Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4Menzel, Wolfgang
History
Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4
Menzel, Wolfgang
Germany -- History
The popular sense of justice and legality, never entirely suppressed
throughout Germany, also gave fresh proof of its existence under the
new state of affairs, partly in the endlessly drawn-out proceedings in
the chambers, partly in the incredible number of new laws and
regulations in the different states. Still, industriously as these
laws have been compiled, no real, essential, German law, neither
public nor private, has been discovered. The Roman and French codes
battled with each other and left no room for the establishment of a
code fundamentally and thoroughly German. The most distinguished
champions of the common rights of the people against cabinet-justice,
the tyranny of the police and of the censor, were principally
advocates and savants. The Estates, as corporations, were scarcely any
longer represented. The majority of governments, ruled by the
principle of absolute monarchy and the chambers, ruled by that of
democracy, had, since the age of philosophy, been unanimous in setting
the ancient Estates aside. The nobility alone preserved certain
privileges, and the Catholic clergy alone regained some of those they
had formerly enjoyed; all the Estates were, in every other respect,
placed on a level. The ancient and national legal rights of the people
were consequently widely trenched upon.
The emancipation of the peasant from the oppressive feudal dues, and
the abolition of the restraint imposed by the laws of the city
corporations, which had so flagrantly been abused, were indubitably
well intended, but, instead of stopping there, good old customs, that
ought only to have been freed from the weeds with which they had been
overgrown, were totally eradicated. The peasant received a freehold,
but was, by means of his enfranchisement, generally laden with debts,
and, while pride whispered in his ear that he was now a lord of the
soil and might assume the costume of his superiors, the land, whence
he had to derive his sustenance, was gradually diminished in extent by
the systematic division of property. His pretensions increased exactly
in the ratio in which the means for satisfying them decreased; and the
necessity of raising money placed him in the hands of Jews. The
smaller the property by reason of subdivision, the more frequently is
land put up for sale, the deeper is the misery of the homeless
outcast. The restoration of the inalienable, indivisible allod and of
the federal rights of the peasant, as in olden times, would have been
far more to the purpose.--Professional liberty and the introduction of
mechanism and manufactural industry have annihilated every warrant
formerly afforded by the artificer as master and member of a city
corporation, and, at the same time, every warrant afforded to him by
the community of his being able to subsist by means of his industry.
Manufactures on an extensive scale that export their produce must at
all events be left unrestricted, but the small trades carried on
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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