e departments; this was so universal
that it was supposed to be essential to a constitution. In the German
Empire we search for it in vain; there is only one responsible Minister,
and he is the Chancellor, the representative of Prussia and Chairman of
the Council. The Liberals could not reconcile themselves to this strange
device; they passed it with reluctance in the stress of the moment, but
they have never ceased to protest against it. Again and again, both in
public and in private, we hear the same demand: till we have a
responsible Ministry the Constitution will never work. Two years later a
motion was introduced and passed through the Reichstag demanding the
formation of a Federal Ministry; Bismarck opposed the motion and refused
to carry it out.

He had several reasons for omitting what was apparently almost a
necessary institution. The first was respect for the rights of the
Federal States. If a Ministry, responsible to Parliament, had existed,
the executive power would have been taken away from the Bundesrath, and
the Princes of the smaller States would really have been subjected to
the new organ; the Ministers must have been appointed by the President;
they would have looked to him and to the Reichstag for support, and
would soon have begun to carry out their policy, not by agreement with
the Governments arrived at by technical discussions across the table of
the Council-room, but by orders and decrees based on the will of the
Parliament. This would inevitably have aroused just what Bismarck wished
to avoid. It would have produced a struggle between the central and
local authorities; it would again have thrown the smaller Governments
into opposition to national unity; it would have frightened the southern
States.

His other reasons for opposing the introduction of a Ministry were that
he did not wish to give more power to the Parliament, and above all he
disliked the system of collegiate responsibility.

"You wish," he said, "to make the Government responsible, and do
it by introducing a board. I say the responsibility will
disappear as soon as you do so; responsibility is only there when
there is a single man who can be brought to task for any
mistakes.... I consider that in and for itself a Constitution
which introduces joint ministerial responsibility is a political
blunder from which every State ought to free itself as soon as it
can. Anyone who has ever been a Minister and at the head o