ied in exile at Manchester, 9th May,
1864."

XVIII.

PETTY TRADERS.

OCTOBER 2, 1852.

In our last we showed that the struggle between the German Governments
on the one side, and the Frankfort Parliament on the other, had
ultimately acquired such a degree of violence that in the first days
of May, a great portion of Germany broke out in open insurrection;
first Dresden, then the Bavarian Palatinate, parts of Rhenish Prussia,
and at last Baden.

In all cases, the _real fighting_ body of the insurgents, that body
which first took up arms and gave battle to the troops consisted of
the _working classes of the towns_. A portion of the poorer country
population, laborers and petty farmers, generally joined them after
the outbreak of the conflict. The greater number of the young men of
all classes, below the capitalist class, were to be found, for a time
at least, in the ranks of the insurgent armies, but this rather
indiscriminate aggregate of young men very soon thinned as the aspect
of affairs took a somewhat serious turn. The students particularly,
those "representatives of intellect," as they liked to call
themselves, were the first to quit their standards, unless they were
retained by the bestowal of officer's rank, for which they, of course,
had very seldom any qualifications.

The working class entered upon this insurrection as they would have
done upon any other which promised either to remove some obstacles in
their progress towards political dominion and social revolution, or,
at least, to tie the more influential but less courageous classes of
society to a more decided and revolutionary course than they had
followed hitherto. The working class took up arms with a full
knowledge that this was, in the direct bearings of the case, no
quarrel of its own; but it followed up its only true policy, to allow
no class that has risen on its shoulders (as the bourgeoisie had done
in 1848) to fortify its class-government, without opening, at least, a
fair field to the working classes for the struggle for its own
interests, and, in any case, to bring matters to a crisis, by which
either the nation was fairly and irresistibly launched in the
revolutionary career, or else the _status quo_ before the Revolution
restored as nearly as possible, and, thereby, a new revolution
rendered unavoidable. In both cases the working classes represented
the real and well-understood inter