sensation, and gave a new
stimulus to Socialist and Communist propaganda amongst the working
people. So did the bread riots during the year of famine, 1847. In
short, in the same manner as Constitutional Opposition rallied around
its banner the great bulk of the propertied classes (with the
exception of the large feudal land-holders), so the working classes of
the larger towns looked for their emancipation to the Socialist and
Communist doctrines, although, under the then existing Press laws,
they could be made to know only very little about them. They could not
be expected to have any very definite ideas as to what they wanted;
they only knew that the programme of the Constitutional bourgeoisie
did not contain all they wanted, and that their wants were no wise
contained in the Constitutional circle of ideas.

There was then no separate Republican party in Germany. People were
either Constitutional Monarchists, or more or less clearly defined
Socialists or Communists.

With such elements the slightest collision must have brought about a
great revolution. While the higher nobility and the older civil and
military officers were the only safe supports of the existing system;
while the lower nobility, the trading middle classes, the
universities, the school-masters of every degree, and even part of
the lower ranks of the bureaucracy and military officers were all
leagued against the Government; while behind these there stood the
dissatisfied masses of the peasantry, and of the proletarians of the
large towns, supporting, for the time being, the Liberal Opposition,
but already muttering strange words about taking things into their own
hands; while the bourgeoisie was ready to hurl down the Government,
and the proletarians were preparing to hurl down the bourgeoisie in
its turn; this Government went on obstinately in a course which must
bring about a collision. Germany was, in the beginning of 1848, on the
eve of a revolution, and this revolution was sure to come, even had
the French Revolution of February not hastened it.

What the effects of this Parisian Revolution were upon Germany we
shall see in our next.

LONDON, September, 1851.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] "The Rhenish Gazette." This paper was published at Cologne, as the
organ of the Liberal leaders, Hansemann and Camphausen. Marx
contributed certain articles on the Landtag, which created so great a
sensation that he was offered in 1842--although only 24 years of
age--