Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/74

 this situation. During this time industrial capital gained a victory over landed property, first in England, where the corn laws were abolished in 1846 and free trade introduced. Elsewhere, as in Germany and Austria, industrial capital at least obtained an equal position alongside of the landed interests. The intellectuals secured freedom of press and movement. The small capitalists and farmers obtained the suffrage. The national unity of Germany and Italy satisfied a long-felt and urgent longing of these nations. To be sure, this was brought about after the collapse of the revolution of 1848, not by internal movements, but by external wars. The Crimean War of 1854–56 overthrew serfdom in Russia and compelled consideration of the industrial bourgeoisie by the government of the Czar. 1859, 1866, and 1870 saw the completion of Italian unity, and 1866 and 1870 saw the same thing accomplished in an imperfect form in Germany. A liberal era was begun in Austria in 1866, and in Germany also the introduction of universal suffrage paved the way to a certain freedom of the press and of organization. The year 1870 completed this tendency and brought France a democratic republic. In England an electoral reform was carried through in 1867 granting the suffrage to the upper circles of the working class and such of the small capitalists as had not obtained it previously.

These steps gave all the classes in European nations, with the exception of the proletariat, a legal foundation upon which to base their existence. They had obtained, even if in a somewhat incomplete form, the things for which they had been striving since the great Revolution. While all their wishes were not fulfilled, and could not be fulfilled, since the interests of various divisions of the possessing class are frequently antagonistic, yet those who felt their rights abridged did not feel strong enough to fight for complete control of the state, and the things they