CONSTITUTIONALISM IN HESSE-CASSEL. r ERE is one class of persons which
really ought to be very grateful to Germany,—the one which studies the growth of constitutional liberty. In other countries, in France, Italy, Greece, and even Spain, the Sovereigns claim by a more or less popular title, and whatever difficulties they may have with their Chambers, they do not represent, and are not supported by what in England we call the Tory party. In Germany, on the other hand, many of the conditions of our own early struggles with the power of the Crown are faithfully reproduced. The dynasties are at least national, and are protected by that quasi-religions awe with which all nations regard an immemorial title. In a legal point of view, moreover, the people are asking concessions. They are asking their "most illustrious and most gracious lords" to surrender power which they and their ancestors have exercised for centuries without challenge. And the maxims that governments exist for the good of the governed, and that the safety of the people is the highest law, are maxims of which men admit the authority only to dispute the application. What is good? What is safety ? Probably the Prussian Chambers obey a sound instinct when they keep carefully within the bounds of law, and expose themselves to the charge of supineness rather than of treason. Certainly they follow the English precedent. After a constitutional struggle of fifteen years, not the Long Parliament, but Charles I. appealed to the sword. If the Stuarts were a legal they *ere not altogether a national dynasty, and the Kings of England had never been absolute. It may very well bedoubted whether the Tudors, if any of the children of Henry VIII. had left issue, would have been as easily ousted, even if they had been as imprudent, as the Stuarts. It is therefore probable that the impatience of the supineness of the Prussian Chambers which has often been expressed in England is a little unreason- able. The one danger which the German Liberal party has to avoid is outstripping public opinion. No doubt in these days of railways and a free press it has means of influencing public opinion which were formerly unknown, and one year now ought to do the work of three two centuries ago. But Parlia- ments do well to have law on their side.
If all these considerations apply to Prussia they apply with tenfold force to the smaller States. The Diet may have no great terrors for the Berlin Chambers, but it hangs like a thunder-cloud over Hesse-Cassel. The inhabitants of the smaller German States are in the same position with reference to their rulers that workmen in England used to be with reference to their masters. The masters might combine and the men might not. Whenever a German princeling is in danger of having to yield to his subjects he goes off to the iet, who are always ready to pronounce the popular pro- ce dings to be "unfederal "—a word which is used in pre- cisely the same sense as the word "unconstitutional" is used by Tory bigwigs. A. thing is unfederal when princes do not like it. The people of Hesse know by experience what it is to be unfederal, and naturally do not wish to incur so damaging a reproach. Not that they can ever be safe from it. In 1830 the French counter-revolution produced among other results these two—that the Duke of Brunswick and the Elector of Hesse-Cassel ran away from their faithful subjects. The Duke never came back again, so the Diet pronounced him mad ; but the Elector did return, and granted a constitution on the 5th January, 1831. The first of these incidents seems to have rebutted, in the judgment of the Diet, the pre- sumption of lunacy raised by the running away. Popular dissatisfaction, however, was not allayed, and a compro- mise was effected. The Elector on the 30th September in the same year made his son—the most illustrious and most gracious Elector and lord who now rules—co-regent. Thus his reign may be said to be coeval with the constitution of Hesse-Cassel. He sat by its cradle, and it certainly has not been his fault if he has not followed its hearse. In 1848 came another French revolution, and the grievances of the Hessians again produced something like rebellion. But this time the Elector had gained wisdom. He bided his time, and in 1849 carried his constitution, which had been in exist- ence, if not quite in operation, for eighteen years, to the Diet. "Dear, dear !" said the Diet, "why the cause of all your troubles is clear. Your constitution is unfederal." So the Diet ordered Federal execution, Austrian troops entered the Elec- torate, the Elector abolished the constitution and made a new one, which, as it left him all real power, was thoroughly Federal. The Hessians, however, could not see it, and in 1860 they actually refused to pay the taxes. In England Dissenters sometimes refuse Church-rates, but a whole people refusing taxes and allowing themselves to be distrained on rather than pay was felt to be a dangerous precedent. Some- thing had to be done, and Prussia, who had been jockeyed by Austria in 1850 and has certain reversionary claims on the Electorate, politely intimated to the Diet that if there was to be another Federal execution she could not allow any other Power to carry it out. When Prussia is a Liberal power she has to be obeyed. The Diet ordered the restoration of the constitution of 1831, leaving it to the Elector and his Cham- bers to amend the un-Federal clauses, and the Elector by his patent of the 21st of June, 1862, promised compliance. But still those terrible Hessians are not satisfied.
The Chambers on the 24th of November drew up their "Grand Remonstrance," to which the Elector replied on the 3rd of December. The Chambers say that they have been negotiating for two years, and that at last "the hope" that the Elector will perform the promise of his patent "has almost vanished." Especially they doubt that His Highness means to keep his word "in reference to the highest court of justice and the internal administration of the country." The Elector replies to this that the Chambers ought to ask " with fitting respect for the removal- of certain stated grievances." We must say that this gives us a very high idea of His High- ness's love of truth and plain-speaking. The Chambers further represent that during the reign of the late Elector "the people degenerated into almost universal poverty," that property was depreciated to the lowest point, and trade com- pletely overthrown. The Elector very properly, in answer to this, comments on the indelicacy of this criticism of" periods of government of our ancestors now resting in God," con- siderately removing by this phrase any doubts as to the eternal felicity of his late Highness which may have been raised by the undoubted fact that he bullied his wife till she ran away from him, and then openly placed in her bed his mistress, a lady named Ortlep, or Ortlopp, who was the lawful wife of a German dragoon. The Chambers then allude with satisfac- tion to the few years of improvement which followed the grant of the constitution of 1831, a happy glimpse of pros- perity to which "a time of retrogression" soon succeeded, "until in the famine year of 1846 the impoverished fell into the bitterest necessity." Nothing, they say, had been done to avert it, the years 1848 and 1849 offered no opportunity of recovery, and 1850 brought Federal execution, foreign troops, immense expenses, and deep, painful wounds, to the cure of which up to the present moment not the slightest steps have been taken, often and impressively as the Chambers have prayed for their adoption." They, moreover, elaborately set forth the falling off in the schools, in trade and agricul- ture, and unhesitatingly attribute these calamities to the increasing "exaggeration of the right of State supervision." Thus much the Chambers feel bound to say, though their moderation keeps "in the background many just and deeply and administration is at once commenced inevitable misfor- tunes must fall on Electoral Hesse." And they conclude by earnestly entreating that " a ruler possessing the consciousness of his position and of his sacred duties" will take "the neces- sary reqolutions." As we have already intimated, the Elector does not exactly see it in that light. The condition of the country is not, he thinks, described with the requisite modera- tion. He is very much surprised "to see the efficiency of his government misunderstood." If the constitution has not been arranged, that is the fault of the Chambers. All their schemes are nothing, but attempts to effect "a settlement at the expense of the unassailable prerogatives of his Crown and a secure order of State life." Of course this is very bad,—the prerogatives we should not care about so much, but the secure order of State life, or, as the Elector calls it elsewhere, "a regulated State order," is clearly indispensable. One is surprised that the Chambers do not see it. The Elector therefore considers that the course of the Chambers is clearly cut out for them, and that as for "a period of sturdy creation and reformation " on his part, "we are already conscious of general faithful performance of our duty." Meanwhile the Chambers are affectionately warned. The Elector has proofs in the address where the public discontent they talk of has its origin, and he has learnt from it "in what to-some-extent-more-important direction a more active display of Governmental activity is required."
So the matter stands. One laughs, but the end of such mirth is heaviness. Englishmen think contemptuously of Hesse. Its people used to let themselves be sold as merce- naries by their rulers, and we used to buy them. We have learnt from Murray's Handbook. that the Bavarian buy-a- broom girls were all Hessians, and the buy-a-broom girls were not estimable characters. Constitutional crises are all very fine in great countries, but three-quarters of a million of people have no business with such things. A Briton watches such affairs with the sort of contemptuous admiration with which Gulliver looked down on the constitutional policy of Lilliput. One cannot be quite serious about three-quarters of a million of people. And yet each unit of the 750,000 suffers as much as an ill-governed Frenchman, Prussian, or Russian. Misery should be measured by its intensity, not its extent, and no citizen of a great country ever had to endure anything like the grinding, prying, omnipresent, do- mestic tyranny of a petty prince. Italy found them intoler- able, and Germany groans under their yoke. Of all of them the Electors of Hesse have been the worst. There is no chance of agreement between the present Elector and his Chambers. They want to enrich the country and he wants to enrich himself. There never has been any want of money in the Treasury. Ever since that ardent Protestant Philip the Mag- nanimous made Luther allow him two wives, devotion to the fair sex has been a family failing. The late Elector's foibles have been alluded to, and the reigning sovereign, if more respectable, is equally burdensome to his subjects. He chose to contract a morganatic alliance with the widow of a non- commissioned officer, and is blessed with nine morganatic chil- dren. When he dies their chance will be gone, and for thirty years the Countess of Schaumburg and her offspring have been feeding on the industry of Hesse. The Chambers protest decorously, and they may protest. In 1862 Count Bernstorf helped them, but without Prussian aid resistance is of no avail. They cannot stop the supplies, and resistance ends in "Federal execution, foreign troops, and immense expenses." We can only advise them to bide their time as patiently as they can. At present Herr von Bismark wants to get Lauenburg, and will do anything to secure the Elector's vote in the Diet. But con- sistency is not a virtue he values. He can be very constitu- tional out of Prussia, and why not in Hesse as well as Hol- stein? Every Prussian who looks at a map must covet Hesse- Cassel. If the Hessians were to wait till the Schleswig- Holstein affair is well settled, then to rise, expel the Elector, and offer his crown to the King of Prussia, we might yet see Herr von Bismark an enthusiastic vindicator of the right of peoples to choose their own rulers.
Previous page
