e was a
deep feeling that it was not safe to entrust the Government with so
enormous a power. Men did not wish to see so many thousands enrolled in
the army of officials, already too great; they did not desire a new
check on the freedom of life and occupation, nor that the Government
should have the uncontrolled use of so great a sum of money. And then
the use he proposed to make of the proceeds: if the calculations were
correct, if the results were what he foretold, if from this monopoly
they would be able to pay not only the chief expenses of the Government
but also assign an old-age pension to every German workman who reached
the age of seventy--what would this be except to make the great majority
of the nation prospective pensioners of the State? With compulsory
attendance at the State schools; with the State universities as the only
entrance to public life and professions; when everyone for three years
had to serve in the army; when so large a proportion of the population
earned their livelihood in the railways, the post-office, the customs,
the administration--the State had already a power and influence which
many besides the Liberals regarded with alarm. What would it be when
every working man looked forward to receiving, after his working days
were over, a free gift from the Government? Could not this power be used
for political measures also; could not it become a means for checking
the freedom of opinions and even for interfering in the liberty of
voting?

He had to raise the money he wanted in another way, and, in 1879, he
began the great financial change that he had been meditating for three
years; he threw all his vigour into overthrowing Free Trade and
introducing a general system of Protection.

In this he was only doing what a large number of his countrymen desired.
The results of Free Trade had not been satisfactory. In 1876 there was a
great crisis in the iron trade; owing to overproduction there was a
great fall of prices in England, and Germany was being flooded with
English goods sold below cost price. Many factories had to be closed,
owners were ruined, and men thrown out of work; it happened that, by a
law passed in 1873, the last duty on imported iron would cease on the
31st of December, 1876. Many of the manufacturers and a large party in
the Reichstag petitioned that the action of the law might at any rate be
suspended. Free-Traders, however, still had a majority, for the greater
portion of t