The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864, page 48 by Various Authors
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elves to changes, even though they may be somewhat sudden, such pleas for more time and a more gradual process may appear affected, if not puerile. It must be remembered, however, that to a genuine German nothing is more precious than a process of development. Whatever is not the result of a due course of Entwickelung, is a suspicious object. Anything which seems to break abruptly in upon the prescribed course is abnormal. Whatever is produced before the embryonic process is complete is necessarily a monster, from which nothing good can be hoped. The same idea is often advanced by the Conservatives in another form. The Liberals, they say, are trying to break loose from history. A prominent professor, in an address before an assembly of clergymen in Berlin, defined the principle of democracy to be this: 'The majority is subject to no law but its own will; it is therefore limited by no historically acquired rights; history has no rights over against the sovereign will of the present generation.' By historically acquired rights is meant in particular the right of William I. to rule independently because his predecessors did so. By what right the great elector robbed the nobles of their prerogatives, and how, in case he did wrong in thus disregarding their 'historically acquired rights,' this wrong itself, by being continued two hundred years, becomes, in its turn, an acquired right, is not explained in the address to which we allude. The principal fault to be found with such reasoning as this of the Prussian Conservatives, is that it is altogether too vague and abstract. There can be no development without something new; there can be, in social affairs, nothing new without some sort of innovation. Innovation, as such, can therefore not be condemned without condemning development. Moreover, development, as the organic growth of a political body, is something which takes care of itself, or rather is cared for by a higher wisdom than man's. To object to a proposed measure nothing more weighty