Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/158

 true that the popular movement was disjointed and now in retrospect appears in certain lights fantastic. But what reasonable person can wonder at this? The people, although highly developed in science, philosophy, literature and art, had always lived under a severe guardianship in all political matters. They had never been out of leading strings. They had observed only from afar how the other nations exercised their right to govern themselves, and managed their active participation in the functions of the state, and those foreign nations the Germans had learned to admire and perhaps to envy. They had studied the theory of free institutions in books and had watched their workings in current newspaper reports. They had longed for the possession of like institutions and earnestly striven for their introduction in their own country. But with all this observing, learning, and longing, and striving, the larger part of the German people had been excluded by the prevailing rigid paternalism from practical experience in the exercise of political self-government. They had not been permitted to learn the practical meaning of political liberty. They had never received or known the teachings which spring from the feeling of responsibility in free political action. The affairs of government lay outside of the customs and habits of their lives. Free institutions were to them mere abstract conceptions, about which the educated and the seriously thinking men indulged in politico-philosophical speculations, while to the uneducated and the superficial they only furnished political catchwords, in the use of which the general discontent with existing conditions found vent.

Suddenly after a prolonged fermentation, and following an impulse from abroad, the German people rose up in strength. The kings and princes now conceded everything that they had refused before, and the people found themselves