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ticed, the person of the Prussian sovereign, | military forces of the Confederation, nomi

in its concrete individuality, nowhere appears upon the face of the Constitution.

It is therefore not an individual but a corporation in which the North German Confederation centres and culminates. It is a board and not a person that stands face to face with the National Parliament, exercising partly executive, partly legislative functions, and hence, in the most monarchical portion of Europe, the denizens of the new Confederation, in so far as a common North German citizenship is being established, will become to all intents and purposes citizens of a republic, and not the subjects of a

crown.

Such is the theory. If we turn to the practical working of the machine we obtain a very different picture. The international equality betwen the allied Governments vanishes, and the overwhelming preponderance of Prussia is everywhere apparent.

We shall best realize in what this preponderance consists if we note, first, the mode of doing business prescribed by the Federal Council; secondly, certain exceptional functions delegated to the Crown of Prussia. Though theoretically consisting of Plenipotentaries, the Federal Council in practice bears more resemblance to the ministerial conferences proposed in the scheme of the Würzburg Coalition than to a diplomatic Congress. As it is not like the Frankfort Diet, permanently assembled, but meets periodically for sessions of no undue length, the Prime Ministers themselves, those of the more important States at least, are able to attend and to act without apply ing for special instructions. Moreover, the rule having been laid down that the votes of members who are without instructions do not count, the business that has to be transacted can be got through then and there at the green table with the utmost rapidity. In this respect the Federal Council resembles an aggregate Cabinet Council of the twenty-two allied States.

For the transaction of Federal business, more especially for that of preparing the bills to be presented to the National Parliament, the Council appoints seven permanent committees, upon whose reports it deliberates in pleno, and decides by simple majority.

These committees are:-1. For Army and Fortifications; 2. For Navy; 3. For Customs and Taxes; 4. For Commerce; 5. For Railways, Posts, and Telegraphs; 6. For Justice; 7. For Federal Accounts.

Prussia is represented in each of the seven committees; and in addition to this, the King of Prussia, as supreme head of the

nates all the members of the committees for the army and navy. The twenty-one earthen vessels are thus each of them sever. ally and individually brought into direct and immediate contact with the one iron one.

When we consider that the meetings of the Council are not public, but take place after the manner of diplomatic conferences, away from the light of day; that the busi ness is transacted off-hand, and without the lengthy process of reference to the respec tive Governments; that the President of the Council not only wields seventeen votes out of the forty-three, but also the Non possumus of a Power never unmindful that its strength relatively to that of the sum total of the other Powers represented is as four to one; and lastly, when we remember that the individual in whose hands this power is lodged is Count Bismarck, we shall not fail to see that, though the forms of international equality have been kept up, the supremacy of Prussia has been amply provided for.

We have, however, still to notice certain attributes with which the King of Prussia is invested as Sovereign, not indeed of the Confederation, but of the presiding State of the Confederation.

These are, first, that of Federal Commander-in-chief, or supreme head of the Federal forces. Under the Constitution of 1815, this office only came into existence when the casus belli had arisen. It is now a permanent office, enabling the impact of a single will to stamp itself for better or worse upon the entire male population of a Confederation embracing thirty millions of inhabitants.* Secondly, That of representing the Confederation in its international relations. To the Sovereign of Prussia is dele gated, by his twenty-one peers, the right of declaring war and concluding peace in the name of the Confederation, as well as that of accrediting Federal diplomatic agents to foreign States, and of having foreign agents accredited to him as procurator of the allied Governments.t

*The principle of the Federative State (Bundes staat) is only partly carried out in the Federal army, the sovereigns of the several States having retained many rights (such as the nomination of officers up to a certain rank, etc.), which would be incompatible with the idea of a strictly Federal force, such, for instance, as the army of the United States. The rights delegated to the King of Prussia, however, are quite sufficient to give him practically the complete and entire control of the Federal land forces.

The Federal navy, on the other hand, is based on It is as absolutely in the hands of the King of Prusthe "Federative State" principle, pure and simple. sia as a regiment of his guards.

There are many other executive attributes which,

The above sketch of the North German | Parliament, with the great bulk of the memConfederation, meagre though it be, will bers composing them, transplant themselves probably suffice to convey to the reader the bodily from their seats in the Prussian impression universally prevalent throughout Chambers to those in the National AssemGermany, that the present state of things bly. The Federal Chancellor, moreover, is merely provisional, and that it is de- and the Prussian Premier are one and the signedly such. We should be transgress- same person. Nevertheless, betwen the coring the limits of the task we have proposed porations thus more or less made up of the to ourselves were we to speculate upon the same units there exists not only a most future to which this "provisorium "is des- marked and radical difference, but there can tined to lead. All we can do is to register likewise be traced the elements of a real anthe present conditions of the problem. tagonism. Account for it how we will, corThe most important fact to note is the re- porations, and more especially political corappearance, though under perfectly different porations, are imbued with a principle, and conditions, of the principle of dualism which have a raison d'être of their own, apart from has been pregnant with so many catastro- the individuals of whom for the time being phes to Germany. The phenomenon which they may be composed. We could not now makes its appearance, however, is not without entering into the internal history of that of the mechanical dualism of two bodies the Prussian State, hope to give our readers whose spheres come into external contact an adequate idea of the vital principles of and endanger by their mutual friction the the corporations in question. But the essenpolitical framework which contains them, tial difference of the conditions under which but, if we may so describe it, that of the the same orator speaks when standing on organic dualism of two natures inhabiting the tribune of the Prussian Chamber or on the same body. For, to all intents and that of the National Parliament, is self-evipurposes, the twenty-four millions who dent. In the one case it is the traditions of make up the mighty kingdom of Prussia the Prussian monarchy which envelop him, are living a double political life, and are in the other it is the aspirations of the Gerruled by a double Government. On the man future by which he is inspired. On one side there is the Prussian Parliament, the one occasion everything combines to the Prussian Ministry, and the Prussian elicit the latent Prussianism within him, on Bureaucracy; on the other side there is the the other everything combines to foster and National Parliament, the Federal Chancel- expand the sense of national patriotism. lor, and the Federal Chancellor's Office. Since we have got used to the debates of the Now, if we examine the individuals who North German Parliament we cannot read compose these bodies we shall find that they those of the Prussian Chambers, not even are more or less the same. Four-fifths of those of the Lower House, how much less the National Parliament consist of Prussian those of the Upper, without a sense of derepresentatives, and not only the Parlia- pression. We are repeatedly made conmentary leaders and orators, but the politi-scious of the "note" of provincialism,* and cal parties and fractions of the Prussian

in a bona fide Federative State, would flow naturally from the organ representing the Federal sovereignty, which in the North German Confederation have been delegated to the King of Prussia, such as the summoning, proroguing, dissolving of the Reichstag, etc. The most important of these, besides those mentioned in the text, is that of superintending the execution of the Federal laws. The Federal laws take precedence of the State laws, and take effect upon their promulgation, i.e., their publication in the Bundes Gesetz Blatt (Gazette of the North German Confederation). This precedence of Federal over State laws is the purest "Federative State" element that has been imported into the North German Constitution; and the seeing to their execution is the most directly executive function exercised in the Confederation. The point to bear in mind, however, is, that the King of Prussia does not exercise these functions as sovereign of the Confederation, but as delegated thereto by the sovereign-that sovereign being the corporation of the twenty-two allied States. He signs, as it were, for the firm having the largest amount of capital engaged in it, but in the eye of the law he is only a "partner."

cannot forget that we are at Berlin, that is, socially speaking, in the capital of the Province of Brandenburg, and yet we have none of this feeling in reading the speeches of the Prussian deputies to the Reichstag. There is all the difference between the atmosphere of an Imperial Parliament and that of

No better illustration of what we desire to express could be found than the threat used by the Minister of Justice during the present session of the Prussian Chamber, to the effect that if the House refused him the paltry sum of £150 for an assistant judgeship, the Government would renew the Constitutional conflict which during six years shook the fabric of the Prussian State to its foundations. Of course this was a brutum fulmen, and the Minister had more or less to retract, but this does not alter the local colour of the transaction. It is the bare fact that such a scene was possible in the Prussian Parliament which is so painfully suggestive of a Marylebone vestry; such a threat on the part of a Government official would have been absolutely impossible in the North Grmaan Parliament.

a local body. Which of the two natures | be, we do not believe it will be easily acwill master the other?

The same germ of antagonism is to be traced in he two bureaucratic hierarchies; the Federal hierarchy, gradually expanding out of the Federal Chancellor's office, and the old Prussian bureaucracy, which looks upon itself as the depositary of the traditions of the Prussian State. Which of the two will have the greater vitality?

To judge by present appearances, it is to the National Parliament that the centre of political gravity is rapidly shifting, and in the Federal Chancellor's office that the executive is beginning to centralize. Two important facts have just become known:First, the expense of the Foreign Office is in future to be an item of the Federal, and not of the Prussian, budget, which is tantamount to the creation of a Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and pro tanto is a step in the direction of the merging of the Prussian in the Federal international unit. Secondly, General von Roon, the Prussian Minister of War, and the author of the scheme for the re-organization of the Prussian army, has taken his place in the Federal Council, and has thus been adstricted to the executive element of the North German Confederation, as far as such an element as yet exists. These are important and rapid strides towards the creation of a Federal Government,* and the Federal Government, once in existence, must be looked upon as the half-way house to the creation of the Federal Sovereign, i. e., to the assumption by the Crown of Prussia of a title, be it that of Emperor or of King of the Germans, which, while investing it with sovereign prerogatives over the Confederation in its own right (and not by mere procuration, as at present), will complete the national structure of the present edifice, with the collate ral effect, however, of the loss by Prussia of her present privileged position in the Confederation, as well as that of her definite amalgamation with Germany.

Now, natural and logically necessary as such a change appears to the bystanders to

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complished. The phrase, "mediatisation of Prussia," meaningless as it proves to be when its meaning is searched for, fills the minds of vast classes of Prussians with a horror as of the valley of the shadow of death; and nowhere, probably, would the resistance to the change be so great as in the Hohenzollern called upon to wear the German crown. Particularism is still the stumbling-block in the way of German unity, but the conditions of the problem are reversed. In the long political struggle which preceded the battle of Sadowa, it was the Particularism of the Middle States which jeopardized the future of Prussia, and with it the future of Germany. The present danger lies rather in the strength of the Particularist elements in Prussia.

We are however in no way despondent about the future, though we confess we should look to it with more confidence if we could credit the Prussian nation, great and sterling as are its national qualities, and full of the stuff of which solid greatness is built up, with a little less provincialism and a little more ueyahoyvyia. "Every man," says Hamlet, "has business and desire." The political fault of Germany has undoubtedly been that she has attended too little to "business," and has lived too exclusively within the sphere of "desire." We cannot but praise Prussia for throwing herself with vigour upon the performance of the former, but she should not forget that the condition of all progress is "to desire better things," and we should feel more hopeful if we could see a little of the idealism,-by virtue of which, be it not forgotten, Germany, during the worst days of her political bondage, maintained her high position amongst the the nations,-returning to the political field from which it is now so ignominiously discarded. The incarnation of the German race into the German State is a great and therefore an ideal task, the greatest and therefore the most ideal which the century has been called upon to perform. By cut ting the Gordian knot of the German ques tion with her sword, Prussia has taken upon of this task. Not only her own destinies, herself the sole and undivided responsibility but those of Europe, depend upon the manin which she may fulfil it. The eyes of the civilized world are upon her. Let her not forget that " unto whom much is given"and, à fortiori, by whom much is taken"from him shall much be required."

THE

NORTH BRITISH
BRITISH REVIEW.

NO. C.

FOR JULY, 1869.

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"I WOULD rather," said one of the noblest men who have taught Ethics from a University chair to this generation, "I would rather be the author of a brief series of expositions of the life of Christ, executed after the idea of Lord Bacon's First Flowings of the Scripture, so as to help my fellow-men to understand that life better, than be the author of the grandest system of speculative ethics." The volumes before us go far to realize this aspiration. Their pre-eminent aim is to unfold the Sacred Individuality of Christ, in its unique glory, as that is seen in the successive incidents of his human life. They show, without parade, the results of much meditation on problems not directly stated, with an insight that is rarely delicate as to the great Character they strive to delineate. Fragments of apologetical evidence are thus inwoven into the course of the narrative, and some deep soundings of moral evidence are taken in a very simple manner, while the lectures contain hints of some ulterior questions touching the very essence and genius of the Christian faith. Though enriched by contributions from several foreign fields, they are a genuine product of British soil, and will appeal peculiarly to the British type of mind. N-12

VOL. L.

as

Six years ago Dr. Hanna offered to the public the first volume of this series, selecting "the last day of our Lord's Passion his special theme. His aim in that volume was to construct "a continuous and expanded narrative, intended to bring out, as vividly as possible, not only the sequence of the incidents, but the characters, motives, and feelings of the different actors and spectators in the events described, refraining from all critical or doctrinal discussions." In the following year, the author issued a companion volume on "the forty days after the Resurrection." In its Preface he states that he "has long had the conviction that the results of that fuller and more exact interpretation of the books of the New Testament to which Biblical scholars have been conducted, might be made available for framing such a continuous narrative of the leading incidents in our Redeemer's life as would be profitable for practical and devotional rather than for doctrinal or controversial purposes." While that volume was passing through the press, the Vie de Jesus of M. Renan was published. Dr. Hanna makes a brief allusion to this work, and while expressing his desire that " a full and critical exposure of all its arbitrary assumptions and denials, affirmations without proofs, doubts without reasons, inconsistencies and contradictions, errors historical and exegetical," should be undertaken by some competent critic, he speaks of

"a simpler, more direct, and more effective method of dealing with the work, by exposing the flagrant failure of its capital design and oband divine from the character and life of Christ, ject-viz., to eliminate all that is supernatural and yet leave him a man of such pure and exalted virtue, as to be worthy of the unreserved and unbounded love and reverence of man

kind." "The singular result of this attempt to strip Christ of all divine qualities and properties is, that it mars and mutilates his character even as a man. Without any controversial treatment, the effect of M. Renan's work may be neutralized by a simple recital of the life of Jesus, so as to show that the blending of the natural with the miraculous, the human with the divine, is essential to the coherence and consistency of the record; that the fabric of the Gospel history is so constructed that if you take out of it the divinity of Jesus the whole edifice falls into ruins."

These sentences sufficiently explain the design of the two earlier volumes. The success which attended their publication encouraged their author to complete the series; and at intervals during the last four years he has issued one volume devoted to "the Earlier Years," one connected with "the Passion Week," and two relating to "the Public Ministry."

really imperfect life into one ideally complete, is but to transfer the miracle from Christ to his followers. For, granting the perfection of the character that has come down to us (whatever be the origin of the record, and the process of its transmission), its existence without a reality to give rise to it is much more inexplicabie than is the reality itself. The poetic idealization by a band of disciples who should all agree as to details-illiterate men, sprung of a biassed, schismatic race, creating out of their own enthusiasm, with the most slender basis in fact, the only pattern of a life approaching to the measure of the stature of the perfect of which history makes mention, is much more difficult to account for than is the appearance of the ideal itself.

To a mind amenable to this and cognate processes of reasoning, Dr. Hanna's work will appear a valuable complement to Dr. Young's, The idea which lies at the root of this In almost every page he will find corroboration latest effort to unfold and illustrate the life of the line of argument. The evidence ariof Christ, is, that the facts recorded by the sing from the character and moral individualfour evangelists are their own best witness- ity of Christ, as the ideal of humanity made bearers, evidence, and defence; and that real, is the centre round which everything the record is historically inexplicable, if the else revolves, and to which everything is divine element which the Church catholic made subservient. The outlying questions has inferred from it be eliminated from the of religious criticism are passed over. We life of Jesus. In this respect there is a have no discussion as to the origin of the marked affinity between the work of Dr. Gospel narratives. The vexed questions of Hanna and the treatise of Dr. Young, en- date and authorship are not entered upon. titled, The Christ of History. Dr. Young The problem of the supernatural in its relastarts with the presupposition that the re- tion to natural law and order, the philosophy cords of the Gospels are but fragments of of the Christian faith as to the person of its ancient history, in which we may expect to Founder, the historical preparation for the find all the characteristics of past literature Advent at the confluence of the several transmitted to a modern age. He claims streams of oriental and of western thought, for them in the first instance no higher credit the relation of Christ to the religious systhan that which criticism accords to the tems of the past and the existing sects of pages of Herodotus or Livy. But as he Judaism, are nowhere formally discussed. proceeds to examine the record of the four In short, all the prolegomena to a study of evangelists, he finds that they narrate the the life are subordinated to a simple recital acts and words of One whose existence is of the life itself. The former inquiries are utterly inexplicable as a product of the doubtless essential to a learned and scienknown forces that work in history and form tific theology. Questions of philosophy and human character, as they reveal a life from of history, in the words of Pressensé, first to last ideally perfect; and as it is an "hold the approaches to the subject;" and axiomatic truth that like ever produces like, we may even admit that everything depends he infers that such a character could not upon the accuracy of our historical narrative, have arisen out of the soil of humanity prop- and upon the precise date of the documents agated from the past, but must have been a which record it. But, on the other hand, if descent into that soil from above. We have the main event recorded-the divinity of come into contact with a life which historical that human life-carries its own light with processes cannot explain, and which cannot in itself, it may indirectly prove the accuon any scientific principle be ranked in the racy of the story. A distinct function is common category of men. Its solitude, therefore fulfilled by those who adopt the uniqueness, and completion forces us to infer less ambitious method of portraying the Life that it could not have sprung from a parent-in its divine sequences and harmonies, that age that was incomplete, one-sided, and defective. To say that the loving adoration of the biographers and others transformed a

it may be left to attest itself, and be its own evidence. We hold it possible for a wise and thoughtful mind, without the aid of a

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