Louise Michel into trouble in republican France. Then we hear of
nothing as between Bismarck and the socialists for some years--the years
I have described above as years of peace and concord in Germany--till
suddenly, on the occasion of two attempts made in 1878, by Hoedel and by
Nobiling against the emperor's life, he came down upon that sect as with
a sledge-hammer. His famous anti-socialist bill was at first rejected.
It passed into law only after a dissolution, the electors having in
their affectionate pity for the wounded emperor unequivocally given
their verdict in favor of suppression. It has since been reaccepted
three times by an unwilling house, and with exertions of the same man
who had fostered and protected the beginnings of socialism, and who had
the watchword given out at the last general elections in 1884, that "His
Serene Highness the Chancellor would prefer the sight of ten
Social-Democrats to that of one Liberal (Deutsch-Freisinige.)"

Now, what is the clew to this comedy of errors? No mere waywardness or
perversity of character, but some powerful bias and a first-cousinship
in principle must account for one of the strangest anomalies in modern
history. Perhaps the following consideration will render both the "bias"
and the "first-cousinship" at least intelligible. Prince Bismarck is a
good hater. Now, if he has any one antipathy stronger than another, and
that through life, it is that against the burgher class, the reverse of
aristocrats, the born liberals, townsmen mostly yet not exclusively--the
"bourgeois," as the French call them (although, if I err not, the exact
counterpart to the "bourgeois" species is not found on German soil), a
law-abiding set, independent of government, paying their taxes, and
thoroughly happy. When they, through their representatives, bade him
defiance in 1862 to 1865, and thwarted his measures of coercion, his
inmost soul cried, _Acheronta movebo!_ He sent for Lassalle, he paid his
successors' debts, and generally assisted the sect. So much for the
"bias." And now for the "first-cousinship." No student of history will
deny that despotism, whenever it has arisen, or been preserved in highly
civilized communities, will extend more of a fatherly care to the masses
than liberalism. This cannot be otherwise; for liberalism sets itself to
educate the masses to self-responsibility, and each individual to thrift
and self-reliance. The sight of an able-bodied beggar is, to a genuin