powers to acceptance, or to the right of petitioning for modifications of the regal decrees (p. 53); as well as when he declares the characteristic distinction of the sovereignty in all German states to be monarchy, in a somewhat extended sense of the word. In short, he abandons, in the first instance, all the advantage he might have drawn from the general wording of the 13th art. of the act of the congress of Vienna, as well as from the interpretation of that article by high authorities, and goes back to the individual histories of the several states of which the kingdom of Hanover is composed, in order to show from their uniform course, that neither in the principalities constituting the oldest possessions of the electoral house, nor in East Friesland, but, least of all, in the bishopricks of Hildesheim, Bremen, or Osnabrück, could any precedent be found of a prince refusing to sanction the legislative enactments of his predecessor. He examines in a perspicacious manner the right of the "Landstände" in 1819, to a participation in the legislative functions, and proves, in the most satisfactory manner, their proceedings to have been legal both as to form and principle. Proceeding then to the constitution of 1833, he shows that, with all its faults, it was essentially German and Hanoverian; that it was in accordance with all past and existing stipulations; and that it satisfied, if not the wishes of the people, at least all just claims of the electoral house, as well as those of the diet at Frankfort; that it was, in short, a natural developement of the old institutions of the country, in which only too much that was antiquated in its administration had been spared by the improving spirit of the age. He then investigates the constitution on its own merits, as viewed from the royalist side of the question, and shows that the pecuniary interests of the reigning house were more liberally provided for, and more surely established, than had ever been the case before; the king's civil list having been estimated at a sum exceeding the extravagant demands of George IV., and amounting to nearly three times the revenue drawn by George III. from his German dominions. And this increase of the royal income was granted when the deficiency in the revenue of the country was scarcely met by the augmentation of the indirect taxes, decreed in 1825.

to 961,460 dollars; in 1800 they were 1,444,457 dollars, and the personal expenses of the sovereign amounted to 228,282 dollars. In 1829-30 the civil list of George IV. was 525,000 dollars. The constitution of 1833 fixes the civil list at 618,000 dollars, to be secured on landed property; being more than one-twelfth of the whole revenue of 7,000,000 dollars.

This work contains undeniably the best exposition of the true state of the question between king Ernest and his subjects that has as yet appeared; but it does not give the reason of that prince's over-hasty and inconsiderate violence. The constitution of 1833, although containing many improvements, and laying a foundation for others, was, as is well known, far from satisfying the Hanoverians in the mangled state in which William IV. consented to sanction it. However, as the age of that monarch made it not improbable that a protracted dispute on so important a point might be entailed upon his successor, and as none knew that successor's character better than the Hanoverians, among whom he had often resided, it was considered wiser to leave no door open for dispute, and to accept of the curtailed rights as offered by William IV. rather than trust to the tender mercies of Ernest. As this argument was avowed by many to be the sole inducement to accept the offered constitution, it was, perhaps, natural that the duke of Cumberland should at the time mentally resolve that it should afford the nation no protection. That king Ernest should endeavour to enforce this resolution, is matter of no great wonder.

But that the Hanoverians, who, by an unanimous expression of public feeling in 1831, which bordered on an armed resistance, compelled the late king to give ear to their com plaints, should now truckle down in peaceful submission to a very different species of oppression, must appear strange to all who are not versed in the labyrinths of German politics. The clue to this apparently inconsistent conduct is given us in the decisions of the German diet on the complaints preferred to it last year by the town of Osnabrück, but which may with more propriety be termed evasions of the question than decisions. A third vote was passed in August last to the same effect.

at the present moment. The first and third related to the competency of the diet to entertain the complaint, and in the first, Prussia and Austria with their adherents were outvoted; the consequences of a declaration that the diet could not interfere in a case of dispute between a sovereign and his subjects, appearing too hazardous to the majority of the states. The third and most recent decision has been declarative of the incompetency of the diet to decide on points of domestic policy "in the present state of the federal union." Can Austria and Prussia have voted in a contrary sense with the sincere intention of letting the king of Hanover arrange the matter unaided with his subjects? We are saved the necessity of replying to this question by the avowed interest which the Prussian monarch has taken in the question, by the public expression of the opinion entertained by his ministers, and by the orders of knighthood with which that sovereign has decorated the Hanoverian minister Von Schele, as a reward for his meritorious exertions in undermining the constitution. There can be no doubt that the decision on this part of the question was only intended to pave the way for a more unfettered intervention in the affairs of Hanover, when the Prussian monarch should deem the opportunity ripe for seizure; and such policy can alone explain why Prussia wished that the Hanoverian question should be treated exceptionally, and as not coming under the jurisdiction of the diet. The vote given by Austria was in conformity with the usual policy of that court, which cannot easily allow of an assumption of independence of the diet.

The united efforts of the agents of these two courts, stimulated by this unexpected defeat, procured a small majority in their favour on the second decision, by which the complaint of the citizens of Osnabrück was rejected, on the ground of their not being qualified to prefer such complaint before the diet.

We will not here enter into the question of the competency of a constituency to resume the functions which they had entrusted to representatives, as soon as those representatives, by the dismissal of the Hanoverian chambers, were dispossessed of their authority. We shall confine ourselves to pointing

desire to play in this affair, and here only express our hope that the Hanoverians may be allowed to derive every advantage which can be drawn from the turn it has taken.

In opposition to the anxious display of sympathy which the king of Prussia has deemed proper to hold out for the encouragement of the violent proceedings of the Hanoverian government, we have the recorded and unanimous opinion of the people of Germany in every state in which they had an organ for expressing their wishes. Since July 1837, the legislative bodies in nearly all the smaller states have been assembled, and not one has omitted to express abhorrence of the proceedings of the Hanoverian government, and the warmest sympathy with the people of that country. At Dresden, Munich, Carlshruhe, Stuttgardt and Brunswick, addresses were voted by large majorities of the second chamber, expressing the confident hope of those houses, that their respective governments would use every exertion in support of the Hanoverian constitution. In Cassel, a motion to the same effect was dropped, after the president had assured the chamber that the government would do its duty, because matters of delicate negotiation were pending between the chambers and the court, and it was thought better to mix no extraneous matter up with them. The outrageous violation of every compact upon which harmony between a king and his people can be founded, by the king of Hanover's decree, seemed to rouse the lethargic spirit of freedom in every constitutional state. And yet was the Prussian cabinet fearless enough to disregard these intelligible symptoms of awakening energy in an enlightened mass of the people—a mass not inferior in number, and far superior in resources, as we shall presently see, to the entire population of Prussia, even supposing that she could calculate upon the cordial co-operation of all classes of her inhabitants.

We can readily conceive how the constant glitter and parade of military armament, may, after a time, produce a conviction in the minds of its beholders, that an array of the best organized troops, such as Prussia has at her disposal, must be invincible. But, as a portentous series of events, of much too recent occurrence to be forgotten, placed the importance

undertakings in the strongest possible light, we shall be permitted to inquire, What the Prussian government of late years has done to secure the attachment of the people of that country? what brilliant measures of state policy have emanated from the Prussian cabinet, on the successful issue of which they found their claim to step forward as arbiters of the rights of neighbouring states? In making this inquiry we shall confine ourselves to the events of the last two years, and shall be careful to let German authorities everywhere speak for themselves.

The observation which struck us the most forcibly, in perusing the published debates on the Hanoverian dispute, in the German legislative bodies, is one of an influential member of the second chamber at Stuttgardt, who declared in that assembly that the arrest and forcible abduction of the archbishop of Cologne was an occurrence of greater importance, and of a more ominous nature for the liberties of Germany, than the annulling of the constitution of Hanover. To all those who have had to deal much with the intelligent classes of Germans this remark speaks volumes. The decrees of the king of Hanover are looked upon as the ravings of a man accustomed all his life to the indulgence of violent passions. By the publication of his edicts he disappointed no hopes which his former course of life had raised. On the contrary, he only fulfilled the expectations of all who knew him, but especially of those who knew that his first burst of fury would fall upon a charter which the people had extorted as a shield against his tyranny.

But the Prussians and the Germans at large who looked to Prussia as the leading power of Germany, which, on emergencies, was to give the tone to, or perhaps even in time to absorb, the other less efficient sovereignties of that nation, had resigned themselves for nearly twenty years to the delusive hope, that, notwithstanding the despotic form of the Prussian government, its ruler sincerely wished the welfare of the land and the improvement of the material no less than of the moral condition of its citizens. As in no country the dependence of the former upon the latter species of progress is better understood than in Germany, the attention of the people was