Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - Lassalle's Open Letter to the National Labor Association of Germany - tr. John Ehmann and Fred Bader (1879).djvu/7

 That party, notwithstanding the contemptuous refusal of the Government to surrender to it the right of voting the budget, still consents to assemble for parliamentary purposes, transacting business with a ministry declared criminally responsible, thus lowering itself and the entire people; exhibiting a spectacle of weakness and an absense of dignity without a parallel in the history of legislative bodies.

Even in spite of the violation of the Constitution, a violation so declared even by themselves, it still continued to assemble, helping the Government to uphold a fraud, a mere appearance of a constitutional state.

Instead of, as it ought to have done, declaring the Chamber closed until the Government declared itself unable to continue the expenditures refused by the Chamber, thus placing the Government in the inexorable alternative of either respectfully recognizing the constitutional right of the Chamber, or, boldly throwing off all appearance of such recognition, defying embarrassments, assume absolute rule, inviting the crisis imposed by absolutism. Notice the result of this cowed action on their part. The Government is so placed as to have all the advantage of absolute power with the added advantages of an apparently constitutional state.

The Government, instead of being forced to unveil absolutism, giving the people to understand that there was no constitutional warranty wanted for expenditures, has the appearance given to it of constitutional consent to its operations, thus duping the public, confusing the intelligence, and depraving the moral sense of the people.

A party capable of such pusilanimity, exhibiting such weakness, is powerless, inadequate to the work of the hour, and incapable of leading in the development of liberty, therefore unfitted to represent the democracy of the nation. It is unworthy to lead the great element constituting the workingmen's movement.

I would have to tell you then as I have to tell you now, that a party which, through its dogma of the "Prussian Front," forces itself to recognize in the Prussian Government the called-for Mesiah for the birth of the German nationality, while there is, even inclusive of Hessia, not a single German Government politically behind Prussia; yes, while there is not a single German Government, even including Austria, which is, in reality, not ahead of the Prussian Government—to seek to