sued by the government to create a powerful nation out of very discordant elements. Under the enlightened exertions of a succession of distinguished men, from 1808 to 1830, Prussia had seen her population doubled, the financial credit of the state raised, and industry encouraged by comparative freedom of trade; these advantages were accompanied, too, by the blessings of free discussion and sound institutions for education, which promised to ensure their duration; and the nation, therefore, willingly accepted them in the form of a gift from the sovereign, as it was more interested in the matter than in the manner of the acquisition. The change which was first remarked after the July revolution in France, but which in reality had been long secretly preparing, opened the eyes of the Prussians to the real character of their sovereign and of his more recent advisers. They saw their king, to whom fortune had offered so many opportunities of gaining the hearts of the Germans, who, in the course of a long reign, had so often been called upon to step forward as the guide and the protector of a powerful and enlightened nation, once more throw the boon, thus proffered perhaps for the last time, from him, and content himself with the part of an obsequious ally of a foreign power, in preference to that of the representative of German independence. The restraints to which the press was then subjected, and which now go so far as seriously to interfere with the liberty of even scientific discussion*; the influence attempted of late to be exercised on the universities; and the despotic authority arrogated by the sovereign over the churches of the various creeds within his dominions, were so many successive blows, under which the fabric of hope, to which the Germans had so long and so willingly clung, gradually gave way. The king of Hanover has thus not produced any greater measure of disgust and disappointment by his display of violence, than has followed the arbitrary breach of the privileges of the Rhenish provinces, by the illegal arrest of the archbishop of Cologne.

The provinces of the Rhine were left in possession of the grand boon of public trials by jury, which the French had

* We allude to the list of prohibited works in Prussia, which has grown to the size of an Index, and in which the works of Rotteck, Gervinus, and other authors

introduced, when it was incorporated with the kingdom of Prussia. How deeply the enlightened classes feel the security which these institutions afford them, is shown by the earnestness with which the inhabitants of the Rhenish provinces, not only of Prussia, but also of Bavaria and Hesse, have ever clung to them. This attachment, too, is not, as many writers have endeavoured to show, a mere predilection for French forms and a desire to retain any outward sign which savours of democracy. The trial by jury never had a fair trial under Napoleon either in France or in any of its dependent kingdoms, and at that time could offer but little that was likely to captivate their affections. The arbitrary manner in which the lists of jurymen were constructed, and the thousand means of oppression which a state of war affords, precluded all hopes of a fair verdict when the French government showed any interest in the result of judicial proceedings. But, with the establishment of peace and a more tranquil domestic administration, public opinion regained its due ascendency and operated as a salutary check on the officers of justice. We need only appeal to the evidence of a man who will not be accused of too great a leaning to democratic principles, we mean the late minister of Greece, Von Rudhardt, to show how well these institutions work where they are fairly treated, and what the opinion of intelligent men is respecting them in other parts of Germany.

Herr von Rudhardt, in his highly-interesting work on Bavaria, concludes his view of the administration of justice in that kingdom with the following remarks :—

"The form of judicial proceedings in the Rhenish circle is not altogether without its faults; among which we may reckon the overloading of the proceedings in civil cases with unnecessary forms; the pecuniary advantage drawn by the state from the fees; the overweening influence of the officers of the courts, who are often both unskilful and interested; the undefined nature of the secret initiatory proceedings in criminal cases, with some other regulations. But the substance of the administration of justice, equality of all ranks before the law, the purification of the judicial office from all extraneous duties, the collegial form of the courts, publicity of proceedings, and the active part allotted to his fellow-citizens in matters where the citizen has most at stake, are the means of affording security both to persons and property."

stitutions, from a man whose whole life was spent in offices of justice and administration, in which the old German secret and inquisitiorial forms prevailed. In what estimation, then, must not they stand with the inhabitants of the Rhenish provinces? And in the face of these privileges, solemnly if unwillingly guaranteed by the sovereign,—in a time of perfect tranquillity, the minister of clerical affairs in Prussia orders the primate of the country to be arrested by a military detachment, has him forcibly conveyed to a distant fortress without the sanction of the local magistracy (for there are magistrates at Cologne), and confines him there for months without demanding the sentence of any tribunal. We are no admirers of the religious tenets professed by the archbishop; but we fully agree with the speaker in the Stuttgardt chamber of deputies, whose opinion we cited above, that such a violation of the liberty of the subject in a civilized state, provided with tribunals of police and justice, is a scandalous outrage upon society, disgraceful to its authors, and full of ominous matter, threatening the repose and well-being of the state.

It must not, however, be supposed that the harsh proceedings adopted against the archbishop were an ebullition of religious zeal called forth by the attack made by that prelate on the Protestant cause. We should not be reluctant, however we lamented the violation of all forms of justice in this case, to allow full merit to the Prussian monarch's attachment to Protestantism, had he not himself taken sufficient pains to disavow the encomium.

His Prussian majesty labours, in common with other continental rulers, under a mania for originating measures for the good of his people, without allowing them a voice as to the necessity or the due extent of the proposed innovations. Of these the most extraordinary has, perhaps, been the amalgamation of Lutheranism and Calvinism in the new Prussian Protestant liturgy. The wish to unite the Lutheran and Calvinist churches seems to have been entertained by the king as far back as the year 1798, when a commission of three churchmen from each creed was appointed to consult and make proposals for its accomplishment. As nothing was ever heard of the result of their labours, it is probable that these learned divines could not agree upon any feasible plan. The

misfortunes which came over the court of Frederick William and the Prussian nation in 1807, and which drove that monarch to seek a temporary asylum at St. Petersburg, are said to have had a singular influence upon the project which he continued to entertain. He was delighted with the responses of the choir in the Greek ritual to the priest at the altar, and is said to have borrowed from these rites the plan of the new church service, which was drawn up at his command by some divines after the establishment of peace in 1815.

The Prussian Protestant clergy were, in the year 1822, formally summoned to relinquish all difference of religious tenets, and to unite in the formation of a new evangelical church. A recent writer on the statistics of the kingdom* gravely observes, that the two principal Protestant creeds agreed to an union respecting outward forms, on the expression of the king's wish to that effect, in an order from his cabinet, dated 19th February, 1822. On the authority of this and of other writers who openly support, or prudently evade canvassing, the present measures of the government, we should be justified in assuming, that all opposition to this wide stretch of royal prerogative had now ceased; and that nothing but a cheerful spirit of obedience animated the Prussians, who were thus favoured with a dictation from the throne in matters of faith. How surprising soever such a consummation must appear to all versed in the history of religious controversy, yet to those who know that, in the first instance, all the leading Prussian divines, with the eloquent and philosophical Schleiermacher at their head, formally protested against such a mode of legislation, it must appear still more extraordinary that the acquiescence in the royal will should be so general and unconditional. The Lutherans were, in this new Agendum, called upon to sacrifice to the Calvinist form of worship no less than the words used in offering the sacrament of the Lord's Supper: 'this is the body and blood of Christ;' the Calvinist form, this represents the body,' &c., being that adopted in the new ritual. Among a number of articles which candidates for the priesthood are required to swear to, the duties of a citizen towards the state, including the denunciation of traitorous designs.

against the sovereign, are inserted; an addition of undoubted northern origin. These articles are also, by a singular misnomer, termed in the oath, fundamental dogmas of Christianity?'

In vain did Schleiermacher and other popular writers raise their voices against these innovations, and show by the most forcible arguments, that such proceedings must not only prove the greatest encouragement of that indifference in religious matters with which the age has been taxed; but that the conscientious of the two creeds would infallibly be confirmed in their adherence to their distinguishing tenets by these measures; and thus the union, which by natural means was fast approaching, would be prevented. The government proceeded to employ all the means in their power to influence the clergy throughout the kingdom to accept of the Agendum; and it cannot be wondered at that by degrees a number of pastors, either under the immediate patronage of the crown, or looking for nomination to patrons who were themselves dependent on the government for places and preferment, should adopt the new ritual without much hesitation.

A lapse of twelve years seems to have been considered a sufficient respite for refractory consciences; for, in 1834, we find penal statutes, in the true course of religious zeal, enacted against nonconformists. The history of the early persecutions against such pastors and their flocks as ventured to manifest a desire to evade or to resist the royal will, is touchingly told in a work published by M. Scheibel*. We confine ourselves to the proceedings of the last two years, which would, under the present restraint on the press in Prussia, have probably not been made public, if the dispute respecting the arrest of the archbishop of Cologne had not allowed the barriers which surround it in other states to be a little extended. In the Augsburg Gazette †, a Bavarian publication, we find a most interesting correspondence, dated as late as September 1838;

*Published by Raw, in Nürnberg, in 1832 and 1835, and by Fleischer, Leipzig

1834.

†The Algemeine Zeitung or Augsburg Gazette, published at Augsburg, is one of the most important public organs, and perhaps the best conducted newspaper in Europe. But it requires some practice to know how to read it. Those who know Germany will understand this, which the extractors of news from its pages for the use of our journals, evidently do not.