iamentary discipline; that, indeed, he did
everything in his power to arrest the healthy growth of German party
life. But it is at least perfectly clear that his reasons for refusing
to allow the German parties a controlling influence in shaping the
policy of the government were not the result of mere despotic caprice,
but were founded upon thoroughly German traditions, and upon a
thoroughly sober, though one-sided, view of the present state of
German public affairs.

To him party government appeared as much of an impossibility as it had
appeared to Hegel. The attempt to establish it would, in his opinion,
have led to nothing less than chaos. The German parties, as he viewed
them, represented, not the State, not the nation, but an infinite
variety of private and class interests--the interests of landholders,
traders, manufacturers, laborers, politicians, priests, and so on;
each particular set of interests desiring the particular consideration
of the public treasury, and refusing the same amount of consideration
to every other. It seemed highly desirable to him, as it did to Hegel,
that all these interests should be heard; that they should be
represented in a Parliament based upon as wide and liberal a suffrage
as possible. But to intrust any one of these interests with the
functions of government would, in his opinion, have been treason to
the State; it would have been class tyranny of the worst kind.

The logical outcome of all this was his conviction of the absolute
necessity, for Germany, of a strong non-partisan government: a
government which should hold all the conflicting class interests in
check and force them into continual compromises with one another; a
government which should be unrestricted by any class prejudices,
pledges, or theories, and have no other guiding star than the welfare
of the whole nation. And the only basis for such a government he found
in the Prussian monarchy, with its glorious tradition of military
discipline, of benevolent paternalism, and of self-sacrificing
devotion to national greatness; with its patriotic gentry, its
incorruptible courts, its religious freedom, its enlightened
educational system, its efficient and highly trained civil service. To
bow before such a monarchy, to serve such a State, was indeed
something different from submitting to the chance vote of a
parliamentary majority; in this bondage even a Bismarck could find his
highest freedom.

For nearly forty years he