringing its hands and lamenting at the deathbed of its foster father, German philistinism — such is the touching picture opened up to us by the religion of the new age.
il
II. Ludwig Simon of Trier, Ein Wort des Rechts für alle Reichsverfassungskämpfer an die deutschen Geschwornen
"We had voted against the inheritability of the office of Supreme Head of the Empire; on the next day we abstained from voting. When the whole result lay before us, however, as it had emerged from the will of the majority of an assembly elected on the basis of universal franchise, we declared that we should submit. Had we not done so we should have proved that we did not fit into civil society in general." (1) (p. 43.)
According to Herr L. Simon "of Trier", therefore, the most extreme members of the Frankfurt Assembly no longer "fitted into civil society in general". Herr L. Simon "of Trier" thus appears to conceive the bounds of civil society in general as being even narrower than the bounds of St. Paul's Church.[185]
Incidentally, in his confession of April 11, 1849, Herr Simon had the tact to reveal the secret of both his former opposition and his later conversion.
"Cold mists have arisen from the gloomy waters of pre-March diplomacy. These mists will gather into clouds and we shall have a thunderstorm pregnant with ruin, threatening to strike first of all the tower of the church in which we are sitting. Take heed and arrange for a lightning-conductor to conduct the lightning away from yourselvesV'^
That is, gentlemen, it is now our skins that are at stake! The beggarly proposals, the wretched compromises offered to the majority by the Frankfurt Left on the question of the Emperor and after the humiliated return of the deputation to the Emperor,[186]
merely in order to retain them in the Assembly, the dirty attempts at agreement which they were at that time making in all directions, all receive their higher consecration in the following words of Herr Simon:
"The events of the past year have made the word agreement the butt of a very disquieting scorn. It is hardly possible to speak of it any longer without being derided. Yet of two possibilities only one can be realised: either people agree with one another, or they fall upon one another like wild animals." (p. 43.)
That is, either the parties concerned fight their battle to the finish, or they postpone it by means of any compromise they choose. The latter is at all events "more educated" and "more humane". With his theory set forth above, incidentally, Herr Simon opens up an endless series of agreements by means of which he will remain acceptable in any and every "civil society".
The late Imperial Constitution is justified in the following philosophical deduction:
"The Imperial Constitution was thus in fact properly the expression of what was possible without new exertions of violence.... It was the living (!) expression of democratic monarchy, and hence of a contradiction in principle. But much has already existed in actual fact which was self-contradictory in principle, and it is precisely from the actual existence of contradictions in principle that further life develops." (p. 44.)
It can be seen that to apply Hegelian dialectics is still rather more difficult than to quote snippets of verse by Schiller. The Imperial Constitution, if it was "actually" to endure in spite of its "contradiction in principle", ought at least to have expressed in a "principled" fashion that contradiction which "actually" existed. "Actually", there stood on the one hand Prussia and Austria, military absolutism, and on the other the German people, cheated of the fruits of their March rising, cheated to a great extent by their foolish belief in the wretched Frankfurt Assembly, and on the point of daring at last to embark on a new fight against military absolutism. This actual contradiction could only be resolved by an actual conflict. Did the Imperial Constitution express this contradiction? Not in the least. It expressed the contradiction as it existed in March 1848, before Prussia and Austria had recovered their strength, before the opposition had been split, weakened and disarmed by partial defeats. It expressed nothing more than the childish self-deception of the gentlemen of St. Paul's Church, who, in March 1849, still imagined themselves able to prescribe laws to the Prussian and Austrian governments, and to ensure for themselves for all posterity the position of imperial German Barrots, a position as profitable as it would be secure.
Then Herr Simon congratulates himself and his colleagues for being totally unshakable in their self-interested infatuation with the Imperial Constitution:
"Admit in shame, ye renegades of Gotha, that in the midst of pressing passions we have resisted every temptation, have faithfully kept our word and have not altered pur common achievement by even one iota!" (p. 67.)
He then refers to their heroic deeds in connection with Württemberg and the Palatinate, and to their Stuttgart decision of June 8, in which they placed Baden under the protection of the Empire, although by that time the Empire was already essentially under the protection of Baden,[188] and their decisions only proved that they were determined not to shift "by even one iota" from their cowardice, and to maintain by force an illusion in. which they themselves no longer believed.
The accusation that "the Imperial Constitution was only a mask for the republic" is ingeniously rejected by Herr Simon as follows:
"Only if the struggle against all governments without exception had to be pursued to the end, ... and who tells you then that the struggle against all governments without exception ought to have been pursued to the end? Who can calculate them all, the possible permutations of battle and of the fortunes of war, and if the hostile brothers" (governments and people) "had stood face to face after a bloody struggle, exhausted and undecided as to the outcome, and if the spirit of peace and reconciliation had come upon them, would we then have harmed even in the slightest the banner of the Imperial Constitution, under which the brothers could have stretched out their hands to each other in conciliation? Look about you! Place your hands on your hearts! Delve sincerely into your innermost conscience, and you will, you must answer: no, no, and again no!" (p. 70.)
This is the true quiver of oratory from which Herr Simon drew those arrows which he fired to such astonishing effect in St. Paul's Church! — In spite of its flatness, however, this touching pathos has its interest. It shows how the gentlemen of Frankfurt sat calmly in Stuttgart and waited for the hostile parties to fight to a standstill so that they could step between the exhausted combatants at the right moment and offer them the panacea of conciliation, the Imperial Constitution. And the extent to which Herr Simon is expressing the innermost thoughts of his colleagues can be seen from the way in which these gentlemen are even now in session in Berne at innkeeper Benz's in Kesslergasse,a waiting only for a new conflict to break out so that they may step in when the sides "are standing face to face, exhausted and undecided as to the outcome", and offer them as a basis for agreement the Imperial Constitution, this perfect expression of exhaustion and indecision.
See this volume, p. 8.— Ed.
"But I say to you in spite of all that and however painful it may be to roam far from one's fatherland, far from one's home and far from aged parents, on the lonely path of exile, I will not exchange my pure conscience for the remorse of the renegades and the sleepless nights of the rulers, not even if I should be offered a surfeit of all worldly goods!" (p. 71.)
If it were only possible to send these gentlemen into exile! But do they not drag the fatherland along behind them in their suitcases in the form of the stenographic reports from Frankfurt?[3] And do these not waft towards them currents of the purest air of the homeland and the fullness of the fairest self-complacency?
Incidentally, when Herr Simon maintains that he is putting in a good word for those who fought for the Imperial Constitution he is indulging in a pious deceit. Those who fought for the Imperial Constitution had no need of his "Word of Justice". They defended themselves better and more energetically. But Herr Simon has to push them forward in order to conceal the fact that, in the interest of the Frankfurters who have compromised themselves in every respect, in the interest of those who framed the Imperial Constitution, in his own interest, he considers it indispensable to deliver an
oratio pro dômo.(2)
m
III. Guizot, Pourquoi la révolution d’Angleterre a-t-elle réussi? Discours sur l’histoire de la révolution d’Angleterre
The purpose of M. Guizot's pamphlet is to show why Louis Philippe and Guizot's policy should really not have been overthrown on February 24, 1848, and how the abominable character of the French was to blame for the ignominious downfall of the July monarchy of 1830 after an arduous existence of eighteen years and for its failure to attain the permanency enjoyed by the English monarchy ever since 1688.
From this pamphlet one may see how even the most capable people of the ancien régime, people whose own kind of talent in the realm of history can by no means be disputed, have been brought to such a state of perplexity by the fatal events of February that they have lost all understanding of history, that they now even fail to comprehend their own former actions. Instead of being impelled by the February Revolution to realise the totally different historical conditions, the totally different class alignment of society, in the French monarchy of 1830 and the English of 1688, M. Guizot dissolves the whole difference in a few moralising phrases, averring in conclusion that the policy that was overthrown on February 24 "preserves the states and alone quells revolutions".
Exactly formulated, the question M. Guizot wants to answer is as follows: Why has bourgeois society developed longer in England in the form of a constitutional monarchy than in France?
The following passage will serve to characterise M. Guizot's acquaintance with the course of bourgeois development in England:
M. Guizot finds only two things worthy of mention in the reign of William III: maintenance of the balance between Parliament and Crown, and maintenance of the balance in Europe by fighting Louis XIV. Then, under the Hanoverian dynasty, "public opinion" suddenly "veered", no one knows how or why. We see here that M. Guizot applies the expressions most commonly used in French parliamentary debate to English history and believes he has thereby explained it. Similarly, M. Guizot imagined, when he was minister, that he held the balance between Parliament and Crown as well as the balance in Europe, whereas in reality all he did was to barter away piecemeal the whole French state and the whole of French society to the financial Shy locks of the Paris Bourse.
M. Guizot does not consider it worth while mentioning that the wars against Louis XIV were exclusively trade wars waged to destroy French commerce and French sea power, that under William III the domination of the financial bourgeoisie received its first sanction by the establishment of the Bank and the institution of the national debt,[189] and that the manufacturing bourgeoisie was given a new impetus by the consistent application of the system of protective tariffs. Only political phrases mean anything to him. He does not even mention that in Queen Anne's reign the ruling parties could maintain themselves and the constitutional monarchy only by an arbitrary measure, the lengthening of the term of Parliament to seven years, thus almost completely destroying the influence of the people upon the government.
Under the Hanoverian dynasty England was already so far advanced that it could wage trade war against France in its modern form. England itself fought France only in America and East India; on the Continent it confined itself to hiring foreign princes like Frederick II to fight France. And when foreign war assumes a different form, M. Guizot says: "foreign policy ceases to be the main concern" and is replaced by the "maintenance of peace". The extent to which "the development and the struggles of the parliamentary regime now mainly engaged the attention of both the government and the public" may be gauged from the accounts of the bribery practised under Walpole's ministry, which, of course, do not differ a hair's breadth from the scandals that became the order of the day under M. Guizot.
M. Guizot sees two particular reasons why the English Revolution took a more favourable course than the French: first, because the English Revolution was thoroughly religious in character and therefore by no means broke with all the traditions of the past; secondly, because from its very inception it did not act destructively but conservatively, and Parliament defended the old laws in force against the usurpations of the Crown.
Concerning the first point, M. Guizot forgets that free-thinking, which so horrifies him in the French Revolution, was brought to France from no other country than England. Locke was its father, and with Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke it assumed that keen-spirited form which was subsequently developed so brilliantly in France. We thus arrive at the odd conclusion that free-thinking on which, according to M. Guizot, the French Revolution foundered, was one of the most essential products of the religious English Revolution.
As far as the second point is concerned, M. Guizot forgets entirely that the French Revolution began just as conservatively as the English, indeed much more so. Absolutism, particularly as it manifested itself finally in France, was here, too, an innovation, and it was against this innovation that the parliaments[190] rose and defended the old laws, the us et coutumes* of the old monarchy based on estates. Whereas the first step of the French Revolution was the resurrection of the States General,[191] which had been dormant since Henry IV and Louis XIII, no fact of equal classical conservatism can be found in the English Revolution.
According to M. Guizot the main result of the English Revolution was that the King was put in a position where he could not possibly rule against the will of Parliament, particularly the House of Commons. The whole revolution consisted in both sides, Crown and Parliament, overstepping the mark in the beginning and going too far until at last, under William III, they found the correct balance and neutralised each other. M. Guizot deems it superfluous to mention that the subordination of the monarchy to Parliament was its subordination to the rule of a class. He need not therefore go into the details of how this class acquired the power necessary to make the Crown finally its servant. In his opinion the only issues involved in the whole struggle between Charles I and Parliament were purely political prerogatives. Not a word about the reason why Parliament and the class represented in it needed these prerogatives. He has just as little to say about Charles I's direct interference in free competition, which jeopardised England's trade and industry more and more; or about his dependence upon Parliament, which because of his constant financial straits became all the greater the more he sought to defy Parliament. Hence the only explanation he can find for the whole revolution is the malevolence and religious fanaticism of individual troublemakers who would not be satisfied with a moderate freedom. Nor can M. Guizot enlighten us on the connection between the religious movement and the development of bourgeois society. The republic, too, is naturally only the handiwork of a few ambitious, fanatic and evil-minded people. That about the same time attempts to set up a republic were likewise made in Lisbon, Naples and Messina,[192] patterned likewise, as in England, after Holland, is a fact that he entirely fails to mention. Although M. Guizot never loses sight of the French Revolution, he does not even draw the simple conclusion that everywhere the transition from absolute to constitutional monarchy is effected only after fierce struggles and after passage through a republican form of government and that even then the old dynasty, having become useless, has to make room for a usurpatory collateral line. The only information he can give us about the overthrow of the restored English monarchy consists of the most trivial commonplaces. He does not even mention its immediate causes: the fear of the new big landed proprietors created by the Reformation that Catholicism might be re-established, in which event they would naturally have had to give back all the lands of which they had robbed the Church — a proceeding in which seven-tenths of the entire area of England would have changed hands; the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie's dread of Catholicism, which in no way suited their book; the nonchalance with which the Stuarts, to their own advantage and that of the court aristocracy, sold all English industry, as well as trade, to the government of France, that is, to the only country which at that time dangerously, and in many respects successfully, competed with the English, etc. As M. Guizot omits everywhere the most important points, all he has left is a most inadequate and banal narration of mere political events.
The big riddle for M. Guizot, the one for which he sees an explanation only in the superior intelligence of the English, the riddle of the conservatism of the English Revolution, is the persisting alliance of the bourgeoisie with the majority of the big landowners, an alliance that distinguishes the English Revolution essentially from the French, which eliminated big landed property by parcellation. This class of big landowners allied with the bourgeoisie — which, incidentally, arose as early as under Henry VIII — found itself not in contradiction with the conditions of existence of the bourgeoisie as did French landed'property in 1789, but, on the contrary, in perfect harmony with them. In actual fact their landed estates were not feudal but bourgeois property. On the one hand, the landed proprietors provided the industrial bourgeoisie with the labour force necessary to operate its manufactories and, on the other, were in a position to develop agriculture in accordance with the level of industry and trade. Hence their common interests with the bourgeoisie; hence their alliance with it.
For M. Guizot, English history ends with the consolidation of the constitutional monarchy in England. For him everything that followed was merely a pleasant game of seesaw between Tories and Whigs, something in the nature of the great debate between M.Guizot and M.Thiers. In reality, however, it was only with the consolidation of the constitutional monarchy that the large-scale development and transformation of bourgeois society in England began. Where M. Guizot sees only placid tranquillity and idyllic peace, the most violent conflicts, the most thoroughgoing revolutions, were actually developing. It was under the constitutional monarchy that manufacture first developed to a hitherto unknown extent, to make room, subsequently, for big industry, the steam-engine and the gigantic factories. Entire classes of the population disappear, and new ones with new conditions of existence and new requirements take their place. A new, more colossal bourgeoisie arises. While the old bourgeoisie fights the French Revolution, the new one conquers the world market. It becomes so omnipotent that even before the Reform Bill[193] puts direct political power into its hands it forces its opponents to pass laws almost exclusively in its interests and according to its needs. It wins for itself direct representation in Parliament and uses it to destroy the last remnants of real power that landed property retains. Lastly, it is engaged at present in utterly demolishing the handsome edifice of the English constitution which M. Guizot so admires.
While M. Guizot compliments the English on the fact that in their country the detestable excrescences of French social life — republicanism and socialism — have not shaken the foundations of the monarchy, the only source of salvation, the class antagonisms in English society have become more acute than in any other country. Here a bourgeoisie possessed of unequalled wealth and productive forces is opposed by a proletariat whose strength and concentration are likewise unequalled. Thus what M. Guizot acknowledges in England finally comes to this, that here, under the protection of constitutional monarchy, far more numerous and far more radical elements of social revolution have developed than in all other countries of the world taken together.
When the threads of development in England become entangled in a knot which he can no longer cut, even in appearance, with mere political phrases, M. Guizot has recourse to religious phrases, to the armed intervention of God. Thus, for instance, the spirit of the Lord suddenly descends upon the army and prevents Cromwell from proclaiming himself king, etc., etc. From his conscience Guizot seeks safety in God; from the profane public, in his style.
Indeed, not only les rois s'en vont, but also les capacités de la bourgeoisie s'en vont.[3]
Not only "kings pass away", but also "the talent of the bourgeoisie".— Ed.
Endnotes
[182] The reviews of Marx and Engels published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-ökonomische Revue contain a critical analysis of a number of historical, sociological and economic works that appeared after the revolution of 1848-49 and influenced the views of bourgeois ideologists. Their criticism is also directed against the petty-bourgeois participants in and interpreters of these events. The reviews were published unsigned in the literary section of the second and fourth issues of the journal. In 1892 Engels wrote in his biographical essay on Marx: "...Besides he wrote (together with Engels) a number of literary and political reviews." In 1886, the journal Die Neue Zeit, which for a long time had the benefit of Engels' counsel and direction, reprinted the review of the pamphlets by Chenu and de la Hodde, giving Marx and Engels as the authors. It may be assumed that some of the reviews, such as those dealing with the books of Girardin and Guizot, were written by Marx, while the review of Carlyle's book was probably by Engels, who had discussed this author's writings previously (see present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 444-68). Since this cannot be established with absolute certainty, however, all the reviews in this volume are published as the joint works of Marx and Engels. Appended to the first group of reviews, published in the second issue, was an editorial note saying: "All the works indicated here may be obtained in London at Mr. D.Nutt's, 270, the Strand, two doors from St. Clement's Church." From the reviews belonging to this group, that of Daumer's book was published in English in the collection: K.Marx and F.Engels, On Religion, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, and the review of Guizot's book in the collection: K.Marx, Selected Essays, Parsons, London, 1926.
[183] Presumably a case of double irony: by calling Daumer's statements in the book suras (the Arab name for chapters in the Koran), the authors stress their assertive didacticism reminiscent of religious preaching, and at the same time hint at Daumer's book Mahomed und sein Werk, Hamburg, 1848 (to which there is a direct reference later in the review).
[184] The prophecies of Nostradamus, the famous sixteenth-century French astrologer and physician-in-ordinary to Charles IX, were couched in verse and were extremely vague and cryptic. Second sight in Scotsmen—the ability, attributed by superstition to Scottish highlanders, to divine the future and events concealed from ordinary people. Animal magnetism—the theory of the Austrian physician Friedrich Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) that a man's behaviour can be influenced by hypnotism ("animal magnetism").
[185] In St. Paul's Church, Frankfurt am Main, the Frankfurt National Assembly (see Note 8) met in 1848 and 1849.
[186] On March 28, 1849, the Frankfurt National Assembly, having drawn up an all-German Imperial Constitution and elected — by the votes of the liberals and moderate democrats — the Prussian King Frederick William IV "Emperor of the Germans", sent a deputation to Berlin to offer him the Crown. Frederick William rejected it, however (announcing his final decision on April 28, 1849), pleading that the Imperial Constitution was unacceptable because of its revolutionary origin and contents.
[188] In his pamphlet Simon wrote that the deputies to the Frankfurt National Assembly who had not renounced their powers (most of them belonged to the Left wing) had condemned the Württemberg King's denunciation of the Imperial Constitution and pronounced their solidarity with the armed struggle waged in the Palatinate and Baden in defence of the Constitution. In particular, Simon mentioned the resolution adopted by the remnants of the Assembly on June 8, 1849, after it had moved from Frankfurt to Stuttgart. It placed Baden under the protection of the Empire, i.e. the Assembly. The resolution was, however, no more than a declaration. Fearing a broad popular movement, the remaining members of the Assembly gave no specific support to the insurgents and refused to call the insurrectionary troops of Baden and the Palatinate to their defence.
[189] This refers to the establishment of the Bank of England (1694). The founders loaned its fixed capital to the government. This was the beginning of the national debt.
[190] The parliaments in France—judicial institutions that came into being in the Middle Ages. The Paris parliament was the highest court of appeal and also performed important administrative and political functions, such as registering of royal decrees, without which they had no legal force. The parliaments enjoyed the right to remonstrate against government decrees. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries their members were officials of high birth called the "nobility of the mantle". They ultimately became a bulwark of Right-wing opposition to absolutism and of resistance to moderate reforms, and were abolished during the French Revolution, in 1790.
[191] The States General—a body representing the social estates in medieval France. It consisted of clergymen, nobles and burghers. Convened in May 1789, after a 175-year interval, at a time when the bourgeois revolution was maturing in France, the States General were on June 17 transformed by decision of the deputies of the third estate into the National Assembly, which on July 9 proclaimed itself the Constituent Assembly and became the supreme organ of revolutionary France.
[192] This refers to popular uprisings against Spanish rule that took place in Lisbon in 1640, in Naples in 1647 and 1648 and in Messina between 1674 and 1676.
[193] The reference is to the Reform Bill of 1832, which was directed against the political monopoly of the landed and financial aristocracy and gave representatives of the industrial bourgeoisie access to Parliament. The proletariat and the petty bourgeoisie, the main forces in the struggle for the reform, received no electoral rights.
[3] In May 1849, when the counter-revolution was on the upsurge, the Prussian Government issued an order expelling Marx and the other editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung from Prussia. This measure, prepared well in advance, was applied when the main uprisings in the Rhine Province had been virtually suppressed. On his return to Cologne in April 1848, Marx applied for Prussian citizenship which he had been forced to renounce in 1845 when he was living in Belgium as an emigrant. Despite the Cologne Magistrate's favourable reply to his application, however, the Cologne royal district authorities and the Minister of the Interior refused to grant it, and Marx remained a "foreigner", who could at any moment be accused of abusing hospitality and expelled. The royal district authorities' note to this effect followed on May 11, 1849, and on May 16 Marx was given 24 hours to leave Prussia. Weerth and Dronke, who did not enjoy Prussian citizenship either, received similar orders. Legal proceedings were instituted against Engels for his part in the Elberfeld uprising. The last issue, No. 301, of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung appeared on May 19, 1849.