, and
that, too, at a time when Bismarck's new commercial policy made the
support of the Clerical Centre in the Reichstag peculiarly acceptable.

[Footnote 80: Busch, _Our Chancellor_, vol. i. p. 122, quotes speeches
of his hero to prove that Bismarck himself disliked this Civil Marriage
Law. "From the political point of view I have convinced myself that the
State . . . is constrained by the dictates of self-defence to enact this
law in order to avert from a portion of His Majesty's subjects the evils
with which they are menaced by the Bishops' rebellion against the laws
and the State" (Speech of Jan. 17, 1873). In 1849 he had opposed civil
marriage.]

Bismarck's resolve to give up the system of Free Trade, or rather of
light customs dues, adopted by Prussia and the German Zollverein in
1865, is so momentous a fact in the economic history of the modern
world, that we must here give a few facts which will enable the reader
to understand the conditions attending German commerce up to the years
1878-79, when the great change came. The old order of things in Prussia,
as in all German States, was strongly protective--in fact, to such an
extent as often to prevent the passing of the necessaries of life from
one little State to its Lilliputian neighbours. The rise of the national
idea in Germany during the wars against the great Napoleon led to a more
enlightened system, especially for Prussia. The Prussian law of 1818
asserted the principle of imposing customs dues for revenue purposes,
but taxed foreign products to a moderate extent. On this basis she
induced neighbouring small German States to join her in a Customs Union
(Zollverein), which gradually extended, until by 1836 it included all
the States of the present Empire except the two Mecklenburgs, the Elbe
Duchies, and the three Free Cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck. That
is to say, the attractive force of the highly developed Prussian State
practically unified Germany for purposes of trade and commerce, and
that, too, thirty-eight years before political union was achieved.

This, be it observed, was on condition of internal Free Trade, but of
moderate duties being levied on foreign products. Up to 1840 these
import duties were on the whole reduced; after that date a protectionist
reaction set in; it was checked, however, by the strong wave of Free
Trade feeling which swept over Europe after the victory of that
principle in England in 1846-49. Of the new champion