Assuredly more ought to be gathered from the appointment of the new
central cabinet, and more especially of its Minister for Foreign Affairs
and leading member, Prince Leiningen: and naturally we look to the
recent manifesto of the prince as a document from which we may best
learn “what revolutionising Germany would be at.” Sensible and clear, or
at all events as little confused as is possible in the present confused
state of all theories, plans, and reasonings in Germany, the manifesto,
in doing no more than pointing out two methods towards effecting the
reconstruction of Germany, leaves every thing as regards the future in
as vague and uncertain a state as before. It only states a dilemma—it
does not attempt to resolve it. It puts Germany in a cleft stick, or
rather, at the division of two paths, the greater merit or
practicability of either of which it does not attempt to show very
decisively, by its concluding words, “_Entweder, Oder!_ choose!” In
fact, it does no more than ask with ourselves, “What would
revolutionising Germany be at?”
It may be surmised, certainly, from the manifesto of Prince Leiningen,
that he himself is really inclined towards the going forward in the
uncertain course of doing _something_ towards the effectuation of the
desired union, although he by no means pretends to recommend _how_ this
is to be done. He seems—and his acceptation of office would in itself
appear to confirm the fact—a partisan of what he defines somewhat
confusedly as “an actual union of all the component parts of the whole,
in such a manner as to avert the possibility of any dispute between the
whole and the parts;” for he adds, “If any other course be pursued, not
singleness or unity, but discord and separation will be established.”
But in the alternative which he places before Germany, of either
returning to the past, or of realising the uncertain and as yet
undefined desideratum of a great union for the future, it would seem,
whatever be the prince’s own meaning, or whatever may be supposed to be
the means used by the Assembly to produce a united whole, that he only
places before it at the same time the alternative of a civil war, at
which he himself hints, or a republican constitution, which must appear
to be the result of the progress in its present sense, of
revolutionising Germany.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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