The only moment when I could guard
against this danger was when the law was to be submitted in the name
of the emperor. The constitutional remedy against such a use of an
opportunity is a change of chancellors. I can see no other remedy.

Mentioning the Reichstag brings me to my cooeperation with it. Mr.
Richter's ideal is, it seems to me, a bashful, cautious chancellor who
throws out careful feelers whether he may offend here, if he does
this, or offend there--one who does not wait for a final vote of the
Reichstag, but rushes home excitedly, as I have often seen my
colleagues do, exclaiming: "Oh God, the law is lost, this man and that
man are opposed to it"--and three weeks later the law has Passed in
spite of them. I cannot enter upon such a policy of conjecture and
proof by inference of what may be determined in the Reichstag when the
tendency of those who talk the loudest, but who are not always the
most influential, happens to be against a bill; and if Mr. Richter
should succeed in procuring such a timid chancellor anxiously listening
for every hint, my advice to you, gentlemen, is to tolerate him in
this position as briefly as possible. For if a leading minister--and
such he is in the empire--has no opinion his own, and must hear from
others what he should believe and do, then you do not need him at
all. What Mr. Richter proposes is the government of the State by the
Reichstag, the government of the State by itself, as it has been
called in France, by its own chosen representatives. A chancellor, a
minister who does not dare to submit a bill of the ultimate success of
which he is not absolutely sure is no minister. He might as well move
among you with the white sign (of a page) inquiring whether you will
permit him to submit this or that. For such a part I am not made!

To what extent I am ready to submit to the Bundesrat I have already
tried to explain, and I have closed with these words "_sub judice lis
est_" (the case is still in court). I need not say now whether my
constitutional conviction would make me yield to the majority of the
Bundesrat, if they should demand it. This question has not yet arisen;
the majority has not demanded it. Whether I shall maintain my
opposition, if the demand is pressed, to this question I reply: _non
liquet_ (it is a moot-point); we shall see what happens. Such things
are eventually decided by the old law which the Romans were astonished
to find with the Germans, and of which