1833

Publication of Principles of Geology (Lyell) which contradicted many religious claims, e.g the age of the world.

Ma loi d'avenir, by Claire Demar, a radical essay calling for equality for women.

An attack on the main police station and the Bund in Frankfurt, and a plan to take the members hostage. Metternich treated it as terrorism. A Central Investigative Office was set up in Frankfurt to monitor radicals and Metternich set up the Mainz Central Police (sometimes called the Mainz Intelligence Agency) to coordinate espionage and policing — 'the first institutionally independent, centralised secret service, organised as a state authority, on German soil' and made Metternich 'the best informed politician on the Continent' regarding political developments and the politically committed literary world (Siemann p668). Its operations extended across all Bund members and to nodes such as Paris and Zurich. Dissolved in February 1848. Metternich also had a special office in the Chancellery (called the Ziffernkabinett) to provide espionage expertise including intercepting, opening, copying letters, encryption etc. NB. Metternich did not control all this apparatus, the police and censorship in Austria were controlled by the Ministry of the Interior.

Metternich-Emperor: the growth of the Zollverein is worrying, it will harm our economic interests but our political interests more. Prussia's growing economic power will imbalance the Bund as 10/17 members are in the Zollverein. Prussia wants the German states to 'direct their view in fear as in hope only toward Berlin, and to see Austria at long last for what it actually in commercial terms already is to all these states, and as what the fashionable Prussian writers are again and again eager to present it, namely as a foreign country'; eventually this trend will open a rift with Prussia. Metternich was looking for a way to deal the Zollverein 'a most devastating blow'. The Bund should become the centre of trade and he reminded the Emperor of Article 19 of the Federal Act — i.e the Bund's role in trade and commerce. He suggested free trade between the Bund member and equal treatment for products originating inside the Bund. This involved changes in Austria to trade policy and some concessions 'to prevent a larger evil which might eventually affect the well-being and influence of the monarchy at the roots'. Siemann: he was in a Catch 22 — if he'd tried to push through membership of the Zollverein, he'd have fallen foul of powerful interests at court and failed; if he'd favoured a customs union internal to the monarchy, as his enemy Kolowrat advised, Austria would have lost its ties with Germany. The only one who could have pushed through an attempt to join the Zollverein was the Emperor and he didn't want to. An example of the problem: it would have been necessary to lower the tariff on sugar for imports to Bohemia, but the Bohemian owners of large sugar producing estates strongly opposed exposing themselves to more competition, and Kolowrat was a lobbyist for them. The memo was ignored as the Emperor did when he disagreed with Metternich (not given the usual signature).

The Slavery Abolition Act passed in Britain.