The problem of paramilitary organizations in Germany after 1918 forms an interesting and crucial chapter in the story of the ill-fated Weimar Republic. The organizations which gained the most notoriety stood on the far political right, unreconciled and unreconcilable both to military defeat and to the republic which was the child of that defeat. But the republic did have its militant defenders, who were recruited on the democratic left and organized in the Reichsbanner. The history of the Reichsbanner not only vividly demonstrated “the sharpness of political antagonisms” in the republic, but also reflected several developments during Germany's so-called golden years after 1924: the balance of political forces, Catholic-socialist and bourgeois-socialist relations, and in no small degree the disintegration of the Weimar Coalition (Social Democratic Party, Democratic Party, and Center Party).

The Conseil d'Etat of the Second Republic was dissolved on 2nd December 1851. A letter of protest, signed by eighteen of the forty Conseillers, was sent to Boulay de la Meurthe, Vice-President of the Republic. The Conseil was distrusted by Louis Napoleon; although initially well-disposed towards him after his election, it had generally sided with the Legislative Assembly in its clashes with him. Less than a month before the coup d'état, the Conseil clearly demonstrated where its sympathies lay; in November 1851, a large majority backed the Assembly and not the President over the project of law on “la responsibilité des dépositaries de l'autorité publique” (the “Loi des Questeurs”).

The period 1780-1850 marked the rapid industrialization of the British economy. This not only meant the creation of new industries. Profound changes took place within these industries. Engineering was one of these. During the period 1780-1850 the British engineering industry was transformed from a labour to a capital-intensive one. This was the result of technological change.

Augustus Hardin Beaumont is known as a secondary figure of English radicalism during the 1830s. He came to England from Jamaica in the spring of 1835 and by the end of January 1838 he was dead. He was briefly associated with the London Working Men's Association in its early stages and then went to the Northeast where he founded the Northern Liberator. Historians of Chartism have noted him in passing and they have recognized his almost frenzied militancy in support of democratic reform. Most agree with Francis Place's judgment that “his eccentricities sometimes bordered upon insanity”, but beyond that they tell us little more about him.