Catholics; a law was
introduced taking the inspection of elementary schools out of the hands
of the clergy, and finally a change was made in those articles of the
Prussian Constitution which ensured to each denomination the management
of its own affairs. Bismarck was probably not responsible for the
drafting of all these laws; he only occasionally took part in the
discussion and was often away from Berlin.

The contrast between these proposals and the principles he had
maintained in his earlier years was very marked; his old friend Kleist
recalled the eloquent speech which in former years he had made against
civil marriage. Bismarck did not attempt to defend himself against the
charge of inconsistency; he did not even avow that he had changed his
personal opinions; he had, however, he said, learnt to submit his
personal convictions to the requirements of the State; he had only done
so unwillingly and by a great struggle. This was to be the end of the
doctrine of the Christian State. With Gneist, Lasker, Virchow, he was
subduing the Church to this new idol of the State; he was doing that
against which in the old days he had struggled with the greatest
resolution and spoken with the greatest eloquence. Not many years were
to go by before he began to repent of what he had done, for, as he saw
the new danger from Social Democracy, he like many other Germans
believed that the true means of defeating it was to be found in
increased intensity of religious conviction. It was, however, then too
late.

He, however, especially in the Prussian Upper House, threw all the
weight of his authority into the conflict. It was, he said, not a
religious conflict but a political one; they were not actuated by hatred
of Catholicism, but they were protecting the rights of the State.

"The question at issue," he said, "is not a struggle of an
Evangelical dynasty against the Catholic Church; it is the old
struggle ... a struggle for power as old as the human race ...
between king and priest ... a struggle which is much older than
the appearance of our Redeemer in this world.... a struggle which
has filled German history of the Middle Ages till the destruction
of the German Empire, and which found its conclusion when the
last representative of the glorious Swabian dynasty died on the
scaffold, under the axe of a French conqueror who stood in
alliance with the Pope.[12] We are not far from an analogous
solution of the sit