served to bring in one body upon the political arena all
the great popular names of 1820-1848, and then to utterly ruin them.
All the celebrities of middle class Liberalism were here collected.
The bourgeoisie expected wonders; it earned shame for itself and its
representatives. The industrial and commercial capitalist class were
more severely defeated in Germany than in any other country; they were
first worsted, broken, expelled from office in every individual State
of Germany, and then put to rout, disgraced and hooted in the Central
German Parliament. Political Liberalism, the rule of the bourgeoisie,
be it under a Monarchical or Republican form of government, is forever
impossible in Germany.

In the latter period of its existence, the German Parliament served to
disgrace forever that section which had ever since March, 1848, headed
the official opposition, the Democrats representing the interests of
the small trading, and partially of the farming class. That class was,
in May and June, 1849, given a chance to show its means of forming a
stable Government in Germany. We have seen how it failed; not so much
by adverse circumstances as by the actual and continued cowardice in
all trying movements that had occurred since the outbreak of the
revolution; by showing in politics the same shortsighted,
pusillanimous, wavering spirit, which is characteristic of its
commercial operations. In May, 1849, it had, by this course, lost the
confidence of the real fighting mass of all European insurrections,
the working class. But yet, it had a fair chance. The German
Parliament belonged to it, exclusively, after the Reactionists and
Liberals had withdrawn. The rural population was in its favor.
Two-thirds of the armies of the smaller States, one-third of the
Prussian army, the majority of the Prussian Landwehr (reserve or
militia), were ready to join it, if it only acted resolutely, and with
that courage which is the result of a clear insight into the state of
things. But the politicians who led on this class were not more
clear-sighted than the host of petty tradesmen which followed them.
They proved even to be more infatuated, more ardently attached to
delusions voluntarily kept up, more credulous, more incapable of
resolutely dealing with facts than the Liberals. Their political
importance, too, is reduced below the freezing-point. But not having
actually carried their commonplace principles into execution, they
were, under _