ion, and that, at least in
her civic government, which, after all, affects 70 per cent. of her
population, Germany enjoys a measure of political liberty which is
absolutely unknown in our own country.

III.

The tradition of municipal freedom in Germany is as old as German
culture. It still lingers in the haunting charm of the German cities
to-day. The Holy Roman Empire possessed only the trappings and the
shadow of power; the reality belonged to the burghers of the towns.
The _Staedtewesen_ gives its original character to the German Middle
Ages. The Hansa towns and the Hanseatic League recall some of the most
stirring memories of German history. The League still survives in the
three independent republics of Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck. The
dominant fact that German medieval civilization was a civilization of
free cities is driven home to the most superficial tourist. In every
corner of the German Empire, in north and south, on the banks of the
Rhine and the Elbe, in Rothenburg and Marienburg, in Frankfurt and
Freiburg, the thousand monuments of the past prove to us the
all-important truth that in Germany, as in Italy and in Flanders, it
is the service of the city which has made for national greatness.

IV.

War and anarchy put an end to municipal prosperity. Protestantism
brought with it the confusion of spiritual and temporal power, which
brought with it the despotism of the Princes, which meant the
suppression of civic liberty. The Thirty Years' War completed the ruin
of the cities. The end of the seventeenth century put in the place of
city governance the tyranny of a hundred petty Princes. Everywhere we
see the ancient town halls crumbling into ruin, and we see arising
pretentious palaces built on the model of the Palace of Versailles.
Germany had to go through the bitter humiliation of Jena before she
realized the necessity of reverting to her glorious civic traditions.
The statesmanship of Stein (see Seeley's "Life and Times of Stein")
understood that such return was the prime condition of a German
political renaissance. By his memorable Municipal Law of 1808 Stein
restored civic liberty. He made local self-government the corner-stone
of German internal policy. The ordinance of Stein remains to this day
the organic law and Great Charter of the German city. It has stood the
test of one hundred years of change, and even the iron despotism of
the Hohenzollern has not been able to challenge it. In every ot