In order to atone for the injustice we have done to the anonymous Montesquieu LVI we have imposed upon ourselves the harsh penance of reading all his advertisements in the Kolnische Zeitung and making his intellectual private property available to the German public as "common property". Here is wisdom! Montesquieu LVI is chiefly concerned with the social question. He has found the "easiest and simplest way" to solve it, and he extols his Morrison pill with the unctuous, naively shameless pathos of a quack. We do not for a moment doubt that neither Montesquieu LVI nor his patrons in the Citizens' Associations  will wait for the imposed constitution to be accepted, revised,  sworn, and promulgated before "feeding the hungry and clothing the naked". Appropriate measures have already been taken. During the last few weeks circulars have been distributed in which capitalists inform craftsmen, shopkeepers, and others that, considering the present state of affairs and the revival of credit, the rate of interest, for philanthropical reasons, has been raised from 4 to 5 per cent. First solution of the social question! The municipal council of Cologne has in the same spirit drawn up a "Worker's Card" for the unfortunate people who must either starve or sell their hands to the city (cf. No. 187 of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung). It will be remembered that under this Charter, imposed on the workers, the worker who has lost his job is bound by contract to place himself under police surveillance. Second solution of the social question! Shortly after the March events, the municipal council established an eating-house in Cologne at cost prices, beautifully furnished, with fine rooms that could be heated, etc. After the imposition of the constitution other premises were substituted for this, premises managed by the poor-law administration, where there is no heating, no crockery, where food may not be consumed on the spot and where a quart of indescribable gruel costs eight pfennigs. Third solution of the social question! While they ruled Vienna the workers guarded the banks, the houses and the wealth of the bourgeois, who had fled. These same bourgeois, on their return, denounced these workers to Windischgratz as "robbers" who ought to be hanged. Unemployed who applied to the municipal council were put into the army to fight Hungary. Fourth solution of the social question! In Breslau the wretched people who were obliged to seek refuge in the poor house were calmly exposed to cholera by the municipal council and the government who deprived them of the most essential physical necessaries of life, and took notice of the victims of their cruel charity only when they themselves were attacked by the disease. Fifth solution of the social question! In the Berlin association "with God for King and Country", a supporter of the imposed constitution declared that it was distressing that in order to further one's interests and plans one still had to pay compliments to the "proletariat". That is the solution of the "solution of the social question"! "The Prussian spies are so dangerous because they are never paid but are always hoping to be paid," says our friend Heine. And the Prussian bourgeois are so dangerous because they never pay but always promise to pay. An election costs the English and French bourgeois quite a lot of money. Their corrupt practices are well known. The Prussian bourgeoisie are very shrewd! They are much too virtuous and upright to dip into their pocket; they pay with the "solution of the social question". And that costs nothing. Montesquieu LVI, however, as Dumont officially assures us, pays at least for the advertisements in the Kolnische Zeitung and appends -- gratis -- the solution of the "social question". The practical part of our Montesquieu's petites oeuvres thus boils down to the following: vote for Brandenburg, Manteuffel, Ladenberg! Elect Camphausen and Hansemann! Send us to Berlin, let our people establish themselves there. That is the solution of the social question. The immortal Hansemann has solved these problems. First, the establishment of law and order to revive credit. Then, the solution of the "social question" with powder and shot, as in 1844, when "my dear Silesian weavers ought to be helped". Hence, vote for the advocates of the imposed constitution! But Montesquieu LVI accepts the imposed constitution only to be able afterwards to "revise" and "swear allegiance to it"! Montesquieu, my good man! Once you have accepted the constitution you can revise it only on its own basis, that is, in so far as it suits the King and the second Chamber consisting of country squires, financial magnates, high-ranking officials and clerics. The only possible revision has been judiciously indicated in the imposed constitution itself. It consists in abandoning the constitutional system and restoring the former Christian-Germanic system of estates. After the acceptance of the imposed constitution this is the only possible and only permitted revision, which cannot have escaped the shrewd Montesquieu. Thus the essays of Montesquieu LVI, in their practical part, amount to this: vote for Hansemann and Camphausen! Vote for Dumont and Stupp! Vote for Brandenburg and Manteuffel! Accept the imposed constitution! Elect delegates who accept the imposed constitution -- and all this under the pretext of solving the "social question". What the hell does the pretext matter to us, when it is a question of the imposed constitution. But our Montesquieu of course prefaces his practical instructions for the solution of "the social question", the quintessence of his monumental work, with a theoretical part. Let us examine this theoretical part. The profound thinker explains first what the "social questions" are. What, then, in effect is the physiological question? Every material being presupposes a certain weight, density, etc. Every organic body consists of various component parts, each of which performs its own special function, and reciprocal interaction takes place between the organs. "These are physiological relations." Montesquieu LVI cannot be denied an original talent for simplifying science. He ought to be granted a patent (without government guarantee). The products of labor cannot be produced without labor. One cannot reap without sowing, one cannot have yarn without weaving, etc. Europe will bend in admiration before the great genius who here, in Cologne, without any aid from the Neue Preussische Zeitung has himself brought these truths to light. In their work men enter into certain relations with one another. There takes place a division of labor which may be more or less diversified. One person bakes, another forges one person agitates, another howls,  Montesquieu writes and Dumont prints. Adam Smith, acknowledge thy master! The discoveries that labor and the division of labor are essential conditions of every human society enable Montesquieu LVI to draw the conclusion that the existence of "various estates" is quite natural, that the distinction between "bourgeoisie and proletariat" is a "big lie", that even if a "revolution" were completely to destroy the existing "social relations" today, "relations exactly the same as the present ones will arise again", and finally that for anyone who has "a sympathetic heart for the misery of his poor brothers" and who wishes to gain the respect of Montesquieu LVI, it is absolutely necessary to elect delegates in keeping with the ideas of Manteuffel and the imposed constitution. In 1789 the bourgeois did not tell feudal society that an aristocrat should remain an aristocrat, a serf a serf and a guildsman a guildsman -- because there is no society without labor and division of labor. There is no life without breathing of air. Hence, argues Montesquieu LVI, breathe the stuffy air and do not open any window. One must possess the naively clumsy insolence of a German imperial philistine grown grey in crass ignorance to contribute oracular pronouncements upon problems on which our century is breaking its teeth, after having rammed the first elements of political economy -- labor and division of labor -- in a superficial and distorted manner his inert head. "There is no society without labor and the division of labor. This epitaph will be inscribed in large letters on walls of the magnificent marble mausoleum which a grateful posterity will feel obliged to erect for Montesquieu LVI (not to be confused with Henry CCLXXXIV of Reuss-Schleiz-Greiz-Lobenstein-Eberswalde [An allusion to Henry LXXII, Prince of Reuss-Lobenstein-Ebersdorf. -- Ed.]) who solved the social question. Montesquieu LVI does not conceal from us "where the difficulty lies" and what he intends to do as soon as he is proclaimed a lawgiver. And what about the commercial crises, my dear man? When a European commercial crisis occurs the Prussian state is above all anxious to extract the last drops, by means of distraint, etc., from the usual sources of revenue. Poor Prussian state! In order to neutralize the effect of commercial crises, the Prussian state would have to possess, in addition to national labor, a third source of income in Cloud- Cuckoo-Land. If royal New-Year's greetings, Wrangel's army orders or Manteuffel's ministerial decrees could indeed conjure up money, then the "refusal to Pay taxes" would not have caused such panic among the Prussian "trusty and well-beloved subjects", and the social question, too, would have been solved without an imposed constitution. It will be remembered that the Neue Preussische Zeitung called our Hansemann a communist because he intended to do away with exemption from taxation. In Cologne our Montesquieu, who has never read the Neue Preussische Zeitung, has all by himself conceived the idea of calling everyone a "communist" and "red republican" who endangers the imposed constitution. Therefore, vote for Manteuffel, or you are not only personal enemies of labor and the division of labor, but also communists and red republicans. Acknowledge Bruggemann's latest "legal basis" or renounce the Code Civil.  Figaro, tu n'aurais pas trouve ca! More about Montesquieu LVI tomorrow.
Neue Rheinsiche Zeitung No. 201 January 1849