and manufactures, second to none perhaps
in Germany; in spirit, courage, and revolutionary energy, proving
themselves far superior to all, were yet more ignorant as to their
real interests, and committed more blunders during the Revolution than
any others, and this was due in a very great measure to the almost
absolute ignorance with regard to the very commonest political
subjects in which Metternich's Government had succeeded in keeping
them.

It needs no further explanation why, under such a system, political
information was an almost exclusive monopoly of such classes of
society as could afford to pay for its being smuggled into the
country, and more particularly of those whose interests were most
seriously attacked by the existing state of things, namely, the
manufacturing and commercial classes. They, therefore, were the first
to unite in a mass against the continuance of a more or less disguised
Absolutism, and from their passing into the ranks of the opposition
must be dated the beginning of the real revolutionary movement in
Germany.

The oppositional pronunciamento of the German bourgeoisie may be dated
from 1840, from the death of the late King of Prussia, the last
surviving founder of the Holy Alliance of 1815. The new King was known
to be no supporter of the predominantly bureaucratic and military
monarchy of his father. What the French middle class had expected
from the advent of Louis XVI., the German bourgeoisie hoped, in some
measure, from Frederick William IV. of Prussia. It was agreed upon all
hands that the old system was exploded, worn-out, and must be given
up; and what had been borne in silence under the old King now was
loudly proclaimed to be intolerable.

But if Louis XVI., "Louis le Desire," had been a plain, unpretending
simpleton, half conscious of his own nullity, without any fixed
opinions, ruled principally by the habits contracted during his
education, "Frederick William le Desire" was something quite
different. While he certainly surpassed his French original in
weakness of character, he was neither without pretensions nor without
opinions. He had made himself acquainted, in an amateur sort of way,
with the rudiments of most sciences, and thought himself, therefore,
learned enough to consider final his judgment upon every subject. He
made sure he was a first-rate orator, and there was certainly no
commercial traveller in Berlin who could beat him either in prolixity
of pretended wi