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'I have sent my plan to Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, and Munich.

'I have never been so sorely pressed as now; events, business, feelings, thoughts, bow me almost to the earth.

"We cannot let the Prince of Prussia come now. He has made enemies, because he is dreaded; but he is noble and honourable, and wholly devoted to the new movement for Germany. He looks at the business with the frank integrity of the soldier, and will stand gallantly by the post which has been entrusted to him.5

'Buckingham Palace, 30th March, 1848.'

At this time Baron Stockmar was being strongly urged to accept the appointment of Deputy for Coburg at the Diet, where he ultimately took his seat on the 16th of May. Neither himself nor his friends could have expected much from the Diet, which was practically superseded for the time; but they had, as expressed by the Coburg Minister, Von Stein,

5

The Prince of Prussia was then in London, having arrived there on the 27th of March, and taken up his residence in the house of the Prussian Ambassador, the Chevalier Bunsen. Among several interesting notices of him at this time, which are to be found in Bunsen's Memoirs (vol. ii. p. 170 et seq.) is the following breakfast scene from Madame Bunsen's hand,- F. had fetched an arm-chair and placed it in the centre of one side of the table; but the Prince put it away himself and took another, saying, " One ought to be humble now, for thrones are shaking;" then I sat on one side of him, and he desired Frances to take her place on the other. He related everything that came to his knowledge of the late awful transactions; and, let reports be what they may, I cannot believe that he has had any share in occasioning the carnage that has taken place-but conclude that the general opinion condemning him has been the result of party spirit and of long settled notions, as to what was likely to be his advice and opinion.' The Prince of Prussia remained in England till nearly the end of May, when he returned to Berlin. He was very sad at going,' the Queen writes to King Leopold (30th May). May God protect him, he is very noble-minded and honest, and most cruelly wronged. He seemed to have great confidence in Albert, who cheered him, and gave him always the best advice.' To Madame Bunsen he said on parting, In no other place or country could he have passed so well the period of distress and anxiety which he had gone through as here, having so much to interest and occupy his mind both in the country and in the nation.'-(Bunsen's Memoirs, ii. 182.)

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6

PLAN BY BARON STOCKMAR

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in writing to him on the 3rd of May (Denkwürdigkeiten, p. 488), the fullest reliance on his influence and co-operation within and without the Assembly,' which was then sitting at Frankfort. His decision was still wavering when the following letter from the Prince (11th April) reached him :

. . You are very kind to speak so kindly of me. You cannot imagine how my fingers itch at being separated perforce from Germany at this moment. I hope, although you should not be able to go to Frankfort yourself, that you will at least furnish Briegleb and Spessart' (the representatives sent by Coburg and Gotha to the Assembly) 'with your good advice.

"I am curious to hear what you will say to my project. The King of Prussia, in writing to me, called it "ideally good." He wishes some alterations which are of no moment, but which seem to my mind to destroy the harmony of the plan. That the Emperor should be named for life is certainly better than for a term of years. But a Roman Emperor and a King of the Germans, however historically beautiful, are things to which the Germans will never take.'

It was some time before Baron Stockmar replied to this letter. He had drawn up a project of his own for the reconstruction of Germany, based upon a principle radically different from that of the Prince. His Emperor was not to be elective, but hereditary. Austria, which had separate interests of its own, and a vast territory which was not German, should be invited to join the Empire with its German States; but Prussia was to be regarded as the Central Power, and from Prussia the Emperor was to be taken. Under his

The allusion here is to what the King of Prussia, in his letter to the Prince, had declared to be, in his view, the thing to be aimed at, viz. the restoration of the Roman Imperial crown upon the head of the Austrian Hereditary Emperor, with an elective Emperor for Germany, who, if not the Emperor of Austria, should be subject to be confirmed by him,

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scheme, too, the ultimate mediatising of the smaller States was contemplated, and in the meantime their Sovereigns would have, for the sake of the common weal of the Empire, to submit to material restrictions. Whether or no this plan can be carried out,' he wrote on the 24th of May (Denkwürdigkeiten, p. 491), 'depends on whether the nation is or is not in earnest in desiring unity. It may be that the Governments at Vienna, Hanover, Munich, and elsewhere, do not desire a real unity, or any material limitation of their own sovereignty by a strong Central Power: but in these days this is of far less moment than what their subjects wish.' Even from this document, however, it may be gathered that the Baron had grave misgivings that the nation was not yet of one mind on the subject, for a little further on he recurs to the idea. "Everything depends on whether the heart and soul of Germany are so thoroughly set upon having a Fatherland in fact, and not merely in words, as to turn a deaf ear to the temptations which separatist tendencies will hold out to it on many sides.' In writing to the Prince a few days later (29th May) he lets his reasons for these misgivings be very clearly

seen:

"The difficulties in the way of the establishment of a united Germany are immense. They are at the same time full of the strangest complications. No people that I know of in history has ever had a period in its destiny at all like ours. To seek and to find the necessary points of union, without which we shall cease to be a nation, is at once most important and most difficult. According to my conviction, our salvation at this moment lies in centralisation of our intellectual and material resources. Opposed to this view are the ideas of our pedants, which ideas will be turned to profit and account by everything which in Germany is malâ fide, namely, by Fanaticism, by Dynasticism, Bureaucracy, Anarchism, Re

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LETTER BY BARON STOCKMAR.

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publicanism, and political stupidity. Our only schoolmaster, therefore, will be the wrath of heaven.

'I was unable to regard as practicable the views recently communicated to me by your Royal Highness. Against the plan of a closer unity in the Saxon family I have in myself nothing to urge, except that an example of this kind, set by princes, might be accepted by the democrats in a different sense, and be carried beyond the limits which your Royal Highness assigns to it; for the notion that in accordance with such a plan all Saxony at least has to become united lies so near that it is sure to suggest itself.

'My own plan, which I have for forty years carried in my own bosom, has been formulated for some time. I have a notion of getting it printed in the Deutsche Zeitung. It is the only one of all the plans that have come under my eye which admits of adhering to what actually exists, and sparing it in a statesmanlike way as far as possible. . .

'In belonging to the Diet, I am the fifth wheel to the carriage. As a private individual and mere volunteer I should perhaps have been able to accomplish more. The National Assembly is at present merely devising a Constitution. The pressure of actual events will soon make it also assume executive authority.?

Stockmar was naturally and justly impatient at his position in the Diet, where he had not even a vote. That body, by sanctioning the National Assembly, now proclaimed its own unfitness to meet the exigencies of the hour. At its best it had been since 1815, in his opinion, 'a wretched machine, despicable and despised,' which the governments had one and all used as the instrument of a policy false and dishonourable in itself, and ruinous at once to princes and people.' Its very constitution made national activity and energetic consistent measures impossible. To belong to such a body is in

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itself misery' (Denkwürdigkeiten, p. 505). Neither there nor among the mass of the National Assembly was his trenchant and far-sighted scheme likely to find much favour. His experiences at Frankfort, indeed, satisfied him that the hour for realising his hopes of a United Germany had not yet come. If my two months' seat in the Diet was good for nothing else, it at least convinced me that among all its members there existed nothing but mistrust, hatred, envy, backbiting, and malignity.'

By the time he wrote this sentence he had also satisfied himself that the man was yet to arise to whom Germany must look as its future Emperor. He had gone to Berlin in the beginning of June to see the King, to whom he had previously sent an outline of his plan for the reconstruction of Germany. What then passed appears to have convinced him that Frederick William could not be depended upon. The work which Stockmar would have him to do demanded qualities which the King did not possess. The consequence was, as Stockmar's biographer writes (Denkwürdigkeiten, p. 509), 'that although he assisted from a distance the attempts made by others during 1848, yet he was never himself deceived as to the results. It was his way to form rapid conclusions on points of character.' One person alone he seems to have found in Berlin of whom he could speak with unqualified praise-the present Empress of Germany. The Princess of Prussia is sound at heart and clear in head, decided and devoted, the one person who thoroughly understands the extraordinary and peculiar character of our times' (ibid. p. 516). Berlin itself he found in a state of anarchy, which he had the courage to tell the King it was his first duty to put down. The means

7

The King was himself conscious of this. In 1849 he said to Beckerath, 'Frederick the Great would have been the man for you: I am not a great ruler' (Friedrich der Grosse wäre Ihr Mann gewesen: ich bin kein grosser Regent). A man of the type of Washington would probably have been still better.