1844
Disraeli in Commons: 'I want to see a public man come forward and say what the Irish question is. One says it is a physical question, another, a spiritual. Now it is the absence of aristocracy, then the absence of railways. It is the Pope one day, potatoes the next. Consider Ireland as you would any other country similarly situated.You will see a teeming population which, with reference to the cultivated soil, is denser to the square mile than that of China; created solely by agriculture, with none of the resources of wealth which develop with civilisation; and sustained, consequently, upon the lowest conceivable diet, so that in the case of failure they have no other means of subsistence upon which they can fall back. That dense population in extreme distress inhabits an island where there is an established Church which is not their Church and a territorial aristocracy the richest of whom live in distant capitals. Thus you have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. That is the Irish question.'
(Gall) He applied to resume civil service training.
Disraeli published Coningsby in which he described the Tamworth Manifesto as 'an attempt to construct a party without principles', and the 'Conservative Constitution' as a 'Caput Mortuum'. 'The Tamworth Manifesto of 1834 was an attempt to construct a party without principles: its basis therefore was necessarily latitudinarianism; and its inevitable consequence has been Political Infidelity ... There was indeed considerable shouting about what they called Conservative principles; but the awkward question naturally arose, what will you conserve? The prerogatives of the Crown, provided they are not exercised; the independence of the House of Lords, provided it is not asserted; the Ecclesiastical estate provided it is regulated by a commission of laymen. Everything in short that is established, as long as it is a phrase and not a fact ... Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for Antiquity, it offers no redress for the Present, and makes no preparation for the Future... Whenever public opinion which this party never attempts to form, to educate, or to lead, falls into some violent perplexity, passion, or caprice, this party yields without a struggle to the impulse, and, when the storm has passed, attempts to obstruct and obviate the logical, and ultimately the inevitable, results of the very measures they have themselves originated, or to which they have consented ... The man who enters public life at this epoch has to choose between Political infidelity and a Destructive Creed.'
Parliamentary battles for Peel. 'Young England' opposed the Factory Bill then allied with anti-slavery MPs to oppose Peel on equalising tariffs between colonial/foreign (i.e slave) sugar. Peel tried to bully it through the Commons but his manner was increasingly offensive.
(Gall) He had another crack at the civil service but abandoned it again after a few weeks. To a friend: 'I applied for a post in the provincial government, worked for six weeks but found the people and the duties as shallow and unsatisfying as before. Since then I have been on leave, and row without will on the stream of life without any rudder beyond the impulse of the moment and am completely indifferent about where it throws me up on the shore.'
Uprising of textile workers in Prague. Spread to Silesia through summer, the most violent upheaval in Prussia before 1848. Marx: in burning the companies' books, the weavers had directed rage at the 'titles of property' and the system of finance capitalism. In 1892 performances of Hauptmann's The Weavers, about the uprising, were initially forbidden by Berlin police fearful of the emotions it might trigger (Clark, p68ff).
As FWIV and the queen prepared to depart, a man approached their carriage and fired two revolver shots. Both missed. Barclay: FWIV bungled the response. There was an immediate wave of sympathy but whereas Berliners expected the would-be assassin's death sentence to be commuted, FWIV gave in to advice and had him executed secretly and with no public explanation. Public sympathy evaporated.
(JS) He went on a holiday to Norderney (island off German coast) and first met future King Wilhelm and Augusta. He flirted with women, ate oysters, shot rabbits, swam, played cards. 'A monotonous but healthy way of life.'
Zollverein-Belgium treaty, for 10 years, giving Belgium preferential access to the iron market at half the normal rate. It was seen in Berlin as avoiding a possible Franco-Belgian customs union while still providing iron foundries with protection from Britain. Cf. the negotiations 1853-4 between Prussia-Britain.
Bismarck travelled to Zimmerhausen to attend the wedding of Marie and Moritz. (The wedding ended disastrously with a fireworks display destroying much of the village of Zimmerhausen.) At the wedding he met Hans von Kleist, the last new friend he made(?), and his future wife, Johanna von Puttkamer, only child of a Pomeranian landowner.
FWIV, worried about the situation and growing tensions, decided to invite all provincial diets to Berlin within 3 years to discuss new taxes. He wanted to move away from bureaucratic absolutism without encouraging constitutionalism. He thought he had found a path through. Wilhelm was very unhappy with his plans throughout 1845. Long debates until 1847.