He started from the premise (in all probability quite a false one) that Goethe, by making timely and energetic protest, could have prevented the Resolutions of Karlsbad, could have secured the liberty of the press and the other spiritual rights of which the reaction had deprived the German nation. In any case, whatever the results might have been, he was firmly convinced that it was Goethe's duty to have protested. Instead of this, what happens? "Geheimrath von Goethe, the Karlsbad poet," as Börne, knowing that he goes there every year to drink the waters, satirically nicknames him, subscribes himself _servant_ among other servants of his Prince ("wir sämmtlichen Diener"); confesses in his _Tag- und Jahres-Hefte_ that he wrote his stupid little play _Der Bürgergeneral_ (the whole plot of which hinges on the stealing of a pail of milk from the peasant Martin), with the intention of ridiculing the French Revolution; also confesses that, far from taking Fichte's part when that philosopher was accused of teaching atheism in the University of Jena, he was much annoyed at the vexation caused to the court by the outside interference which Fichte's utterances provoked.[9] Another cause of offence was the way in which, when Oken's _Isis_ was published, Goethe bewailed the peaceful times brought to an end by the establishment of the liberty of the press in Weimar, "the further consequences of which every right-thinking man with any knowledge of the world foresees with alarm and regret."[10] And the same feeling of disappointment and mortification was aroused in Börne when he read that Schiller, whom he highly esteemed, had at the very crisis of the French Revolution declared in his announcement of the new periodical _Die Horen_, that from this publication everything in the nature of criticism of the government, of religion, or of the political questions of the day, would be expressly and strictly excluded.[11]