in their foreign relations and inhibited from making separate alliances, they were destined,-whilst Austria, Prussia, the Netherlands, and Denmark, whose sovereigns participated in the advantages of the league, were untrammelled in all essential matters.

The avowed object of the Confederacy, as set forth in the act of 1815, and recognised in the constitution of 1820, was to secure the external and internal tranquillity and independence of the different States; the respective territories of which were also further guarantied by the Holy Alliance. It was especially provided that the members of the Confederacy should not make war on one another, that in case of an attack from abroad no State should make a separate peace or truce, and that they should keep on foot an army, for which each State should furnish its contingent. The equality of religious sects was likewise stipulated, and it was further provided that the several principalities should have representative constitutions, by which the people were to participate in the laying of taxes, making laws, &c. No member can withdraw itself from the league, and the Diet may interfere not only between princes, but between a prince and his subjects.

The affairs of the Confederacy are managed by a Diet, which holds its sessions at Frankfort. The assemblies of the body are of two kinds, in both of which the minister of Austria presides. 1st. The general assembly, in which every State has at least one vote;

Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover* and Wurtemberg, each four; Baden, Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Darmstadt, Holstein and Luxemburg, three; Brunswick,Mecklenberg-Schwerin and Nassau, each two. In all proceedings relating to religion ard the admission of new members, unanimity is required, and in others two-thirds of the votes. 2d. The ordinary assembly, in which there are but seventeen votes, of these Austria, the five kingdoms, Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Darmstadt, Holstein, and Luxemburg have each one, and the others are collective votes of the minor States. The ordinary assembly proposes measures to the general assembly and executes its decrees. A majority of nine decides all questions.

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As the Confederacy is an association of the princes, and not of the people of the different States, the members of the Diet are not deputies, but ministers plenipotentiary, who are pelled to consult their constituents, before coming to any final decision. The subjects, which have occupied their principal attention during the last fifteen years, have been the organization of the federal army, the free navigation of the rivers, the commercial intercourse between the States generally, and the suppression of liberal or revolutionary doctrines.

After several years discussion,

*The title of the king of Hanover was first assumed, after the downfall of Napoleon, to put the sovereign of that

country on an equality with those of Bavaria, Saxony and Wurtemberg.

the regulations for the army of the Confederacy were finally adopted on the 17th April, 1821. One man for every hundred inhabitants is the contingent, which each State has to furnish, and consequently the standing army exceeds 300,000 men. One half of one per cent of the whole population is also set apart as a reserve. The contingent of each power must always be kept in readiness, but to the Diet belongs the authority of determining what portion of the army is to be called into service. The commander-in-chief is named by the Diet, to whom he takes an oath of fidelity, and many of the principal fortresses of the States of the Confederacy are garrisoned by portions of the federal army.

By the Congress of Vienna, the liberty of internal navigation was adopted as a principle, and provisions were made for securing, to the subjects of the several powers bordering on the rivers, their free use to the sea, on the payment of moderate tolls. One of the earliest cases, in which the interposition of the Diet was invoked, was an attempt made in 1821 by Prussia, to impose duties on goods passing through its dominions on the Elbe, to and from one of the principalities of Anhalt. The complaints of Anhalt were answered by a metaphysical effort to reconcile the unrestricted right of using a river with the unlimited power of imposing duties on articles transported on it; but, before the impartiality of the assembly of the Confederacy was brought to the test in settling a controversy be

tween one of the most important and one of the least considerable States subjected to its jurisdiction, means were found to reconcile the disputants. Similar difficulties also arose between other neighboring powers, and without eliciting the final action of the Diet; but by far the most important controversy of this nature in which the German States were involved, was one with the King of the Netherlands, in relation to that part of the Rhine, which passed through Holland. In this matter the sovereign of the Low Countries was wholly independent of the Confederacy, but it occupied, for many years, in connection with the subject of the tolls to be established on the Rhine, and the free intercourse among the States, much of the attention of the Diet.

Holland evaded the article of the treaty of Vienna, which opened the navigation of the Rhine to the sea, by contending that, if the other powers would insist on the terms of the treaty, they must be content with the Rhine proper, which was neither the Waal, the Leck, nor the Yssel, but a rivulet, which leaves the Leck at Wyck, and passing by Utrecht and Leyden, loses itself in a muddy stream. Holland afterwards agreed to con sider first the Leck and then the Waal, as a continuation of the Rhine; but she insisted that there was a distinction between the terms to the sea' and into the sea,' and that the Rhine or its continuation terminating at Gorcum, the navigation from thence was on an arm of the sea, and

consequently not within the purview of the treaty. The course pursued by the King of the Netherlands was particularly annoying to Prussia, on account of its interfering with the very extensive trade carried on by the Rhenish Provinces with the United States and South America. Austria, also, plainly intimated that the freedom of the navigation of the rivers was connected, as one transaction, with the increase of the territories of the house of Orange. The prohibition of transit in other than Dutch vessels was repealed, and the Germans were allowed to navigate the Rhine of Holland on the same terms as other parts of the river; but when they approached the sea, they continued to be subjected to the export duties; and in this situation matters rested at the time that the attention of His Netherlands' Majesty was called to those occurrences in Belgium, which stripped him of the better half of his dominions. To those among us, who are acquainted with the practical dificulty of adjusting a tariff of duties in a manner to conciliate the diversified interests of an extended Empire, it cannot be surprising that the Diet should not have assumed a task, not imperiously obligatory on it, and undertaken to form general regulations of trade for the several States of the Confederacy. Attempts were, however, made to render Germany one country as to internal commerce; but these having failed, partial conventions were entered into by different States. At an early day several of them made declarations, recognising the

importance of unlimited freedom of trade among the members of the Confederacy, and of the greatest practical facilities in their intercourse with foreign nations. It subsequently became a favorite notion with the politicians of the minor powers, to form a union for the free admission of all articles among themselves, and for the exclusion of the products of those countries, which were not parties to the compact. In 1822, Bavaria, Wurtemberg and HesseDarmstadt entered into arrangements founded on this principle, and united in the adoption of prohibitory duties with respect to France, and which it was proposed to extend to Holland, Prussia, and England.

By a convention, concluded at Berlin in February, 1828, between Prussia and Hesse-Darmstadt, it was agreed that there should be entire freedom of commerce between the two States, subject however to the duties which should continue to be levied in each, regard being had to their respective systems of indirect internal imposts; that there should be a mutual suppression of the line of custom-houses upon their adjoining frontiers; and that the Grand Duke should adopt for his other frontiers the tariff of Prussia.

In the same year, a treaty of commerce, with a special reference to the custom houses, was concluded between Bavaria and Wurtemberg, and acceeded to by several of the principalities bordering on the two kingdoms. This treaty provided that a line of custom-houses, common to the

contracting parties, should be established, and that they should unite in naming agents to receive the duties, the amount of which was to be provisionally regulated by the tariff of Bavaria.

An arrangement of a more extended nature was, about the same time, entered into between several of the powers of the north and centre of Germany. Their object is thus set forth in an act bearing date the 24th of September, 1828.

'The Kingdoms of Hanover and Saxony, the Electorate of Hesse, the Grand Dutchy of Saxe Weimar, the Dutchy of Brunswick, the Landgrave of Hesse Hamburg, the Dutchies of Nassau, Oldenburg, Saxe Altenburg, Saxe Coburg Gotha, Saxe Meiningen, the Principalities of ReussGreitz, Reuss-Lobenstein Ebensdorf, Reuss-Schleitz, and Schwartzburg-Rudolstadt and the free cities of Bremen and Frankfort form an association, in order to procure, in the sense of the 19th article of the act of Confederation, all possible liberty of commerce, as well among the members of the Union as with foreign states, and to establish such regulations, as that all the States may enjoy, as far as their financial and mercantile relations may permit, their respective geographical and other advantages.'

This association was limited provisionally to 31st Dec. 1834, it being understood that the intermediate time should be employed in settling arrangements of a definitive character.

Other special treaties have also been concluded by the German powers, of which the most important is the Convention, for twelve years, from 1st January 1830, between the King of Prussia and the Grand Duke of Hesse on the one side and the Kings of Bavaria and Wurtemberg on the other. This treaty stipulates for, 1st, the liberty of reciprocally importing all indigenous productions of the soil, of industry, or the arts, for the consumption of the contracting countries, free, with certain special exceptions, from all duties. 2dly, the liberty of transit for all the productions and merchandize of the respective parties, subject to the payment of tolls, according to the regulations of the treaty of Vienna or of special conventions. Preliminary arrangements were also made for the establishment of a uniform system of moneys, weights and measures.

Besides the adjustment of the terms of commercial intercourse with one another, those powers of Germany, which have either continental neighbors or a maritime coast, have entered into conventions to regulate their trade with foreign powers. Prussia, Hanover, Oldenburg and the Hanseatic towns early embraced the overtures contained in the British acts of reciprocity of 1823-4, and on 29th December, 1829, a treaty of the same nature with Austria was signed at London. The United States, also, have commercial conventions with Austria, Prussia and the Hansetowns, founded on the libe