within the geographical limits assigned to it, all the expectations of those who had looked to a National Parliament as the only effective remedy for the political evils of territorial dismemberment. It represented fairly and truthfully the "climate of opinion" prevalent in the north of Germany as distinct from the local temperature prevalent in the several States.

With scarcely any exception, every man of political mark, of whatever party, found a seat within its walls. The Liberal elements, as was to be expected, largely preponderated, but, on the other hand, the Conservative elements of all shades, from the feudalist reactionary to the liberal-conservative, were represented in a truer ratio to their real power than they had been in the Prussian Chamber of Deputies.

The Liberal majority of this Constituent Assembly (and the National Parliament subsequently elected for the ordinary business of legislation bears all the essential features of its predecessor) was divided into two great sections, between whom there existed far less cordiality and far more acrimony than appears to us, as bystanders, justifiable, when we consider how identical in the main are the objects of both. We have noticed elsewhere that the two ideas for the realization of which the German nation has not ceased since the War of Liberation to strive, are unity and freedom-Einheit und Freiheit. It was with this double cry that the Prussian legions drove their adversaries into the swollen waters of the Katzbach. It was in these two directions that the efforts of the Prussian negotiators at the Congress of Vienna were defeated. It was in the attempt simultaneously to solve these two problems that the Frankfort Parliament came to its untimely end. Now, though there most assuredly exists no essential incompatibilty between these two objects, but the reverse, inasmuch as, taking the genius of the Teutonic race into account, it is difficult to conceive of the permanent establishment of the one without the other, yet it is not less true that during a period of more or less revolutionary transition, a passionate and one-sided striving for the one object necessarily calls into life forces which act in a direction adverse to the other. The vigor ous concentration of power into one hand for the purposes of unity operates pro tanto against the simultaneous assertion of the rights of individual and local liberty. Headlong enthusiasm in the cause of the latter acts in a proportionate degree against the concentration and centralization of power. Hence most of the catastrophes which have occurred in the crisis of German developN-11

VOL. L.

| ment have owed their origin to the mutual friction of these two forces; and if at the present day we inquire into the causes of the comparative slowness with which the work of consolidation progresses, we cannot fail to see that amongst the weightiest is the antagonism produced by the exclusiveness with which the one and the other principle is clung to by its respective votaries. Instead of being worshipped together at the same shrine, the two idols have been set up be hind separate altars, and the priests who ought to form part of one holy brotherhood revile each other as if they were the ministers of rival religions.

Though the two forms of worship may be found side by side in every part of Germany, the one predominates in the North, the other in the South. The Northerner taunts the Southerner with his parochialism, his incapacity to seize any idea but that of cantonal independence, his unwillingness to make any sacrifice for the national cause or the common good. In language yet more bitter, the Southerner reviles the Northerner for his Cæsarism, his blind lust for power, and his readiness to sacrifice civil and political liberty to the vainglorious desire of establishing a military colossus that shall dictate its laws to Europe. The North German Constitution, says the Suabian, can be summed up in three paragraphs: "Hold your tongue; Pay taxes; Be a soldier."

The two sections of the Liberal party in the North German Parliament, known by the names of the National Liberals and the party of Progress, respectively correspond to these two classes of worshippers. Both hold the cardinal points of the modern Liberal creed, but the formula of the former may be said to be, "Take care of Unity, and Liberty will take care of herself;" that of the latter, "Take care of Liberty, and Unity will take care of itself." Both accept the events of 1868 as faits accomplis, but the party of Progress do so without having shaken off the effects of the antecedent struggle, and with the bitterness of that struggle still in their hearts. The National Liberals accept the new dispensation in a glad and hopeful spirit, and feel like men who have their feet on the first round of the ladder, and to whom scaling the remaining rounds is a comparatively easy task. The former pride themselves on being logical, the latter on having acquired political wisdom.

The scheme presented by the allied Governments to the constituent Parliament satisfied neither the National Liberals nor the party of Progress. The Prussian Conservatives were naturally in their hearts averse to it, inasmuch as it consecrated many

It was under this Parliamentary constellation that the attitude of the National Liberals decided the fate of the scheme in a manner favourable to the wishes of its promoter. From the first, M. de Bismarck knew that they would submit to almost any conditions rather than that a common Constitution for North Germany, of one kind or another, should not come into life, and this enabled him on all critical occasions to to use the argument of the Non possumus with the same effect with which he had used it in the conferences of the allied Governments. The words once out of his mouth, the National Liberals voted with the Government party, and secured a majority. On the other hand, in regard to such concessions as he showed a readiness to make, the National Liberals, joining with the party of Progress, obtained a majority over the Conservative supporters of the Government. There thus came to be established relations of peace and amity, though hardly of cordiality, between M. de Bismarck and some of the most important elements of the Liberal party-relations profoundly affect ing the present and future both of the statesman and of his new allies, but with which we cannot occupy ourselves here.

Looked at from the standing-ground of those Federal physiologists who had so learnedly analysed the various genera and species into which federative bodies must of necessity be classed, the North German Constitution presents a lusus naturæ which it is not easy to describe.

Some introductory notion of it may perhaps be conveyed to the reader if we say that it combines the objects of the "Bundesstaat" with such materials as could be saved from the wreck of the Constitution of 1815; or, to convey a more definite idea, if we describe it as an edifice of which the basis and foundation is national, and the superstructure international.

The organs of the Confederation are only two in number, the National Parliament (Reichstag) and the Federal Council (Bundesrath), and consequently the outlines of the structure are simple enough. The difficulty consists in obtaining a clear conception of the way in which these organs fulfil the executive and legislative functions assigned to them.

The National Parliament presents no difficulty. It is taken bodily out of the Constitution of 1849, and may therefore be considered as the contribution of the professors and the nation to the new edifice. Its functions are legislative, their sphere being limited by the subjects designated in the Constitution as falling within the competence of Federal legislation, viz., army, navy, mercantile navy, consular representation, customs, excise taxes on tobacco, salt, and sugar, posts, telegraphs, weights and measures, currency, banking, patents, railways, navigation of rivers, canals, high roads, laws for civil and criminal procedure, laws respecting domicile, settlement, aud a common North German denizenship, passports, laws regulating the exercise of trades, taxes to be imposed for Federal purposes, loans for Federal purposes. That bona fide rights of legislature on so vast a field as the above necessarily invest the body enjoying those rights with considerable political power, self-evident. There is, indeed, no political question of any importance which cannot be directly or indirectly brought before the forum of the National Parliament, and which would not be profoundly affected by the ver dict it might pass upon it. Nevertheless, the representative branch of the North German Legislature will not be able to assume a really independent political position, or exercise a direct and decisive influence over the political destinies of its constituents, until the right of yearly voting the military estimates, and that of fixing the numerical force of the Federal army, has been firmly established. Whether the year 1871* will see this right not only acknowledged in the ory but acted upon in practice, is a question upon which we will not venture an opinion.

is

Independently of this eventuality, however, a great accession of political power will accrue to the Parliament whenever the

Constituent Assembly in the draft of Constitution *The most important amendment made by the submitted to it was that affecting the military budget and the quota of recruits to be furnished by the Confederate States. According to the proposal as it originally stood, a quota of one per cent. of the under arms, were to be fixed once for all by the population, and 225 thalers per head for every man Organic Statute of the Confederation. The Assembly, however, made a firm stand on this point, and a compromise was at last brought about, to the effect that, until 1871, the above taxes in blood and money were to remain in force, but that from that date the National Parliament was to vote the military estimates both in men and money. Even after 1871, however, the payments in both kinds were to continue until changed by a law. As Prussia can always prenotwithstanding the above provision, she had it vent such a law being passed, it would appear as if, her power to prolong the above rates indefinitely.

necessity of contracting a Federal loan, or that of imposing new Federal taxes, shall arise. As regards the latter, the combination of national and international machinery which characterizes the new Constitution leaves it open to the allied Governments to put off the day when the right of voting money-bills shall perceptibly increase the power of the Parliament, for, as the Constitution at present stands, the only national sources of Federal revenue are derived from the customs and from excise taxes on sugar, salt, and tobacco, and any deficiency which may arise is made up by the international expedient of pro rata contributions (matricular beiträge) from the several States. It is however clear that this expedient is one which cannot last long, and that sooner or later fresh Federal taxes will have to be imposed...

If, turning from the National Parliament, we inquire where are the other branches of the Legislature, and look for the Executive, for the Sovereign, and the Ministers of the new-born commonwealth, we find ourselves face to face with the Federal Council, and our troubles begin. Examined structurally, the Federal Council is nothing else than the Plenary Assembly of the Frankfort Diet, with the votes of Austria and the Southern States eliminated, and with Prussia substituted for Austria as presiding Power; consequently its outward and visible semblance presents the international features of a Congress of Plenipotentiaries, in which, notwithstanding that the office of presiding at the Congress is permanently assigned to one of the allied Powers, none is theoretically before or after another.

*

It is of importance to the correct appreciation of the Constitution we are examining, that we should precisely estimate what this right of Presidency is in theory, and what it amounts to in practice. As regards the theory of the office, we must carefully guard against confounding the functions of the Presidency of the North German Confederation wtih those of the President of the United States. The latter is the executive head of a sovereign body, and the office he fills absorbs many of the attributes which, under a monarchical form of government, are vested in the Crown. It is a distinct and independent factor in the mechanism of the commonwealth, and, in virtue of the right of veto,

*By an ingenious device, not destitute of a grim sort of humour, Hanover, Electoral Hesse, Holstein, Nassau, and Frankfort were resuscitated ad hoc, and the votes they had held in the Plenary Assembly of the Diet were consigned to the hands of Prussia, who with her own four was thus credited with seventeen votes.

constitutes one of the three branches of the Legislature; it cannot, moreover, be conceived otherwise than in the concrete form of an individual person. The personality of the President of the United States is as important a political fact in the American Republic as that of the Czar of Russia is in the Russian autocracy.

The Presidency of the North German Confederation is the reverse of all this. Examined functionally, it is nothing else than the chairmanship of an international board, and has no functions or attributes distinct from that board. In the political abstraction entitled the North German Confederation, Prussia is the presiding Power (Presidial Macht). In the body outwardly and visibly representing that abstraction, the Federal Council, the Prussian Plenipotentiary, under the name of Federal Chancellor, takes the chair at the head of the green table round which the Plenipotentiaries sit, in the same way that the Austrian Plenipotentiary, under the name of presiding Plenipotentiary (Presi dial Gesandter) did at the Frankfort Diet. He directs the business of the board, and is invested with all the attributes which are requiste for the transaction of such business; he is also the organ through which the board communicates with other public bodies, and its mouthpiece in the Parliament, and he has to see to the execution of the Federal laws, for which purpose, be it noted, a special department, under the modest title of the Federal Chancellor's Office, has been created.* Beyond this, however, he has no distinct and independent position apart from the board. Like every other Plenipotentiary, he is worth exactly what his vote is worth. He can, whenever he chooses, vacate the chair in favour of a colleague, and the work goes on just the same as it did before. Hence, though Prussia is the presiding Power, and the Prussian Plenipotentiary presides at the Federal Council, the King of Prussia is not President of the Confederation; and it is worth remarking that, with some important exceptions to be later no

The "Bundes Kanzlei Amt" consists of a board composed of Räthe or Councillors, presided for the immediate use of the Chancellor, the various over by a President, into whose hands are collected, threads of the Federal Administration which centralizes in the seven committees of the "Federal Council," to be later adverted to. It is divided into sections corresponding to those seven departments, each of which is presided over by a Rath, with a staff of subordinate officials, so that what at first sight appears but a room full of clerks to carry on the business of the Chancellor's Office, assumes, on closer inspection, the rudimentary outlines of an imperial State machinery. M. Delbruck, the President of the Board, is one of the very ablest civil servants in the service of the Prussian Crown.