Dr. Frantz

It has been already stated that the last pamphlet of Dr. Frantz, the dissector "our constitution," was seized by the police, and confiscated. As the author is one of the higher employés of the department of Foreign Affairs, and, from his former writings, is known as a zealous Royalist, it was rather a speculation what offence the authorities could have found in the work. A perusal fully explains the phenomenon. Dr. Frantz has been too zealous, and,from a wish to make the Royal dynasties of Germany what they might or ought to be, has so vividly described what they are and are not, that the most hairy and extreme of Democrat might give him the kiss of fraternity. He is in the case of the too clever advocate who pleaded by mistake for the wrong brief, and, stating the facts ''with his usual ability," almost got a verdict against his client. The police does not tolerate such perverted activity, and the defender of kingly authority against "our constitution " (in seven editions) is among the proscribed. Dr. Frantz calls his pamphlet the "Staats Krankheit " or the ," Political Disease;" he defines it to be the "dissolution of authority," or of the idea of it, which was the essence of the feudal system ; but, instead of deploring it as an evidence of human depravity, and ascribing it to Rousseau, Voltaire, and the philosophers of the 18th century, he says it was inevitable and natural ; that the feudal system was broken down by the printing press, gunpowder and steam ; that the first cannon which made a breach in the walls of a feudal castle was a new political power ; and that the invention of the bayonet, which enabled infantry to defy the cavalry of the feudal nobles, had more effect than all the volumes of philosophy ever written. He contends, therefore, that to bewail the decay of "authority" in its ancient sense, or to seek to restore it by creating orders, privileges, and stande, which have lost their significance, is puerile, and is placing sentiment in the place of policy. In this, he says, the mass of the Church and Royalist party is as far from comprehending the real state of things as the democrats ; the first pursue an ideal past, and the latter an abstract and chimerical future. They are both equally distant from the possible and practicable, which must be based on things as they are. The conflict, uncertainty, and confusion caused by the blind struggles of the parties of restoration and of what is called progress, are at the bottom of all the convulsions of European society ; this fever, manifested in purposeless change—republics followed by empires, empires by monarchies, monarchies by republics, and republics probably by empires again, is the " political disease" for which Dr. Frantz suggests the remedy. It is that the "dynasties" should accommodate themselves to the altered state of the world, and, as they led their vassals in the business of the feudal ages, which was war, and founded colonies and kingdoms at the expense of the Roman Empire, they should take the lead in the business of the present, and become the chiefs of banks, the lords and directors of railroads, the lenders of armies of emigrants, who are seeking a new world by thousands, with no guide but necessity ; the remedy is, in short, a reproduction of Mr. Carlyle's panacea ; and the Carlyle cry for " a man," as the great want of the time, is re-echoed in German. To English readers this is by no means new ; but the indirect reproach convoyed to the Teutonic dynasties who have let authority melt from them in every direction, except the negative and destroying one of the army, is too strong to go without rebuke. The princes of Europe, Dr. Frantz says, might have kept all the social influence they have suffered Jew bankers, railroad directors, and great manufacturers to absorb ; and that none of the Royal families have produced any individual of distinct character or power since Frederick the Great, he says, is a proof of decay. He ascribes it to another kind of social isolation—the continued intermarriages of the "dynasties" till all the princes of Europe may be considered as kindred ; this has produced moral and physical degeneracy ; and, as the process has been going on for centuries, it strikes one that Dr. Frantz's remedy comes too late. The part of the work that traces the decay of "authority" and the natural fall of the feudal system is masterly, sharply drawn, and here and there even humorous. The zest with which the author flayed the "Constitutionalists" is no less evident here, in exposing the romantic dreamers of a revival of the middle ages and all their picturesque barbarism. But when, having put princes and dynasties out of court, as impossibilities, morally and physically, he calls on them to produce "a man" (in the Carlyle sense), or a series of "leaders of men," his theory breaks down and becomes an absurdity.

But none but a man of talent could have arrived at an absurdity so well ; and as the police is by nature suspicious of all talent, especially when it kicks a little over the Government traces, it has seized the whole edition ; from the police point of view it has done quite right, for sundry sneers escape the author at the incapacity of princes, their seclusion from the realities of life, their excessive love of the " Opera" and the " Parade," which would have consigned half a dozen democrats to prison. Suppression should be impartial and consistent, since it is always unsuccessful. A confiscated pamphlet is the popular reading of the day, and Dr. Frantz's ultra-royalism has furnished one of the best on the list.

Empire 9 December 1852,