that
Citizen So-and-so is not to be trusted.

The inquiry into, and the exposition of, the causes, both of the
revolutionary convulsion and its suppression, are, besides, of
paramount importance from a historical point of view. All these petty,
personal quarrels and recriminations--all these contradictory
assertions that it was Marrast, or Ledru Rollin, or Louis Blanc, or
any other member of the Provisional Government, or the whole of them,
that steered the Revolution amidst the rocks upon which it
foundered--of what interest can they be, what light can they afford,
to the American or Englishman who observed all these various movements
from a distance too great to allow of his distinguishing any of the
details of operations? No man in his senses will ever believe that
eleven men,[4] mostly of very indifferent capacity either for good or
evil, were able in three months to ruin a nation of thirty-six
millions, unless those thirty-six millions saw as little of their way
before them as the eleven did. But how it came to pass that thirty-six
millions were at once called upon to decide for themselves which way
to go, although partly groping in dim twilight, and how then they got
lost and their old leaders were for a moment allowed to return to
their leadership, that is just the question.

If, then, we try to lay before the readers of _The Tribune_ the causes
which, while they necessitated the German Revolution of 1848, led
quite as inevitably to its momentary repression in 1849 and 1850, we
shall not be expected to give a complete history of events as they
passed in that country. Later events, and the judgment of coming
generations, will decide what portion of that confused mass of
seemingly accidental, incoherent, and incongruous facts is to form a
part of the world's history. The time for such a task has not yet
arrived; we must confine ourselves to the limits of the possible, and
be satisfied, if we can find rational causes, based upon undeniable
facts, to explain the chief events, the principal vicissitudes of that
movement, and to give us a clue as to the direction which the next,
and perhaps not very distant, outbreak will impart to the German
people.

And firstly, what was the state of Germany at the outbreak of the
Revolution?

The composition of the different classes of the people which form the
groundwork of every political organization was, in Germany, more
complicated than in any other country. While in Eng