THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
As I sat hour after hour alone and shivering on the deck, disquieting thoughts began to trouble me, not only about the general course of things, but also for the first time about my own personal safety. I remembered the wording of the address which we had published in Eisenach, and which contained several sharp attacks upon the majority of the national parliament and upon the Prussian government. I remembered also to have read in the papers that the parliament in consequence of the September revolt had passed a law which imposed a heavy penalty upon utterances insulting to its members. Had we not actually committed that crime in our published address? Undoubtedly; and thus I began to picture to myself how after my arrival in Bonn I would soon be arrested, and on account of the press-offense against the national parliament and the Prussian government put on trial. Of course I resolved to suffer courageously for my convictions. What troubled me more was the thought that our address probably would have no other effect than this. But my apprehension that I would be arrested and punished proved to be entirely superfluous. If our proclamation had really come to the knowledge of the government, the authorities probably did not think it worth while to take any notice of it; and I drew from this the lesson—a not at all flattering one—that we young people might possibly appear to others much less important than to ourselves. Before long, however, conflicts really serious arrived.
Momentous news from Vienna confirmed the predictions of our Viennese friends in Eisenach. Hungary had in the days of March asserted a high degree of political autonomy under a “personal union” with Austria. It had its own ministry residing in Pesth, without whose counter-signature no order of the Austrian emperor concerning Hungary should be valid.
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