The German Confederation of 1815-1866 went far outside the boundaries of modern Germany.  It included lands belonging to three non-German monarchs.  The King of Holland was a member of it in virtue of the Dutch provinces of Limburg and Luxemburg; the King of Denmark for the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein; and the Emperor of Austria (who, then as now, ruled over Hungary, Austrian Poland, and the Southern Slav provinces) for Bohemia, Moravia, and German-speaking Austria up to and beyond Vienna.  The Confederation was in fact in no sense a national State, and was never intended to be so.  It was a loosely knit assortment of principalities and free cities.  Germany was still broken up and divided in a manner almost inconceivable to the inhabitants of an old-established unity like Great Britain or France.  At least five different kinds of money, for instance, were in use in the different States of the Confederation, and, as stamp-collectors know, the postal system was bewildering in its complexity.  More important was the deep gulf between different parts of the country due to religious divisions.  The Reformation, which left England with a National Church, left Germany hopelessly divided; and the division between the Protestants in the north and east, and the Catholics in the west and south, is still, half a century after the establishment of the United Empire, a source of difficulty.

Yet the Confederation has one undeniable achievement to its credit.  It paved the way for German unity by facilitating the Zollverein, or Customs Union, which was extended between 1830 and 1844 to practically all the German States except those under Austrian rule.  But the far-reaching importance of this development was not at that time appreciated.  Western Europe was tired after the great Napoleonic struggle and was not in a mood for big designs.  To all outward appearance Germany seemed to have relapsed, after the thrill and glamour of the Wars of Liberation, into the stuffy atmosphere of the old eighteenth century life.  Only a very patient, a very docile, and a very philosophic and law-abiding people would have endured such an anti-climax; and it is these qualities, together with a certain clumsiness and helplessness due to their complete inexperience of the responsibilities of a larger citizenship, which go far to explain the subsequent history of Germany.

But in the evil days after the Congress of Vienna the idea of German unity lived on, and formed a constant theme of discussion and speculation, like the idea of the unity of Poland and of the Southern Slavs in the present generation.  The stirring memories of the Great Revolution were like a constant refrain at the back of men’s minds all through that dreary time.  In 1830, when the French established a Liberal Monarchy and the Belgians freed themselves from the unwelcome supremacy of Holland, there was much excitement throughout Germany.  But nothing serious occurred until 1848, when the Liberal and