ey required
justification or apology. There seems no reason for this. It would have
been impossible for him, had he at that time been entrusted with the
government of the State, entirely to put into practice what he had said
from his place in the Chamber. But he was not minister; he was only a
party leader; his speeches were, as they were intended to be, party
speeches; they had something of the exaggeration which conflict always
produces. They were, moreover, opposition speeches, for he was
addressing not so much the Government as the Chamber and the country,
and in them the party to which he belonged was a very small minority.
But why was there not to be a Conservative party in Prussia?

It was necessary for the proper development of constitutional life that
the dominant Liberal doctrines should be opposed by this bold criticism.
Bismarck was only doing what in England was done by the young Disraeli,
by Carlyle, and by Ruskin; the world would not be saved by
constitutional formulae.

There were some of his party whose aims went indeed beyond what may be
considered morally legitimate and politically practicable. The Gerlachs
and many of their friends, and the purely military party which was
headed by Prince Charles Frederick, the King's youngest brother, desired
to do away with the Constitution, to dismiss the Parliament, and to
restore the absolute monarchy in a form which would have been more
extreme than that which it had had since 1815. The King himself
sympathised with their wishes and he probably would have acted according
to them were it not that he had sworn to maintain the Constitution. He
was a religious man and he respected his oath. There does not appear any
evidence that Bismarck wished for extreme action of this kind. Even in
his private correspondence, at least in that part of it which has been
published, one finds no desire to see Prussia entirely without a
Parliament. It was a very different thing to wish as he did that the
duties of the Parliament should be strictly limited and that they should
not be allowed completely to govern the State. We must always remember
how much he owed to representative assemblies. Had the Estates General
never been summoned, had the Revolution never taken place, he would
probably have passed his life as a country gentleman, often discontented
with the Government of the country but entirely without influence. He
owed to Parliament his personal reputation, but he owed to i