t them; they have too little wit and too
much self-complacency--stupid and audacious. Stupid, in all its
meanings, is not the right word; considered individually, these
people are sometimes very clever, generally educated--the
regulation German university culture; but of politics, beyond the
interests of their own church tower, they know as little as we
knew as students, and even less; as far as external politics go,
they are also, taken separately, like children. In all other
questions they become childish as soon as they stand together _in
corpore_. In the mass stupid, individually intelligent."

Recalling these days, Bismarck said in later years:

"I shall never forget how I had every morning to receive the
visit of Sir Andrew Buchanan, the English Ambassador, and
Talleyrand, the representative of France, who made hell hot for
me over the inexcusable leanings of Prussian policy towards
Russia, and held threatening language towards us, and then at
midday I had the pleasure of hearing in the Prussian Parliament
pretty much the same arguments and attacks which in the morning
the foreign Ambassadors had made against me."

Of course the language used in the House weakened his influence abroad,
and the foreign Governments shewed more insistence when they found out
that the Prussian Parliament supported their demands. It was noticed
with satisfaction in the English Parliament that the nation had
dissociated itself from the mean and disgraceful policy of the
Government.

At last personal friction reached such a point that the session had to
be closed. In order to understand the cause of this we must remember
that in Prussia the Ministers are not necessarily members of either
House; they enjoy, however, by the Constitution, the right of attending
the debates and may at any time demand to be heard; they do not sit in
the House among the other members, but on a raised bench to the right of
the President, facing the members. They have not, therefore, any feeling
of _esprit de corps_ as members of the assembly; Bismarck and his
colleagues when they addressed the House spoke not as members, not as
the representatives of even a small minority, but as strangers, as the
representatives of a rival and hostile authority; it is this which
alone explains the almost unanimous opposition to him; he was the
opponent not of one party in the House but of the Parliament itself and
of every other Parliamen