equality with the nobility; like the nobility, they were apprehensive
over the growing number of illiterates and workers, who might
threaten life and property if not restrained.

The economic demands of the bourgeoisie paralleled their political
demands. They advocated abolition of the restrictions and regulations
of the mercantilist system (especially those affecting labor and produc-
tion), freedom of movement for men and goods, repeal of internal road
and river tolls (toward which the Prussian Customs Union of 1834 was
a promising beginning), uniformity of currency, weights, and mea-
sures, and a common law of commerce. These last provisions linked
economic reforms to political issues because every businessman real-
ized that national unification would provide a powerful stimulus to
business and industrial expansion and lead to abolition of countless
local customs and usages left over from the Middle Ages. The liberal
merchants and businessmen also demanded noninterference by the
government in matters of business and trade, which became known as
the laissez faire doctrine. ¹ A similar attitude toward government inter-
ference was also noticeable in the field of social welfare. The liberals
were opposed to any type of welfare legislation, such as child labor
laws or the shortening of the working day, and favored instead free-
dom of contracts and the abolition of usury laws, which set low rates
of interest. This attitude of unrestrained individualism, in the face of
the increasingly inhuman working conditions in factories and mines,
aroused the hostility of the workers against the middle classes and in-
spired socialist writers to attack liberalism from the very beginning. ²

The intellectuals, whose freedom of expression had been suppressed
after 1812, reemerged after the 1830 revolution in Paris, and at the
Hambach Festival in May 1832, they staged the first mass demonstra-
tion in the Germanies; they denounced the repressive measures of the
Metternich system, such as censorship of press and publication and
restriction of the right of association, and demanded a reunited, repub-
lican Germany and the liberation of Poland, Hungary, and Italy. The
German governments, prodded by Metternich, responded to these
demands with more repressive measures which, in turn, popularized
the Young German movement. This movement, one of many similar
European-wide movements (Young Italy, Young Ireland, and Young
Poland) was inspired by French revolutionary ideals and dissatisfac-

-12-