the towns,
and that wonderful things were happening there, so he tied up his bundle
and set off. Without any distinct object or resolution, the country
people presented themselves on the scene of commotion, and were warmly
received by the party leaders. But, seen from the windows of ducal
palaces and ministerial hotels, these swarms of peasants had quite
another aspect, and it was imagined that they had a common plan of
co-operation. This, however, the peasants have never had. Systematic
co-operation implies general conceptions, and a provisional subordination
of egoism, to which even the artisans of towns have rarely shown
themselves equal, and which are as foreign to the mind of the peasant as
logarithms or the doctrine of chemical proportions. And the
revolutionary fervor of the peasant was soon cooled. The old mistrust of
the towns was reawakened on the spot. The Tyrolese peasants saw no great
good in the freedom of the press and the constitution, because these
changes "seemed to please the gentry so much." Peasants who had given
their voices stormily for a German parliament asked afterward, with a
doubtful look, whether it were to consist of infantry or cavalry. When
royal domains were declared the property of the State, the peasants in
some small principalities rejoiced over this, because they interpreted it
to mean that every one would have his share in them, after the manner of
the old common and forest rights.

The very practical views of the peasants with regard to the demands of
the people were in amusing contrast with the abstract theorizing of the
educated townsmen. The peasant continually withheld all State payments
until he saw how matters would turn out, and was disposed to reckon up
the solid benefit, in the form of land or money, that might come to him
from the changes obtained. While the townsman was heating his brains
about representation on the broadest basis, the peasant asked if the
relation between tenant and landlord would continue as before, and
whether the removal of the "feudal obligations" meant that the farmer
should become owner of the land!

It is in the same naive way that Communism is interpreted by the German
peasantry. The wide spread among them of communistic doctrines, the
eagerness with which they listened to a plan for the partition of
property, seemed to countenance the notion that it was a delusion to
suppose the peasant would be secured from this intoxication by h