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it, were of a most depressing nature. The most venturous of all Hardenberg's measures was that by which he entirely new-modelled the system, and did nothing less than create a new order of independent landed proprietors. The Erbunterthänigkeit, or hereditary subjection of the peasantry to the proprietors of the estates on which they were born, had been already abolished by Stein: Next were removed the absurd restrictions which had so long operated, with accumulating force, to diminish the productiveness of land, by fettering the proprietor not merely in the disposal, but even in the mode of cultivating his estate. Then came forth, in 1810, a royal edict, effecting, by a single stroke of the pen, a greater and more decisive change than has resulted from any modern legislative act, and one on which a more popular form of government would scarcely have ventured. It enacted, that all the peasantry of the kingdom should in future be free, hereditary proprietors of the lands which hitherto they had held only as hereditary tenants, on condition that they gave up to the landlord a fixed proportion of them. The peasantry formed two classes. The first consisted of those who enjoyed what may be termed a hereditary lease, that is, who held lands to which the landlord was bound, on the death of the tenant in possession, to admit his successor, or, at least, some near relation. The right of the landlord was thus greatly inferior to that of unlimited property; he had not his choice of a tenant; the lease was likely to remain in the same family as long as the estate in his own; and, in general, he had not the power of increasing the rent, which had been originally fixed, centuries, perhaps, before, whether it consisted in produce or services. These peasants, on giving up one-third of their farms to the landlord, became unlimited proprietors of the remainder. The second class consisted of peasants whose title endured only for life, or a fixed term of years. In this case, the landlord was not bound to continue the lease, on its termination, to the former tenant, or any of his descendants; but still he was far from being unlimited proprietor; he was bound to replace the former tenant with a person of the same rank; he was prohibited to take the lands into his own possession, or cultivate them with his own capital. His right, however, was clearly more absolute than in the former case, and it is difficult to see what claim the tenant could set up beyond the endurance of his lease. That such restrictions rendered the estate less valuable to the proprietor, may have been a very good reason for abolishing them entirely, but seems to be no reason at all for taking a portion of the lands from him who had every right to them, to give it to him who had no right whatever, but that of possession, under his temporary lease. But this class of peasants, too, (and they are supposed to have been by far the more numerous,) on giving up one-half of their farms, became absolute proprietors of the remainder. The half thus taken from the landlords, appears just to have been a price exacted from them for the more valuable enjoyment of the other;-as if the government had said to them, give up to our disposal a certain portion of your estates, and we shall so sweep away those old restrictions which render them unproductive to you, that what remains will speedily be as valuable as the whole was before.

"It cannot be denied, therefore, that this famous edict, especially in the latter of the two cases, was a very stern interference with the rights of private property; nor is it wonderful that those against whom it was directed should have sternly opposed it; but the minister was sterner still. He found the finances ruined, and the treasury attacked by demands, which required that the treasury should be filled; he saw the imperious necessity of rendering agriculture more productive; and though it may be doubted, whether the same end might not have been gained by new-modelling the relations between the parties, as landlord and tenant, instead of stripping the former to create a new race of proprietors, there is no doubt at all as to the success of the measure, in increasing the productiveness of the soil. Even those of the aristocracy, who have waged war most bitterly against Hardenberg's reforms, allow that, in regard to agriculture, this law has produced incredible good. It must be confessed,' says one of them, that, in ten years, it has carried us forward a whole century;'-the best of all experimental proofs how injurious the old relations between the proprietors and the labourers of the soil must have been to the prosperity of the country.

"The direct operation of this measure necessarily was to make a great deal of property change hands; but this effect was farther increased by its indirect operation. The law appeared at a moment when the greater part of the estates of the nobility were burdened with debts, and the proprietors were now deprived of their rentals. They indeed had land thrown back upon their hands; but this only multiplied their embarrassments. In the hands of their boors, the soil had been productive to them; now that it was in their own, they had neither skill nor capital to carry on its profitable cultivation, and

This regulation has sometimes been ascribed to anxiety to keep up the numbers of the peasantry to fill the armies; a more probable explanation is to be found in the exemption of the nobility, that is, generally speaking, the landholders, from taxation. They established this exemption in favour of the property which they retained in their own hands, by abandoning to taxation the lands which they had given out to the peasantry, Bauernhofe. It thus became the interest of the Crown to prevent any diminution of the Bauernhöfe, the only taxable land in the country. To abolish this restriction, was one of Stein's first measures, in 1808; for he was determined to make all land taxable, without exception.

new loans only added to the interest which already threatened to consume its probable fruits. The consequence of all this was, that, besides the portion of land secured in free property to the peasantry, much of the remainder came into the market, and the purchasers were generally persons who had acquired wealth by trade or manufactures.* The sale of the royal domains, to supply the necessities of the state, operated powerfully in the same way. These domains always formed a most important item in the revenue of a German prince, and one which was totally independent of any control, even that of the imperfectly constituted estates. In Prussia, they were estimated to yield annually nearly half a million Sterling, even in the hands of farmers, and, under the changes which have so rapidly augmented the value of the soil all over the kingdom, they would soon have become much more profitable. But, while compelled to tax severely the property of his subjects, the king refused to spare his own; and, in 1811, an edict was issued, authorizing the sale of the royal domains at twenty-five years' purchase of the estimated rental. These, too, passed into the hands of the purchasers not connected with the aristocracy; for the aristocracy, so far from being able to purchase the estates of others, were selling their own estates to pay their debts. The party opposed to Hardenberg has not ceased to lament that the Crown should thus have been shorn of its native and independent glories; for it ought to be powerful,' say they, by its own revenues and possessions. Our principles of government teach us a different doctrine. "Beneficial as the economical effects of this division of property may have been, its political results are no less important. It has created a new class of citizens, and these the most valuable of all citizens; every trace, not merely of subjection, but of restraint, has been removed from the industrious, but poor and degraded peasants, and they have at once been converted into independent landed proprietors, resembling much the petits proprictaires created by the French Revolution. In Pomerania, for example, the estates of the nobility were calculated to contain 260 square miles. Those of free proprietors, not noble, only five miles. Of the former, about 100 were Bauernhöfe, in the hands of the peasantry; and, by the operation of the law, 60 of these would still remain the property of the boors who cultivated them. Thus there is now twelve times as much landed property, in this province, belonging to persons who are not noble, as there was before the appearance of this edict. The race of boors is not extinct; for the provisions of the law are not imperative, if both parties prefer remaining in their old relation; but this is a preference which, on the part of the peasant at least, is not to be expected. Care has been taken that no new relations of the same kind shall be formed. A proprietor might settle his agricultural servants upon his grounds, giving them land, instead of wages, and binding them to hereditary service; this would just have been the seed of a new race of boors to toil under the old personal services. Probably the thing had been attempted; for, in 1811, an edict appeared, which, while it allows the proprietor to pay his servants in whole or in part with the use of land, limits the duration of such a contract to twelve years. It prohibits him absolutely from giving these families land heritably on condition of service; if a single acre is to be given in property, it must either be a proper sale, or a fixed rent must be stipulated in money or produce. Hardenberg was resolved that his measure should be complete.

"When to the peasants who have thus become landholders, is added the numerous class of citizens, not noble, who have come into the possession of landed property by the sales of the royal domains, and the necessities of so many of the higher orders, it is not difficult to foresee the political consequences of such a body of citizens gradually rising in wealth and respectability, and dignified by that feeling of self-esteem which usually accompanies the independent possession of property. Unless their progress be impeded by extraneous circumstances, they must rise to political influence, because they will gradually become fitting depositaries of it. It would scarcely be too much to say, that the Prussian government must have contemplated such a change; for its administration, during the last fourteen years, has been directed to produce a state of society in which pure despotism cannot long exist but by force; it has been throwing its subjects into those relations which, by the very course of nature, give the people political influence

It will scarcely be believed that, up to 1807, a person not noble could only by accident find a piece of land, whatever number of estates might be in the market, which he would be allowed to purchase. By far the greater portion of the landed property consisted of estates-noble; and if the proprietor brought his estate into the market, only a nobleman could purchase it. The merchant, the banker, the artist, the manufacturer, every citizen, in short, who had acquired wealth by industry and skill, lay under an absolute prohibition against investing it in land, unless he previously purchased a patent of nobility, or stumbled on one of those few spots which, in former days, had escaped the hands of a noble proprietor, small in number, and seldom in the market. Even Frederick the Great lent his aid to perpetuate this preposterous system, in the idea that he would best compel the investment of capital in trade and manufactures, by making it impossible to dispose of it, when realized, in agricultural pursuits, a plan which led to the depression of agriculture, the staple of the kingdom, as certainly as it was directed in vain to cherish artificially a manufacturing activity, on which the country is much less dependent. This could not possibly last; the noble proprietors were regularly becoming poorer, and the same course of events which compelled so many of them to sell disabled them generally, from buying; destitute of capital to cultivate their own estates, it was not among them that the purchasers of the royal domains were to be looked for. In 1807, Stein swept away the whole mass of absurd re. strictions, and every man was made capable of holding every kind of property.

by making them fit to exercise it. Is there anything in political history that should make us wish to see them in possession of it sooner? Is it not better, that liberty should rise spontaneously from a soil prepared for its reception, and in which its seeds have gradually been maturing in the natural progress of society, than violently to plant it on stony and thorny ground, where no congenial qualities give strength to its roots, and beauty to its blossoms, where it does not throw wide its perennial shadow, under which the people may find happiness and refuge, but springs up, like the gourd of Jonahı, in the night of popular tumult, and unnatural and extravagant innovation, to perish in the morning beneath the heat of reckless faction, or the consuming fire of foreign interference?

"This great, and somewhat violent measure, of creating in the state a new order of citizens possessing independent property, was preceded and followed by a crowd of other reforms, all tending to the same end, to let loose the energies of all classes of the people, and bring them into a more comfortable social relation to each other. While the peasantry were not only set free, but converted into landholders, the aristocracy were sternly deprived of that exemption from taxation which, more than anything else, renders them odious in every country where it has been allowed to remain. They struggled hard to keep their estates beyond the reach of the land tax, but the king and Hardenberg were inflexible: 'We hope,' says the royal edict, that those to whom this measure will apply will reflect, that, in future, they will be free from the reproach of escaping public burdens at the expence of their fellow-subjects. They will likewise reflect, that the tax to be laid upon them will not equal the expence to which they would be put, if called on to perform the military services which originally burdened their estates. The whole financial system acquired an uniformity and equality of distribution, which simplified it to all, and diminished the expence of collection, while it increased the revenue. Above all, that anomalous system, under which every province had its own budget, and its peculiar taxes, was destroyed, and Hardenberg, after much opposition, carried through one uniform and universal system for the whole monarchy. This enabled him to get rid of another monstrous evil. Under the miserable system of financial separation, every province and every town was surrounded with custom-houses, taxing and watching the productions of its neighbours, as if they came from foreign countries, and discouraging all internal communication. The whole was swept away. At the same time, the national expenditure in its various departments, the ways and means, the state of the public debt, and the funds for meeting it, were given forth with a publicity which produced confidence in Prussia, and alarm, as setting a bad example, in some less prudent cabinets. Those amongst ourselves who clamour most loudly against the misconduct of the Prussian government, will allow, that the secularization and sale of the church lands was a liberal and patriotic measure; those who more wisely think, that an arbitrary attack on any species of property endangers the security of all property, will lament that the public necessities should have rendered it adviseable. The servitudes of thirlage, of brewing beer, and distilling spirituous liquors, existed in their most oppressive form, discouraging agriculture, and fostering the ruinous spirit of monopoly. They were abolished with so unsparing a hand, that, though indemnification was not absolutely refused, the forms and modes of proof of loss sustained to found a claim to it were of such a nature, as to render it difficult to be procured, and trifling when made good. This was too unsparing.

"In the towns there was much less to be done; it was only necessary to release their arts and manufactures from old restraints, and rouse their citizens to an interest in the public weal. Hardenberg attempted the first by a measure on which more popular governments have not yet been bold enough to venture, however strongly it has been recommended by political economists; he struck down at one blow all guildries and corporations, not those larger forms, which include all the citizens of a town, and constitute a borough, but those subordinate forms which regard particular classes and professions. But, whether it was from views of finance, or that he found himself compelled, by opposing interests, to yield something to the old principle, that the public is totally unqualified to judge who serves them well, and who serves them badly, but must have some person to make the discovery for them, the Chancellor seems to have lost his way in this measure. He left every man at liberty to follow every profession, free from the fetters of an incorporated body; but he converted the government into one huge, universal corporation, and allowed no man to pursue any profession without annually procuring and paying for the permission of the state. The Gewerbsteuer, introduced in 1810, is a yearly tax on every man who follows a profession, on account of that profession; it is like our ale and pedlar licences, but it is universal. So far, it is only financial; but the licence by no means follows as a matter of course, and here reappears the incorporation spirit; every member of those professions, which are held to concern more nearly the public weal, must produce a certificate of the provincial government,

Let those who accuse the Prussian government of disregarding the improvement of its subjects re flect, that it was only in 1799, that the British Parliament thought of contriving means to rescue the agriculture of Scotland from this servitude.

that he is duly qualified to exercise it. Doctors and chimney-sweeps, midwives and ship-builders, notaries-public and mill-wrights, booksellers and makers of water-pipes, with a host of other equally homogeneous professionalists, must be guaranteed by that department of the government within whose sphere their occupation is most naturally included, as perfectly fit to execute their professions. The system is cumbersome, but it wants, at least, the exclusive esprit de corps of corporations.

"The other and more important object, that of rousing the citizens to an active concern in the affairs of their own community, had already been accomplished by Stein in his Städteordnung, or Constitution for the cities, which was completed and promulgated in 1808. He did not go the length of annual parliaments and universal suffrage, for the magistracy is elected only every third year; but the elective franchise is so widely distributed among all resident householders, of a certain income or rental, that none are excluded whom it would be proper to admit. Nay, complaints are sometimes heard from persons of the upper ranks, that it compels them to give up paying any attention to civic affairs, because it places too direct and overwhelming an influence in the hands of the lower orders. There can be no doubt, however, of the good which it has done, were there nothing else than the publicity which it has bestowed on the management and proceedings of public and charitable institutions. The first merchant of Breslau, the second city of the monarchy, told me it was impossible to conceive what a change it had effected for the better, and what interest every citizen now took in the public affairs of the corporation, in hospitals and schools, in roads, and bridges, and pavements, and water-pipes. 'Nay,' added he, by our example, we have even compelled the Catho lic charities to print accounts of their funds and proceedings; for, without doing so, they could not have stood against us in public confidence.' This is the true view of the matter; nor is there any danger that the democratic principle will be extravagant in the subordinate communities, while the despotic principle is so strong in the general govern, ment of the country.

6

"Such has been the general spirit of the administration of Prussia, since the battle of Jena; and it would be gross injustice to her government to deny, that in all this it has acted with an honest and effective view to the public welfare, and has betrayed anything but a selfish or prejudiced attachment to old and mischievous relations; that was no part of the character of either Stein or Hardenberg. The government is in its forms a despotic one; it wields a censorship; it is armed with a strict and stern police; and, in one sense, the property of the subject is at its disposal, in so far as the portion of his goods which he shall contribute to the public service depends only on the pleasure of the government; but let not our just hatred of despotic forms make us blind to substantial good. Under these forms, the government, not more from policy than inclination, has been guilty of no oppressions which might place it in dangerous opposition to public feeling or opinion; while it has crowded its administration with a rapid succession of ameliorations, which gave new life to all the weightiest interests of the state, and brought all classes of society into a more natural array, and which only ignorance or prejudice can deny to have been equally beneficial to the people, and honourable to the executive. I greatly doubt, whether there be any example of a popular government doing so much real good in so short a time, and with so much continued effect. When a minister roots out abuses which impede individual prosperity, gives free course to the arts and industry of the country, throws open to the degraded the paths of comfort and respectability, and brings down the artificial privileges of the high to that elevation which nature demands in every stable form of political society; while he thus prepares a people for a popular government, while, at the same time, by this very preparation, he creates the safest and most unfailing means of obtaining it, he stands much higher, as a statesman and philosopher, than the minister who rests satisfied with the easy praise, and the more than doubtful experiment, of giving popular forms to a people which knows neither how to value nor exercise them. The statesmen of this age, more than of any other, ought to have learned the folly of casting the political pearl before swine.

"This is no defence of despotism; it is a statement of the good which the Prussian government has done, and an elucidation of the general spirit of improvement in which it has acted; but it furnishes no reason for retaining the despotic forms under which this good has been wrought out, so soon as the public wishes require, and the public mind is, in some measure, capable of using more liberal and manly instruments. On hand, it is most unfair (and yet, in relation to Prussia, nothing is more common) to forget what a monarch has done for his subjects, in our hatred of the fact that he has done it without their assistance, and to set down his government as a mere ignorant, selfish, and debasing tyranny. The despotism of Prussia stands as far above that of Naples, or Austria, or Spain, as our own constitution stands above the mutilated Charter of France. The people are personally attached to their king; and, in regard to his government, they feel and recognize the real good which has been done infinitely more strongly than the want of the unknown good which is yet to be attained, and which alone can secure the continuance of all the rest. They have not enjoyed the political 121 VOL. XVI.

experience and education which would teach them the value of this security; and even the better informed classes tremble at the thought of exacting it by popular clamour, because they see it must speedily come of itself. From the Elbe to the Oder, I found nothing to make me believe in the existence of that general discontent and ripeness for revolt which have been broadly asserted, more than once, to exist in Prussia; and it would be wonderful to find a people to whom all political thinking is new, who knew nothing of political theories, and suffer no personal oppressions, ready to raise the shout of insurrection.

"To this it is commonly added, that the general discontent is only forcibly kept down by the large standing army. The more I understood the constitution of the Prussian army, the more difficult I found it to admit this constantlyjrepeated assertion. Not only is every male, of a certain age, a regularly trained soldier, the most difficult of all populations to be crushed by force, when they are once warmed by a popular cause, but by far the greater part of this supposed despotic instrument consists of men taken, and taken only for a time, from the body of citizens against whom they are to be employed. There is always, indeed, a very large army on foot, and the foreign relations of Prussia render the maintenance of a large force indispensable; but it is, in fact, a militia. We have no standing army at all, properly speaking,' said an officer of the Guards to me; 'what may be called our standing army is, in reality, nothing but a school, in which all citizens, without exception, between twenty and thirty-two years of age, are trained to be soldiers. Three years are reckoned sufficient for this purpose. A third of our army is annually changed. Those who have served their three years are sent home, form what is called the War Reserve, and, in case of war, are first called out. Their place is supplied by a new draught from the young men who have not yet been out; and so it goes on.' Surely a military force so constituted is not that to which a despot can well trust for enchaining a struggling people; if popular feeling were against him, these men would bring it along with them to his very standard. I cannot help thinking, that, if it were once come to this between the people and government of Prussia, it would not be in his own bayonets, but in those of Russia and Austria, that Frederick William would have to seek a trust-worthy ally.

"It will never do to judge of the general feeling of a country from the mad tenets of academical youths, (who are despised by none more heartily than by the people themselves,) or from the still less pardonable excesses of hot-headed teachers. When I was in Berlin, a plot, headed by a schoolmaster, was detected in Stargard, in Pomerania; the object was, to proclaim the Spanish Constitution, and assassinate the ministers and other persons of weight who might naturally be supposed to be hostile to the innovation. This no more proves the Prussian people to be ripe for revolt, than it proves them to be ready to be murderers.

"In judging of the political feelings of a country, a Briton is apt to be deceived by his own political habits still more than by partial observation. The political exercises and education which we enjoy, are riches which we may well wish to see in the possession of others; but they lead us into a thousand fallacies, when they make us conclude, from what our own feelings would be under any given institutions, that another people, whose very prejudices go with its government, must be just as ready to present a claim of right, bring the king to trial, or declare the throne to be vacant. Prussia is by no means the only country of Germany where the people know nothing of that love of political thinking and information which pervades ourselves. But Prussia is in the true course to arrive at it; the most useful classes of her society are gradually rising in wealth, respectability, and importance; and, ere long, her government, in the natural course of things, must admit popular elements. If foreign influence, and, above all, that of Russia, whose leaden weight is said to hang too heavily already on the cabinet of Berlin, do not interfere, I shall be deceived if the change be either demanded with outrageous clamour from below, or refused with unwise and selfish obstinacy from above. No people of the continent better deserves political liberty than the Germans; for none will wait for it more patiently, receive it more thankfully, or use it with greater moderation.”

NORTH.

Thank ye, ODoherty-that's a good boy.

ODOHERTY.

May I take the book home with me? I must certainly read the rest of it.

NORTH.

By all means. I assure you you will find the writing throughout clever, the facts interesting, and the tone excellent. Ring, Morgan, I must have my chair.

Printed by James Ballantyne and Co. Edinburgh.

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