n. They had occupied themselves almost
exclusively with nice theoretical distinctions, mere formalities, and
questions of constitutional etiquette. The Assembly, in fact, was more
a school of Parliamentary _savoir vivre_ for its members, than a body
in which the people could take any interest. The majorities were,
besides, very nicely balanced, and almost always decided by the
wavering centers whose oscillations from right to left, and _vice
versa_, upset, first the ministry of Camphausen, then that of
Auerswald and Hansemann. But while thus the Liberals, here as
everywhere else, let the occasion slip out of their hands, the Court
reorganized its elements of strength among the nobility, and the most
uncultivated portion of the rural population, as well as in the army
and the bureaucracy. After Hansemann's downfall, a ministry of
bureaucrats and military officers, all staunch reactionists, was
formed, which, however, seemingly gave way to the demands of the
Parliament; and the Assembly acting upon the commodious principle of
"measures, not men," were actually duped into applauding this
ministry, while they, of course, had no eyes for the concentration and
organization of Counter-Revolutionary forces, which that same ministry
carried on pretty openly. At last, the signal being given by the fall
of Vienna, the King dismissed its ministers, and replaced them by "men
of action," under the leadership of the present premier, Manteuffel.
Then the dreaming Assembly at once awoke to the danger; it passed a
vote of no confidence in the Cabinet, which was at once replied to by
a decree removing the Assembly from Berlin, where it might, in case of
a conflict, count upon the support of the masses, to Brandenburg, a
petty provincial town dependent entirely upon the Government. The
Assembly, however, declared that it could not be adjourned, removed or
dissolved, except with its own consent. In the meantime, General
Wrangle entered Berlin at the head of some forty thousand troops. In a
meeting of the municipal magistrates and the officers of the National
Guard, it was resolved not to offer any resistance. And now, after the
Assembly and its Constituents, the Liberal bourgeoisie, had allowed
the combined reactionary party to occupy every important position, and
to wrest from their hands almost every means of defence, began that
grand comedy of "passive and legal resistance" which they intended to
be a glorious imitation of the example of