a large part of the lower nobility, and all the
different sections of the lower orders--that this Liberal League was
determined to have what it wanted. In vain the King had declared, in
the opening speech, that he would never, never grant a Constitution in
the modern sense of the word; the Liberal League insisted upon such a
modern, anti-feudal, Representative Constitution, with all its
sequels, Liberty of the Press, Trial by Jury, etc.; and before they
got it, not a farthing of money would they grant. There was one thing
evident: that things could not go on long in this manner, and that
either one of the parties must give way, or that a rupture--a bloody
struggle--must ensue. And the middle classes knew that they were on
the eve of a revolution, and they prepared themselves for it. They
sought to obtain by every possible means the support of the working
class of the towns, and of the peasantry in the agricultural
districts, and it is well known that there was, in the latter end of
1847, hardly a single prominent political character among the
bourgeoisie who did not proclaim himself a "Socialist," in order to
insure to himself the sympathy of the proletarian class. We shall see
these "Socialists" at work by and by.

This eagerness of the leading bourgeoisie to adopt, at least the
outward show of Socialism, was caused by a great change that had come
over the working classes of Germany. There had been ever since 1840 a
fraction of German workmen, who, travelling in France and Switzerland,
had more or less imbibed the crude Socialist or Communist notions then
current among the French workmen. The increasing attention paid to
similar ideas in France ever since 1840 made Socialism and Communism
fashionable in Germany also, and as far back as 1843, all newspapers
teemed with discussions of social questions. A school of Socialists
very soon formed itself in Germany, distinguished more for the
obscurity than for the novelty of its ideas; its principal efforts
consisted in the translation of French Fourierist, Saint-Simonian, and
other doctrines into the abstruse language of German philosophy. The
German Communist school, entirely different from this sect, was formed
about the same time.

In 1844, there occurred the Silesian weavers' riots, followed by the
insurrection of the calico printers of Prague. These riots, cruelly
suppressed, riots of working men not against the Government, but
against their employers, created a deep