BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

that fateful year, namely “the unexampled abomination of Christian men adopting
cannibalism, . . . as was the case not a month ago at Messina!” As for the Frankfurt Assembly
and German political aspirations: “Heaven help the idiots! [W]hat would they be at? They have
got all manner of constitutions, liberty of the press—though there is not a man in Germany who
could write a decent leading article—and a great deal more freedom than is good for them
already.” 40
40 Ibid., 530-33.
41 Miller, “The Making of Germany,” Westminster Review, 132; “German Professors,”
Cornhill, 342, 346; “French, Germans and English,” British Quarterly Review, 351-53.
426-29.
While the “ludicrously tragic” drama of 1848 and its aftermath continued to be attributed
to the intransigence of Frederick William IV and a “tyranny of professors” acting as state
functionaries, the idea also persisted that the reflective character and passivity of the Germans
themselves contributed to their own political deficiencies. 41 Despite earlier charges that German
speculative philosophy had bred a contempt for sober inquiry and created an un-Christian,
egotistical and godless contempt for authority in a generation of Germans that sought change
through violent revolution, the perception endured that incapacity for political revolution itself
distinguished Germany from France and England. 42 An 1898 retrospective in the Review of
Reviews characterized the events of 1848 in Germany as a revolution that “stood still before
thrones” and reiterated the common theme that the German “revolution” bore no resemblance to
the great historic revolutions of 1640 and 1688 in England, or those of 1789, 1830 and 1848 in
42 See “Results of German Philosophy,” British Quarterly Review 7 (May 1848): 406,
203