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It paved the way for German unity by facilitating the Zollverein, or Customs Union, which was extended between 1830 and 1844 to practically all the German States except those under Austrian rule. But the far-reaching importance of this development was not at that time appreciated. Western Europe was tired after the great Napoleonic struggle and was not in a mood for big designs.
It held them also in another manner, namely, by means of the Zollverein, signed anew on June 4, 1867. But it was as yet far from having brought about a peaceful realization of unity. The southern states, not merely the sovereigns only, but the peoples as well, had always shown little taste for Prussian leadership, and after 1866 this feeling was very visible.
The campaign which he initiated, after the South African War, for the institution of an Imperial Zollverein or a system of Colonial Preference was a failure, and indeed was probably a blunder, since it implied an attempt to return to that material basis of imperial unity which had formed the core of the old colonial system, and had led to the most unhappy results in regard to the American colonies.
He was now at leisure to resume the discussions on uniform, and the work of fastening and unfastening the numerous buttons of his pantaloons, in which he had been so roughly interrupted by Jena. The first institution of the Zollverein, or commercial union with several States, gradually extended, was a measure which did much for the unification of Germany.
He was now at leisure to resume the discussions on uniform, and the work of fastening and unfastening the numerous buttons of his pantaloons, in which he had been so roughly interrupted by Jena. The first institution of the Zollverein, or commercial union with several States, gradually extended, was a measure which did much for the unification of Germany.
In retrospect it is clear that more was requisite for the realisation of the vision of the wished-for nation, than imperial investiture of a crowned monarch with sovereignty over a group of lands. A modern writer has pointed out how infinitely subtle is the vital principle of a nation, one not even to be created by common interests. A Zollverein is no patria.
At this he chuckled heartily to himself: so the rest of us laughed too: the thing was too absurd. But the Authority, who was a man of nice distinctions and genuinely anxious to instruct us, was evidently afraid that he had overstated things a little. "Mind you," he said, "there'll be something left certainly the Zollverein and either the Ausgleich or something very like it."
The Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of January 1860 seemed to betoken the speedy conversion of the world to the enlightened policy of unfettered exchange of all its products. In 1862 and 1865 the German Zollverein followed suit, relaxing duties on imported articles and manufactured goods a process which was continued in its commercial treaties and tariff changes of the years 1868 and 1869.
During the next few years the North German Confederation was employed in consolidating and strengthening itself, and in trying to induce the southern states to join the league. The Zollverein was remodelled and extended, until by the year 1868 every part of Germany was a member of it, with the exception of the cities of Hamburg and Bremen, and a small part of Baden.
As equals, the union can be only a confederacy, a sort of Zollverein, in which each state retains its individual sovereignty; if as unequals, then someone among them will aspire to the hegemony, and you have over again the Athenian Confederation, formed at the conclusion of the Persian war, and its fate.
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