ment, stopped short, and rather showed a disposition to
discourage it entirely, these clamors of the Conservatives must seem
somewhat out of taste. To Americans especially, who can accommodate
themselves to changes, even though they may be somewhat sudden, such
pleas for more time and a more gradual process may appear affected, if
not puerile. It must be remembered, however, that to a genuine German
nothing is more precious than a process of development. Whatever is not
the result of a due course of _Entwickelung_, is a suspicious object.
Anything which seems to break abruptly in upon the prescribed course is
abnormal. Whatever is produced before the embryonic process is complete
is necessarily a monster, from which nothing good can be hoped. The same
idea is often advanced by the Conservatives in another form. The
Liberals, they say, are trying to break loose from _history_. A
prominent professor, in an address before an assembly of clergymen in
Berlin, defined the principle of democracy to be this: 'The majority is
subject to no law but its own will; it is therefore limited by no
historically acquired rights; history has no rights over against the
sovereign will of the present generation.' By historically acquired
rights is meant in particular the right of William I. to rule
independently because his predecessors did so. By what right the great
elector robbed the nobles of their prerogatives, and how, in case he did
wrong in thus disregarding _their_ 'historically acquired rights,' this
wrong itself, by being continued two hundred years, becomes, in its
turn, an acquired right, is not explained in the address to which we
allude. The principal fault to be found with such reasoning as this of
the Prussian Conservatives, is that it is altogether too vague and
abstract. There can be no development without something new; there can
be, in social affairs, nothing new without some sort of innovation.
Innovation, as such, can therefore not be condemned without condemning
development. Moreover, development, as the organic growth of a political
body, is something which takes care of itself, or rather is cared for by
a higher wisdom than man's. To object to a proposed measure nothing more
weighty than that it will not tend to develop the national history, has
little meaning, and should have no force. The only question in such a
case which men have to consider is whether the change is justified by
the fundamental principles of right