ction and propaganda, was extremely
slow in the smaller States.

Both in Prussia and in the smaller States the difficulty of giving vent
to political opposition created a sort of religious opposition in the
parallel movements of German Catholicism and Free Congregationalism.
History affords us numerous examples where, in countries which enjoy
the blessings of a State Church, and where political discussion is
fettered, the profane and dangerous opposition against the worldly
power is hid under the more sanctified and apparently more
disinterested struggle against spiritual despotism. Many a Government
that will not allow of any of its acts being discussed, will hesitate
before it creates martyrs and excites the religious fanaticism of the
masses. Thus in Germany, in 1845, in every State, either the Roman
Catholic or the Protestant religion, or both, were considered part and
parcel of the law of the land. In every State, too, the clergy of
either of those denominations, or of both, formed an essential part of
the bureaucratic establishment of the Government. To attack Protestant
or Catholic orthodoxy, to attack priestcraft, was then to make an
underhand attack upon the Government itself. As to the German
Catholics, their very existence was an attack upon the Catholic
Governments of Germany, particularly Austria and Bavaria; and as such
it was taken by those Governments. The Free Congregationalists,
Protestant Dissenters, somewhat resembling the English and American
Unitarians, openly professed their opposition to the clerical and
rigidly orthodox tendency of the King of Prussia and his favourite
Minister for the Educational and Clerical Department, Mr. Eickhorn.
The two new sects, rapidly extending for a moment, the first in
Catholic, the second in Protestant countries, had no other distinction
but their different origin; as to their tenets, they perfectly agreed
upon this most important point--that all definite dogmas were
nugatory. This want of any definition was their very essence; they
pretended to build that great temple under the roof of which all
Germans might unite; they thus represented, in a religious form,
another political idea of the day--that of German unity, and yet they
could never agree among themselves.

The idea of German unity, which the above-mentioned sects sought to
realize, at least, upon religious ground, by inventing a common
religion for all Germans, manufactured expressly for their use,
habi