nservatives. The German Empire, proclaimed by the
German sovereigns at Versailles in January, 1871, was of his creation;
and while established upon somewhat novel principles of federation by a
parliamentary statute, it looked to outsiders like a home for progress
and liberty. There were dangers lurking, it is true, beneath many a
provision of the new constitution, such as the absence of an upper
house, and the substitution in its stead of delegates from the separate
governments, acting in each case according to instructions received,
authorized to speak whenever they chose before the Reichstag, but
deliberating separately and secretly both upon bills to propose, and
upon replies to give to resolutions of the Reichstag. In fact, this
Bundesrath, or federal council, represents the governing element under
the emperor, with functions both administrative and legislative. By an
artificial method of counting, Prussia, although she would command
three-fifths of all the voters by virtue of her population, has less
than one-third. Thus the possibility of an imbroglio between the
governments is ever present, as well as that of a hasty vote in the
popular assembly.

[Illustration: Bismarck before Paris.]

It will never, probably, be quite understood why Prince Bismarck broke
loose from a political alliance which, it would seem, had given no
trouble whatever. In foreign affairs the house, in its immense majority,
abstained from even the faintest attempt at interference. As for
patronage, it has been said that no appointment was ever solicited for
anyone by a member of the liberal party. From ministerial down to menial
posts no claim was raised, no request preferred. If the section of
moderate conservatives above mentioned has furnished a few ambassadors
like Prince Hohenlohe, Count Muenster, Baron Keudell, and Count Stolberg,
that was by the chief's free will. Why, then, it has been asked, a
change so absolute as the one the world has witnessed, from the saying
of the chancellor in 1877, that his ideal was to have high financial
duties on half a dozen objects and free trade on all others, to one of
the most comprehensive tariffs in the world two years later? His own and
his friends' explanations are lamentably deficient--"growing anaemia and
impoverishment of the country," "drowning of native industry by foreign
manufacturers," "corn imported cheaper than produced," and what not. The
present writer, looking from afar, has always th