nce that year, he made several attempts to introduce laws
that members should be to some extent held responsible, and under
certain circumstances be brought before a court of law, in consequence
of what they had said from their places in Parliament. This was
represented as an interference with freedom of speech, and was bitterly
resented. Bismarck, however, always professed, and I think truly, that
he did not wish to control the members in their opposition to the
Government, but to place some check on their personal attacks on
individuals. A letter to one of his colleagues, written in 1883, is
interesting:

"I have," he says, "long learned the difficulties which educated
people, who have been well brought up, have to overcome in order
to meet the coarseness of our Parliamentary _Klopfechter_
[pugilists] with the necessary amount of indifference, and to
refuse them in one's own consciousness the undeserved honour of
moral equality. The repeated and bitter struggles in which you
have had to fight alone will have strengthened you in your
feeling of contempt for opponents who are neither honourable
enough nor deserve sufficient respect to be able to injure you."

There was indeed a serious evil arising from the want of the feeling of
responsibility in a Parliamentary assembly which had no great and
honourable traditions. He attempted to meet it by strengthening the
authority of the House over its own members; the Chairman did not
possess any power of punishing breaches of decorum. Bismarck often
contrasted this with the very great powers over their own members
possessed by the British Houses of Parliament. He drew attention to the
procedure by which, for instance, Mr. Plimsoll could be compelled to
apologise for hasty words spoken in a moment of passion. It is strange
that neither the Prussian nor the German Parliament consented to adopt
rules which are really the necessary complement for the privileges of
Parliament.

The Germans were much disappointed by the constant quarrels and disputes
which were so frequent in public life; they had hoped that with the
unity of their country a new period would begin; they found that, as
before, the management of public affairs was disfigured by constant
personal enmities and the struggle of parties. We must not, however,
look on this as a bad sign; it is rather more profitable to observe that
the new institutions were not affected or weakened by this friction. It