Part 15

The contempt here expressed for the German princes was (as we have said) very characteristic of Stein--an old, free baron of the Empire; and the important matter of German _unity_ and _nationality_ here touched on is more decidedly brought forward in the following extract from a letter to the same person, dated Petersburg, December 1, 1812:--

"I am sorry that your Excellency should see only a Prussian in me, while, at the same time, you reveal yourself to me in the character of a Hanoverian. I have only one fatherland, and that is Germany; and as, according to the ancient constitution, I belonged only to my _whole_ country, and not to any particular part of it, so my heart is given still to the German fatherland, and not to this or that province. In this moment of important development, the dynasties are in fact quite indifferent to me; I view them only as instruments. My wish is, that Germany should become great and strong, and regain its ancient integrity, independence, and nationality; and that it should attain and firmly maintain this position, between France on the one hand and Austria on the other, is as much the interest of Europe in general as of this particular part of it; and it seems to me equally plain, that this great European object cannot possibly be attained by means of the present rotten and crumbling old machinery. This were to erect the system of an artificial military boundary on the ruins of the old baronial castles, and the walls and towns of fortified cities, and to throw aside altogether the ideas of Vauban, Cohorn, and Montalembert.

"My confession of faith in this matter is contained in one word--UNITY. And if my plan does not please you, take another: Put Austria in the place of Prussia, and make it lord of Germany--if this be practicable--only don't bring back the old Montagues and Capulets, and the halls of the old barons. If the bloody contest which Germany has already stood for twenty years, and is now called upon to undergo again, be to end in a FARCE, ('_mit einem possenspiel endigen_,') I for one shall prefer to have nothing to do with the matter, and will take myself back into private life with all possible speed and comfort."

In this letter we see applied to the political constitution of Germany, as it was to be arranged at the peace, all that comprehensive grandeur of idea, combined with decision and despotism (it would be false to use a milder word) of execution, which had, in the single year 1808, done such wonders in reconstructing the social fabric in Prussia. But it was one thing to deal despotically with the internal government of one state--especially after a battle of Jena!--and another thing to apply the same over-riding principle to the complex relations of many states. It was one thing to say to the debased aristocracy of Prussia, Thou shalt admit the poor into the participation of thy privileges; the serf shall be a free man, and the merchant shall shake hands with the noble: quite a different thing to say to the King of Bavaria, in the spring of 1813, after the peace, Thou shalt be swallowed up in Austria; and to the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, Thou, who didst in 1807 flee _from_ Jerome, shalt in 1813 flee _to_ Frederick William III., who, like mighty Brahma, (in the Hindoo history,) shall absorb thee quite into his Prussian godhead. The eager and impetuous old Freiherr, with his racing pulse, had manifestly been anticipating a few centuries, and attempting to dictate to necessity here. He wished a good thing, perhaps, and a great thing; but a thing that, in the circumstances, could not possibly be. Hear how sensibly the calm, cool, and moderate Hanoverian, Graf Münster, argues the matter. 'Tis plain that our brave Luther is getting too violent, and will require a Melancthon and an Erasmus to keep him in order.

"London, 4th January 1813.

"With regard to the future arrangements of the German states, you yourself say, we should invite the expelled princes to join our cause; and we cannot do this surely, if we intend, after the risk is over, to throw them overboard: or is it likely that they will resign of their own accord, and offer their thrones to either of the two masters of whom we may give them the option? The peace of Westphalia you call an abortion. Be it so; but it was better any how than a thirty years' war; and I see nothing more likely than such war to arise from any project to _conquer_ Germany, and to make a violent subjugation of Bavaria, Saxony, Hessia, Baden, Brunswick, &c. In the most of these lands, the princes themselves will have the chief voice in determining what side their subjects shall take in the approaching struggle. I do not speak particularly of the Confederation of the Rhine, or of the state of things introduced in 1802; but from the days of Monbod and Hernam until now, Germany has always been divided, except, indeed, for one short period, during which the country suffered much misery. It is plain enough, I grant, that the constitution of Germany was not the work of an enlightened national will--did not proceed from any clear consideration of the best interests of the country--but _what constitution in the world is there that has not been the work, in a great measure, of accidental circumstances_? Since Solon and Lycurgus, only the Constituent National Assembly in France, and the stupid Cortes in Spain, have dreamed of such a thing as constitution-making, and the work of both has been blown, as we see, to the four winds. 'Tis true England is trying something of the same kind just now in the Sicilies; but God preserve us from such a mistaken course! Your criticism on our constitution is, indeed, altogether too severe; from the principles of the Teutonic constitution, all public liberty in Europe originally sprang. The contest in which we are engaged will certainly not end in a '_farce_;' but why you should go back into private life, preferring to be rather the grave-digger than the physician of our present political state, I really cannot conceive. Let us rather endeavour after what is practically attainable, than grasp at splendid theoretical possibilities. You are fond of English authorities; let me, therefore, remind you of him who said--_the practice of a constitution is frequently very different from its theory_. There is much that I like in Arndt's book, and its author I highly esteem; but the way of amelioration (_Verbesserung_) which I propose to follow, seems to present some prospect of success, where your _revolutionary_ projects bring with them a risk of losing all.

"You say that the _dynasties_ are a matter of indifference to you. To me they are not. There lives in them a spirit which one can trace through ages. Read only what Müller in his _Fürstenbund_ says of the Guelphs. 'Need I mention the fame of the Guelphs, whose spirit of unbending independence has made their name a watchword for liberty?' Even England has never been so free as under the three Georges, and the fourth George brings the same sentiments with him to the throne. Compare with this your slavish Prussian system! I respect Frederick the Great, but he caused the ruin of Germany by his aggrandizement, and the ruin, let me add, of his own state too, by creating a body that only his great soul could animate, and which, after his death, lay helpless. When I showed the Prince Regent your remarks on the dynasties, he exclaimed--If Stein is quite indifferent to them, why does he not name us (Hanover) instead of PRUSSIA? I feel inclined to put the same question. Let us be content if we can do the best with the materials given us for our own age. ('_Lassen sie uns doch auch für unsere eigene Lebenszeit sorgen._') Why think particularly of the King of Prussia, a man whom, with the same breath that you exalt him, you put under three subjects,[20] and take at the same time his army into your own hands, to keep him from doing harm? I pray your Excellency to observe, that while my proposal leaves us free hands for any possible future improvement, your two plans will offend all parties: your first plan, to make Austria swallow up Germany, will offend all Europe, and Germany to boot; your second plan, to divide Germany between Austria and Prussia, will excite the opposition not only of Russia, England, and Sweden, but of all those North Germans who are not prepared to receive as a _boon, the Prussian system with cell its machinery of boards and councils, of auscultants and assessors, and its hereditary incapacity to understand that old maxim of political philosophy_--GOVERNA MEGLIO CHI MEN GOVERNA--He governs best who governs least.

"Neither am I at all prepared to agree with what you say on the subject of the German courts. I have lived long in great courts, and I know not a few small ones; and I can honestly say, that the state of morals among the peasants in country villages has always appeared to me more corrupt than in the highest circles of polite and cultivated society; and I can find little difference in principle between the case of one man intriguing in high circles for _grandes entrées_, and that of another setting a similar machinery to work to obtain the presidency in any church meeting of a small parish, or a union of parishes; between one who, to attain a selfish object, flatters a prince, and another who flatters the prefect of a department. If a difference is to be made, the higher object which excites the higher passions seems rather entitled to a preference.

"Again, I do not see why we should put altogether out of view, how much science, civilization, and wealth, have gained by the multiplication of central points, where all these things may be cherished, and whence, as from so many life-giving fountains, they may be beneficently dispensed. What country is there that can compete with Germany in respect of scientific culture?--and have the courts of so many princes not contributed to this result? And in ancient Greece was it not a similar state of things, that, as one great element at least, produced a similar result? But I will not attempt to discuss this subject in all its bearings. Enough, if you will believe me, that in the arrangement of the future political state of Germany, I do not look for a mere FARCE; while, at the same time, I feel obliged to protest decidedly, in present circumstances at least, against your project of uniting Germany under one or two masters."

There are many admirable points in the above letter; and after pondering it well, no intelligent reader will doubt for a moment that the schemes of Stein with regard to German _unity_, were not only impracticable in their main scope, but, in some respects, of very questionable propriety. It were necessary, however, to have had the experience of a Prussian, and the heart of a Stein, in the year 1813, if one would fully understand how imperatively these practical impossibilities must have presented themselves to the earliest and patriotic minds of those days. Convinced that the cool Hanoverian is right, we still feel inclined to sympathise with the hot Prussian, who is in the wrong. "_Malo cum Plutone errare._" Stein followed Alexander into Germany, witnessed the battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, disheartening as they were, like all true Germans, undismayed: and on the 23d August 1813, shortly after the resumption of hostilities, we find him a second time in Prague, and writing most characteristically as follows:--

"The spirit of the people here is by no means what it was in 1809; and for this plain reason, that the government does nothing, and will do nothing, to rouse it. At that time (1809) the STADIONS held the helm, and they used every means to waken the nobler feelings of human nature, and they attained their object. Now, at the head of affairs, we have a cold, scheming, shallow, calculating man, who is afraid of nothing so much as an energetic measure--loves nothing more than a goal at the nearest possible distance from his nose--and is always ready to help himself out of a scrape with any miserable patchwork that may serve for the nonce. Hence the marriage introduced by a divorce, the foolish hope of a partial peace, the childish congress, the wretched ultimatum, and so forth."

And on the 14th September, after the war was fairly broken out again, we find the following remarks occasioned by the untoward battle of Dresden:--

"The latest events have taught us what to think of our new allies, and their commander, (Schwartzenberg.) We have gained an increase in _mass_, not in _insight_, nobility of sentiment, or vigour; we now understand what the fruits are of the new system pursued in Austria since 1810. From 1806 to 1809, the two Stadions gave all their energy to the great work of elevating the spirit of the nation, and at the same time strengthening and fully equipping the army; and they succeeded in both points; the nation was animated by the most devoted enthusiasm, the army fought with true valour. Since the peace of Vienna, on the other hand, the new ministry has been concerned only to purchase a beggarly peace, to disorganize the army, to cripple the public spirit, and to solve the great problem of European regeneration by the miserable arts of diplomacy. This also has succeeded. The nation has become lukewarm, and the army fight with no very remarkable display of soldiership. * * * The man who calculates, but without depth, may be a very good book-keeper, but is no mathematician.

"The result, as we have hitherto seen, is, that we have fought EVERY WHERE with distinguished success, except where _the grand army_ was present, that between Russia and Austria no very friendly feelings prevail, ('_eine grosse Abneigung herrscht_,') made worse, of course, by the well-known lukewarmness of the latter power. Over and above all this, Metternich aims at a preponderant influence such as neither his talents, his character, nor the military position of the Austrian empire entitles him to. The Emperor Alexander sees all this clearly, and will very probably undertake the command of his own and the Prussian army in person; and the movement of masses thus animated, will then communicate itself to the inert Austrians.

"It is of the utmost importance that some conclusion should be come to about the settlement of Germany. From * * * expect no comprehensive views; he seeks for nothing but the shortest and most comfortable road, and will content himself with respectable vamping in any shape. The history of the negotiations proves this; and had it not been for the MADNESS OF NAPOLEON, we should unquestionably have had for the third, fourth, and fifth time, a ruinous and wretched peace."

The person so severely handled in two places of these letters where he is not named, is plainly enough Prince Metternich; a statesman who, whatever may be his abilities, and whatever may have been his merits--and merits in the management of German affairs--from the peace of Vienna in 1809, to that of Paris in 1815, (and it were out of place to attempt discussing these points here,) was plainly in every respect the _antipodes_ of Stein; and a man whom the hot Prussian baron could no more form a just judgment of, than Martin Luther could of Erasmus. Diplomatists and mere politicians, even the best of them, are seldom--to say the least of it--the most noble specimens of human nature: there are bad and good amongst them of course; but Stein, in his despotic sweeping style, was fond of classing them all together, as in one of his letters to Gagern; where, after expressing his confident reliance on "Providence, and the hand of a loving Father who guides all," he adds, but "from the sly crafty animals called politicians--(the original is English)--from these _homunciones_ I expect nothing."

The official position which Stein occupied during the eventful year 1813, was that of Supreme Director of the Interim Central Board of Administration (_Central Verwaltung_) of the conquered provinces of Germany, till arrangements should be made for their final disposal in a general congress. When that congress came to do its work, of course he had nothing more to do; and it will be pretty evident to the reader, from the temper and opinions of the man, as above exhibited, that he was in nowise calculated to work efficiently with such men as Metternich, Talleyrand, and Lord Castlereagh, at Vienna. The very composition of the congress, made up of every possible complex and contending interest, rendered from the beginning the realization of Stein's patriotic views, with regard to German unity, impossible. In such congregations of working and counter-working diplomatists, not the triumph of any great principle, but the compromise of a number of petty claims, is generally the result; but compromise and patchwork of every kind were, to a man of Stein's temper, only another name for the DEVIL. The congress of Vienna, so far as Germany was concerned, ended, according to his views, in a "FARCE;" for not only were the other German states, great and small, left entire, but SAXONY also--Napoleon's centre and base in the late war--was preserved, only a half (instead of the whole) of it being cut off for the great German object of forming "a strong Prussia." And with regard to this point, we must confess we feel, in some respects, inclined to agree with the Prussian baron. If Saxony was to be made an exception to the general rule, it would have been better, for many reasons, to have handed it over undivided to the great Northern power. If neither one strong German empire, nor an equally-poised federal system, was any longer possible, a strong Prussia was certainly a thing imperatively called for. But congresses are congresses; and we must even content ourselves with the most convenient adjustment of contending claims that was found practicable at the time; and if the result seems unsatisfactory, we may turn away our eyes from it; occupy ourselves with the best business that offers itself, and let God work. So at least Stein did. He kept his word to Count Münster most faithfully; and, after the decisive thunders of Leipsig and Waterloo, having done his part to bring the great European tragedy to a worthy catastrophe, he retired from witnessing the "farce," with all convenient speed, into private life, and was heard of no more in court or cabinet in Berlin, from that day till his death. In the spring of 1816, we find him, in his own ancestral castle in Nassau, addressing a fiend as follows:--"Yes, dear friend, we have won much; but much also should have been otherwise. God governs the world, and abandons no German; and if we remain true and German, (_treu und Deutsch_,) we shall take up the matter some other day with the French again, and settle the account more satisfactorily. For myself, I long to depart; _this world is, once for all, so constituted, that a man cannot walk on the straight path, and yet ought not to walk on the crooked_. 'Tis even so; circumstances and relations drive and force men. They act, and think they are the doers; but it is God that decides." This most characteristic passage expresses only Stein's feeling, that the French had been allowed to escape so cheaply, by the generosity of the Allies, at the peace of Paris; but he had much more substantial grievances to vex him nearer home; and, next to the feeble machinery of the diet at Frankfort, that which hurt him most was the political reaction at Berlin that commenced immediately after the peace, and threatened to undo that great social work which he had so boldly begun in 1808. However much a Prussian in his political sympathies, Stein was essentially an Englishman in his principles; the tendency of all his measures, as they were introduced by himself, or followed out by Hardenberg, was to temper the military and bureaucratic despotism of Frederick the Great by a wise admixture of popular influence; he wished a "constitution" after the English model, as much as circumstances might permit, not in form merely but in deed; he was not afraid of free discussion among a well-educated people like the Germans, and was too noble-minded to imitate, in Berlin or Maine, the spy-system on which Napoleon had based his immoral monarchy of physical force at Paris. It was not to be expected, however, that in a country hitherto governed solely by the Court and by the Bureau, these English views of Stein should not have met with sturdy opposition; in fact it was mainly by help of the battle of Jena, that he was enabled to do what he did for creating a Prussian PEOPLE in 1808. Now that terrible shock had passed; and the host of defeated bureaucratists and court minions, after the battle for the liberation of the fatherland had been fought by others, now began to crown into their old places, and to occupy the ears of a king more honest to promise what was right than strong to do it. Accordingly, instead of "freedom of the press" and "constitution" in Prussia, we have heard no sound, since the year 1815, but that of prohibited books, imaginary conspiracies of beer-inspired Burschen, deposed professors, and banished old Luther; and every thing, in short, except what the pious old Frederick William III. promised, or was made to appear to promise, with such gracious, popular, and constitutional phrases at Vienna, in the year 1815. Whether the military and bureaucratic despotism of Germany may not, after all, be a better system of government on the whole than our strange system of local and corporate influence of all sorts, of fermenting acids and alkalis, here is a question which some persons of a speculative disposition may consider open enough; but that the supreme power having once pledged itself to give a people a free constitution and freedom of the press, should act with honour, and do what was promised, seems, (if there be any such thing as public morals at all,) under any form of government, nothing more than what common policy as well as propriety would dictate. Those who bear the rule in Germany, however, have, for the last thirty years, done every thing that they possibly could do to make the royal word a public mockery, and a shame; one cannot review the well-known despotic proceedings of the German diet, first in 1829, and afterwards in 1832, without subscribing a most full assent to the sentence of the Baron von Stein, when he says, in reference to those very matters--"the falsehood that prevails in our age is deserving of the most serious reprehension." And again, "Our German government sink more and more daily in public estimation by their timidity and perfidy." With regard to the whole system, indeed, of Prussian government, the system of doing every thing by official men, and nothing by voluntary movement of the people, and apart from this special matter of the "_constitution_," Stein was accustomed to use the strongest language of reprobation; witness the following letter to Von Gagern, dated 24th August 1821. Coppenberg was a favourite seat of the Baron in Westphalia.