Not until that enemy had
suffered
the fate of Austria
and France would the German Empire be safe and the
continent of Europe purged of political heresies.
and France would the German Empire be safe and the
continent of Europe purged of political heresies.
Robertson - Bismarck
The North German Confederation
concentrates in lines precise and unmistakable the first
of the two great chapters in the Bismarckian solution of
the German problem. The text of the Constitution is
stamped throughout with the imprint of his personality,
genius, principles, and ideals.
The interest therefore of the eleven months' toil in
constitution-making lies as much in what was rejected as
in what was accepted, in the omissions no less than in the
inclusions, in the extreme rigidity of some, and the ex-
treme flexibility of other, parts of the framework. The
three main organs were the Presidency (Praesidium),vested
in the King of Prussia, the Federal Council (Bundesrat),
and the Parliament (Reichstag). Legislation and taxation
were shared between the Council and the Parliament, the
concurrence of both organs being required for the validity
of laws or taxes. The originality of the Confederation
lay in the functions assigned to, and the relations estab-
lished between, the Praesidium, the Council, and the
representative Parliament. As President, the King of
Prussia was not a sovereign in the ordinary sense. He was
not a member of the Council, nor was his consent necessary
to Federal legislation or taxation. He did not preside
over the Council, the Chairman of which was the Federal
Chancellor. But as President he summoned and dissolved
the Reichstag, concluded treaties, declared peace and
war, and represented the Bund in all external relations;
he promulgated the laws, and in peace and in war was
commander-in-chief of the combined Federal forces, to
whom the oath of allegiance was taken. The Council was
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 229
not an upper chamber of the legislature. It was a syndi-
cate of governmental delegates, appointed in assigned
numbers to the members of the Bund* who voted as units,
representing the assigned vote, on the instruction of their
respective governments. The Council was thus consti-
tuted not over, but out of, the States; its deliberations
were secret; its decisions were taken on a majority of
votes; it had the initiative in legislation, and it could
reject bills passed by the Reichstag. Through its various
committees, dealing with defined subjects, it acted as a
semi-executive organ. The Parliament was an assembly
of representatives sitting in a single chamber, and chosen
by direct and universal manhood suffrage from equal
electoral districts. It voted the Federal budget, and its
consent was necessary to all legislation. The one Federal
minister was the Chancellor, appointed by the Presidency,
responsible to the Bund as a whole, and in his chancellery
were concentrated the Federal executive and administration.
The Chancellor was not responsible directly either to the
Reichstag or the Bundesrat. He could not be dismissed as
the result of a parliamentary vote, but he was intended to
act as the spokesman of the Council in all matters of policy,
administration, or legislation, and it was his duty to submit
to the Presidency all matters in which the Praesidium was
the executive organ, and to countersign all notifications
in which the Presidency acted on behalf of the Bund.
This Constitution was, broadly, an adaptation of the old
Federal organisation, fundamentally modified in four
directions--the increased powers assigned to the Presi-
dency, the creation of the Federal Chancellor, the inclusion
of a popular and representative legislature, and the relations
established between the Council and the Parliament. It
was ingeniously organised to meet the two chief defects of
the old system: the absence of real unity in consequence
of the unimpaired sovereignty of the member-States, and
the limited competence and lack of coercive power of the
Federal organs. The new Federal system was a real unity;
it could legislate for and impose its Federal will on the
1 Seventeen votes were assigned to Prussia; twenty-six were assigned to the
other twenty-one States which composed the Federation.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? BISMARCK
whole Bund in all matters denned in the Constitution as
a Federal concern. It no less ingeniously combined the
demand for popular representation and a share of all
Germans in the government of the Confederation with
the claim of Prussia to be the preponderant and directing
power. It gratified the dynasties by the position assigned
to the governments in the Council, which, although not
a Congress of Princes, was a syndicate made from the
princedoms; it recognised local particularism by leaving
the legislatures of the member-States intact in their diver-
sity of franchise and institutions, and their powers only
impaired by the transfer of defined Federal concerns to the
dual central organ of Bundesrat and Reichstag. Lastly,
and by no means least, it created a chancellorship with
powers vague and ill-defined enough to satisfy the person-
ality and ambition of a Bismarck. The position of Federal
Chancellor was what Bismarck wished to enjoy. The
office was the keystone of the Federal arch, and the whole
structure was pieced together to maintain the keystone in
its central position.
Bismarck's share, in speech, in writing, and in oral con-
ferences in the prolonged discussions from December to
June, would make more than a volume. He came to the
creative task, not merely with the glamour of an acquired
prestige, and the force of an overpowering personality, but
with an experience unrivalled in Germany of diplomacy,
administration, and knowledge of men and institutions.
Bismarck was in the plenitude of his physical and mental
powers in 1866-7--onry a Titan could have carried the
burden, and even he very nearly collapsed under it--and
he revealed in the making of the Constitution the inflexible
tenacity of aim and principle, the inexhaustible variety of
resource, the complete absence of scruple, the combina-
tion of brutal strength, velvety suppleness, and Prussian
mastery of detail that had marked his ministerial presi-
dency. No man knew better that he was fighting now to
impose the Bismarckian solution--to impose himself, his
principles, ideals, and interpretations of life--on Germany.
It was the joy of achieving that supreme ambition, the
consciousness of realising at last all that made life worth
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 231
living, all the full-blooded sense of what it was to be a
German and a Prussian, that inspired him to resist every
party, principle, or proposal opposed to the German State
he desired to establish.
Hence the procedure in the making of the Constitution.
He first concluded alliances, as noted, with the States to
be federated; then drew up the original draft, and on
behalf of Prussia obtained the ratification of the text
through plenipotentiaries by whom the governments were
pledged. The constituent Reichstag was thus confronted
with an agreed scheme, amendment of which in any funda-
mental sense was exceedingly difficult, for it must be made
the occasion for re-reference to the governments behind the
Reichstag. The Constitution passed by the Reichstag was
finally submitted to all the legislatures, with the warning
that emendation would involve a re-submission to every
State and the Reichstag as a whole for its concurrence.
Its final acceptance en bloc was thus secured. Apart from
his personal authority in argument, Bismarck had two
great weapons at his disposal. First, the power of Prussia.
If Prussia would not agree, the proposal must come to
naught; and Prussia was practically himself. The Lower and
the Upper House of the Landtag would act as he advised.
They were "strong enough to veto where they could not
create. Secondly, the critical external situation which made
rapid decision urgent. Bismarck used this consideration
both privately and in public with great skill. For while the
Constitution was on the anvil the Luxemburg crisis and
the danger of a war with France had to be faced and sur-
mounted. The European situation had indeed the same
driving influence that it had in 1689 on the English Revo-
lution and the passing of the Declaration of Rights.
'Work quickly,' Bismarck said in a famous sentence. 'Put
Germany in the saddle and she will soon ride. '
German pride, fed on its imperial history, lamented
the absence of a Kaiser and a Reich, a sovereign and an
empire. Prussian Junkertum deplored the emasculation
of the Prussian monarchy, which it desired to see ruling
North Germany as it ruled Prussia, by direct authority
and unquestioned prerogative. The tenderness to the
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 232
BISMARCK
petty States exasperated the fierce governing class, which
would gladly have treated Prussia's allies with magisterial
militarism. But above all, Liberals and Radicals strove
to secure fundamental constitutional rights (firundrechte),
defined in the Constitution, a Federal ministry and an
administration representative of, and responsible to, the
Reichstag. The Bundesrat, dissevered from the Reichs-
tag, ought in their view to be an Upper House the com-
position and action of which could be controlled, in case
of conflict with the representative organ. But against
everything savouring of parliamentary government and
ministerial responsibility, in the British sense, against
everything that would make the Reichstag a policy-making
and government-making organ, Bismarck set his face like
flint, and all such proposals were rejected.
There is not the slightest doubt that, had Bismarck
so chosen, the Constitution could have conferred on the
new Confederation responsible parliamentary government.
The responsibility for the rejection, and the consequences
in the history of Germany that followed from its rejection,
rests with Bismarck; and the reason for his refusal is plain.
Parliamentary government in the Confederation would
have involved a drastic re-writing of the Prussian Consti-
tution, and a no less drastic reorganisation of the Prussian
system. How could a responsible Federal Chancellor
combine his office with the Minister-Presidency of Prussia,
responsible only to the Prussian Crown? Three things
were essential in Bismarck's eyes. Policy and the responsi-
bility for policy must be vested in organs outside parlia-
mentary control; the army must be withdrawn from
parliamentary interference; and behind the Federal
Chancellor must stand a Prussia, the strength of which
would be at the disposal of an unfettered Prussian Crown,
supported by Prussian Junker tradition. He secured the
first through the Bundesrat, the second through the
alliances that preceded the making of the Confederation,
and the clause in the Constitution that fixed for five years
(i. e. until 1871) the composition and number of the
Federal army, and placed it under the supreme command
of the Praesidium; the third by incorporating a Prussia
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 233
unreformed, intact, and unrepentant in the Bund. Hence-
forward Moltke and the General Staff could work, unim-
peded, on the army, and complete its preparation for its
final task; Bismarck could shape and direct policy, un-
hindered by Federal ministerial colleagues, and controlling
a Bundesrat in which Prussia had seventeen votes out of
forty-three, and the manipulation of which was withdrawn
from public knowledge or parliamentary influence.
The democratic franchise occasioned deep misgivings
in many quarters. It is very questionable whether
Bismarck's later interpretation--that it was blackmail to
democracy--really represents what he thought in 1866,
or really felt until he retired. It seems more accurate to
infer that he desired a representative assembly- which
would mirror as accurately as possible the German people,
enable the government to gauge the currents in the nation
as a whole, and provide an organ for the concentrated expres-
sion of national policy and for influencing public opinion.
All these ends could be achieved with safety if the powers
of the representative body, nominally large, were in reality
checked and circumscribed, as they were in the Constitution
at every point. Universal suffrage conferred a superb
democratic glamour on a truly anti-democratic system.
And Bismarck early in his career was convinced that the
danger of Liberalism came not from the uninstructed
masses but the educated and independent middle and
professional classes. When he wrote his memoirs at the
close of his life the industrial revolution had done its work
and the democracy had largely been transformed into an
urban industrial proletariat; he wrote with twenty years'
bitter experience of the weapon forged by Windthorst
and the Clerical centre, by Bebel and the Socialist Demo-
crats, from universal manhood suffrage. In 1867 Bismarck
could understand and sympathise with the Socialism of
Lassalle; neither Prussia nor Germany were industrial-
ised; seventy per cent, of the population still lived in the
country, and the framing and carrying of a restricted
franchise for the Reichstag was, as he said, a matter so
controversial and difficult as to prohibit its consideration.
Universal suffrage was not ideal, but it was simple, popular,
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 234
BISMARCK
and practical; its adoption in the Federal Constitution
would not involve the demand for its extension to Prussia
or other States, averse from it in principle. 'Direct
election and universal suffrage,' Bismarck pronounced, ' I
consider to be greater guarantees of Conservative action
than any artificial electoral law. ' Bismarck's conception
of a Parliament was that of our Tudors--a perpetual
royal commission to lay the wishes of the nation at the
feet of the throne; a national organ with defined powers,
limited by the prerogatives of the Crown. The opinion
of Parliament could be ascertained and neglected, if
need be, but the Legislature could always be made a
grand ally for affixing the national seal on all enterprises,
where it was essential the Crown should appear both to
the nation itself, and to foreign states, as the representative
executor of a sovereign national will. Between policy
imposed on and endorsed by the nation, and policy
made by the nation, the difference was fundamental
and final.
July I, 1867, when the Constitution was promulgated,
was the K8niggratz of Liberalism in Germany. Foiled in
1848, thwarted in 1862, Liberalism and the Liberal pro-
gramme had practically their last real chance in 1860-7.
The effort to renew the struggle in 1871 was the flash of
powder damped by disuse. The rejection in the Consti-
tution of every vital element and principle of the Liberal
programme, coupled with the equally decisive failure to
modify the Prussian Constitution, provides a critical date
in the history of Germany and of Europe. For ten years
Germany had been gathering itself at the cross-roads--
for four it had stood expectant, waiting for the decision
that would mark its route, and it now was set marching
towards unification indeed, power, opulence, discipline,
and the high places of the universe, but not towards the
ideals of character and law and self-government that were
the dream of the golden age of aspiration. National
Liberalism was enmeshed in the iron cage of the new
Federal Constitution; it enjoyed a great political influence,
but neither political authority nor power, which were re-
served to the Federal Council, and in that Council the
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 235
principles of the governing caste in Prussia achieved an
invincible supremacy.
The real character of the victory won by Bismarck
between 1866 and 1867 was concealed for ten years. And
the reason lay in the dual programme of National Liberal-
ism since 1848--unification and constitutional self-govern-
ment through responsible parliamentary administration.
The task of internal unification began with 1867 when the
framework of the organisation had been completed, and
to the achievement of this task the national Liberal leaders
and their devoted followers contributed a driving power,
ability, and work, that cannot be overestimated. Indeed,
without the unselfish and patriotic labours of men such as
Bennigsen, Lasker, Forckenbeck, Miquel, supporting the
efforts of the ministerial chiefs of departments, Delbriick,
Stephan, Falk, and Camphausen, Bismarck could never have
achieved the remarkable results accomplished by 1880.
Liberalism was endeavouring partly to find in legisla-
tion and executive action a compensation for the failure to
obtain responsible parliamentary government; with the
inevitable consequence that the bureaucracy, the guiding
levers of which were controlled by the governing class,
was enormously strengthened. Public opinion was
steadily imbued with the conviction that liberty and law
as character-building elements in national life, would be
more rapidly and efficiently worked out through co-or-
dinated governmental action from above, than through
the slow, disappointing, and patchworky progress of
representative institutions and the friction of warring
parties. The Reichstag, thus, was transformed into a
legislative machine and a debating club, banked up against
the dead wall of the Prussian Landtag in which the
administration could always command, if its political
authority was questioned, a solid Conservative majority.
'The Army' or 'the Crown' in danger played the part
that 'the Church in danger' played in the evolution of
constitutional government in England. For in each case
first principles of the established State were the root of
the controversy.
Hence with unification practically completed by 1879,
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? BISMARCK
it was impossible for National Liberalism to resume in the
industrialised and soaring Germany of 1879tae programme
of self-government through representative institutions.
It had itself assisted to build the breakwaters and the dams
which barred the parliamentary waters from trickling into
the reservoir of political power where policy was made.
Its old ideals, mildewed by neglect, fell to the impotent
Radicalism led by Richter, and the economic war of
classes led by Bebel--both, and from one point of view, not
unjustly termed 'enemies of the Empire' (Reichsfeind-
lich). For the aims of both could only be realised by
taking down the whole imperial engine, riveted into the
chassis of the Prussian State, and rebuilding it on a different
pattern and for wholly different purposes. The speci-
fication of that imperial engine is written out in the text
of the Constitution of the North German Confederation.
The counter-specification had been elaborated in 1849.
One important consequence of the defeat of Liberalism
cannot be omitted. The National Liberalism of 1850-66
had regarded England as its moral ally--the country which
had inspired its programme and supplied the ideas, the
precedents, and the example of constitutional self-govern-
ment--and the Liberals, with no desire to make an Eng-
lish Germany, hoped that by realising the same ends in
government and the same type of state as England, looked
forward to a great political entente in which two great
nations, working in their respective spheres and under a
differentiated Nationalism, could achieve common ideals
and purposes. The complete failure of Great Britain to
understand the character of the struggle waged in Ger-
many from 1850 onwards, and to grasp the meaning of
1867, the absence of sympathy, the obstacles placed by
British policy in the way of German achievement, the
hostile criticism, and, still worse, the patronising approval,
killed the enthusiasm for England in the great Liberal
camp. England, too, presently fell under the hypnotism
of Bismarck in its attitude towards German affairs, in
complete ignorance of what Bismarck and Bismarckianism
really were, or what they meant for Great Britain and
Europe. The old feeling and ideas continued to be con-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 237
centrated in the court and circle of the Crown Prince and
Princess, but Germany steadily moved away from them.
The Franco-German war completed the disillusionment.
England had failed. Her principles and her ambitions were
as dangerous to the new Empire as the adoption of her
system of government would be disastrous. Industrialism
was superimposed on the political divorce: it made absolute
the decree nisi for the two countries. England and the
British Empire were regarded first as neutrals who had
betrayed, and then as rivals who would bar, the realisation
of the complete German programme. The extirpation of
'English' influence in every sphere--dynastic, political,
intellectual, and economic--grew to be the ideal of the
Nationalism that laboured for the Empire as the expres-
sion of Power--German Power.
The intellectuals and the universities slowly ranged
themselves on the anti-British side. The conversion of
a Treitschke, a Sybel, and a Mommsen to the new gospel
was far more significant than at first sight appears; for in
the new Germany the universities were to be even more
potent in moulding the minds of the young generation
than-in the epoch of the German renaissance. The in-
fluence of authority in the matters of spirit and intellect
more than kept pace with the increase of authority in
politics and administration. The organisation of intellect
came to be regarded as essential as the organisation of the
army, the civil administration, or the tariff union. To a
Realpolitik a Realwissenschajt is an indispensable element of
national power, since it controls the empire of man in the
universe of spirit, and provides the material weapons for
maintaining die control and extending its scope. When
Bismarck finally broke with the economic policy of Free
Trade in 1879, the last of the English chains which
'fettered' the evolution of a national Germany was
shivered. Cobdenism, Manchesterism, Adam-Smithianis-
mus, and the influence of the British school of individualism
were eliminated from State policy and economic action.
The emancipation of the German intellect was the corol-
lary to the emancipation of the German nation from the
bondage of 'Walsch' and foreigner. It gave a new
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? BISMARCK
interpretation, and a new sphere, to the conception of
a Teutonic Central Europe. Henceforward Great Britain
--the incarnation of everything intellectual, political, and
economic that was the antithesis of the German Empire--
could by a subtle and inevitable transition in German
thought be transformed from the rival into the enemy.
Not until that enemy had suffered the fate of Austria
and France would the German Empire be safe and the
continent of Europe purged of political heresies.
Bismarck had not failed to grasp the position established
in 1867. His virtual alliance with, and reliance on, the
National Liberal party demanded great skill in political
management lest Bennigsen and his colleagues should
become the riders and he the horse. The Conservatives
of the Kreuzzeitung were angered to bitterness with ' the
lost leader,' and for the ten years after 1867 Bismarck was
exposed to vehement attacks from the Right. The social
and court influence of Conservatism was far greater than
that of any other party, and the ramification and enlace-
ment of its roots enmeshed every organ of authority--the
Crown, the War Office, the General Staff, the Civil Service,
and the local administration, above all, in the agricultural
districts. For many years it was not possible to counter-
balance the great industrials, because they were only in the
making, as yet, against the powers vested in tradition, estab-
lished institutions, and a social caste that provided the
higher personnel. Bismarck could not shatter the sources
of Junker authority without emasculating the Prussia by
whose brute weight he controlled the Confederation, and,
later, the Empire. His ally was the Crown, and his weapons
were the doctrine of passive obedience as the life-blood of
Conservatism and unwavering confidence in himself. He
emphasised the principles of his youth. Conservatism, if it
acted against the Crown and its government, was guilty of
intolerable indiscipine, equivalent to mutiny and treachery.
If it came to an open breach the Crown would act--and it
did. In his private correspondence with Roon he could
say what could not be said in public. Some characteristic
and illuminating quotations will be relevant here: 'If the
government has not at least one party in the country
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 239
which does not support its principles and policy, then the
constitutional system is impossible: the government will
manoeuvre and intrigue against the constitution; it must
either create an artificial or aim at a transitory majority.
It succumbs then to the weakness of a coalition-ministry
and its policy fluctuates, which is pernicious to the State,
and especially so to the Conservative principle. ' (Feb-
ruary 6, 1868. ) 'Every state which values its honour and
independence must recognise that its peace and security
rests on its own sword--I believe, gentlemen, we are all
united on that point. . . . Just as a roof protects against
the rain, a dam against inundation, so our army protects
our productivity in its full measure. ' (May 22, 1869. )
'The form in which our King exercises Imperial rights
in Germany has never been of great importance in my
eyes; to secure the fact that he exercises them, I have
strained all the strength God has given me. . . . ' (To
Roon, August 27, 1864. )
'1 can emphatically maintain this: does not the Pre-
sidium of the North German Confederation exercise in
South Germany such an Imperial authority as has not been
in a German Emperor's possession for five hundred years?
Where is the time since the first Hohenstaufen when there
has been in Germany an unquestioned supreme command
in war, an unquestioned certainty of having in war the
same enemies and the same friends? The name counts
for something . . . the Head of the North German Con-
federation has in South Germany a position such as no
Emperor since Barbarossa has had, and though Barbarossa's
sword was victorious his power was not based on treaties
and generally recognised. ' (To Roon, February 24, 1870. )
'It is absolutely certain in my conviction that I have
found the chief influence which I have been privileged to
exercise, not in the Imperial, but in the Prussian Power.
. . . Cut away from me the Prussian root, convert me
into a pure Imperial minister, I believe I should have as
little influence as every one else. ' (Reichstag, March 13,
1877. )
One other remark reveals much. 'The stronger,'
Bismarck said (March 28, 1867), ' the influence of Parlia-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 240
BISMARCK
ment on the State, the more necessary is it to maintain a
stern discipline in the civil service. ' He had learned in the
constitutional conflict what an invaluable weapon the
Prussian civil services could be in counteracting the
Liberal opposition. The assimilation of the annexed pro-
vinces, the Prussianisation of the Confederation, was largely
to be achieved through the organised Beamtenstand, dis-
ciplined and deployable under the Crown as efficiently as
the army, and kept as free from parliamentary interference.
The classical authority is the royal proclamation of
January 4,1882, which summarises the position as correcdy
in 1867 as in 1882: 'Executive orders of the King require
the countersignature of a minister . . . but it is incorrect
and tends to obscure the constitutional rights of the Crown
if their execution is represented as dependent on a re-
sponsible minister and not on the Crown . . . it is the
duty of my ministers to protect my constitutional rights
against doubt or misrepresentation. I expect the same
duty from all officials . . . all officials who are entrusted
with the execution of my governmental commands and
are removable from their service under the law of dis-
cipline are required under the obligation of their oath of
service to maintain the policy of my government even at
elections. '
The future relations of the new Confederation with the
South German States were a knotty problem. Bismarck's
views are susceptible of very various interpretation. It
is certain that he contemplated union between south
and north, as the consummation of the work of 1867. It
is no less certain that he recognised more deeply than
many of his critics the external and internal difficulties
in the realisation of such a union. It has been held by
many then, and since, that the fluid and elastic element in
the Constitution of 1867 was deliberately emphasised to
permit a subsequent incorporation of Bavaria, Wiirttem-
modification of the main lines of the Federal structure.
It has, on the other hand, been argued that the Consti-
tution of 1867 was deliberately provisional, and that Bis-
marck intended to recast the whole system on an imperial
Baden,
without substantial
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 241
pattern. Bismarck can be quoted for and against both
these interpretations. The truth would seem to be that
he had not really decided, and could not really decide,
when and how union with the south would be possible.
The form would turn on the particular situation, Euro-
pean as well as German. 'It is impossible to see in
advance with sufficient clearness the ways of Divine Provi-
dence. ' (August 13, 1875. ) When Miquel maintained
that' the line of the Main is no longer a line of separation,
but simply a stopping station at which we draw breath,
as an engine takes in coal and water, in order to proceed
on our route,' Bismarck could reply that 'we all carry
national union in our hearts; but for the calculating
statesman the necessary comes first and then the ideally
desirable . . . if Germany attains its goal in the nine-
teenth century, I should regard that as a great achieve-
ment; if it were reached in ten or five years it would be
something quite extraordinary, an unexpected crowning
gift from God. . . . I have always said to the National
Liberals that I look on the matter with a hunter's eyes.
If I lay a bait for game I do not shoot at the first doe, but
wait until the whole herd is busy feeding. '
Apart from the obligations1 implied rather than defined
in the Treaty of Prague--which France regarded as a
positive prohibition of complete union--and in the main-
tenance of which in all probability she would have the
support of Austria, Bismarck recognised the grave internal
objections and obstacles to union. Dynasticism, Parti-
cularism, Radicalism, and Clericalism were very strong in
the south. The Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria had a
historic tradition of independence that made its fusion in
a truly Federal Constitution, and its subordination to a
Hohenzollern presidency, virtually impossible in 1867;
the Radicals were predominant in Wiirttemberg and the
Clericals very powerful in Bavaria. Representation of
the south in the Reichstag of 1867 on the basis of universal
1 Article 4 of the Treaty of Prague ran: 'H. M. the Emperor of Austria
. . . also agrees that the German State to the south of this line shall form a
union, the national connection of which with the Northern Confederacy is
reserved for a more defined agreement between both parties, and . which u ti
maintain an international independent existence.
B. d
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 242
BISMARCK
suffrage would have made formidable additions to the
National Liberals and Centre parties, and completely
swamped the Conservatives. The Federal Council would
have had an anti-Prussian majority; and the parliamen-
tary situation was sufficiently difficult already, without
swelling the volume of discontent created by the dis-
possession of the dynasties in Hanover, Nassau, and Hesse-
administrative incorporation of the annexed territories
was being carried out by the Prussian bureaucracy.
French statesmen, it is true, were congratulating them-
selves and France that Germany was now definitely split
into three clearly marked divisions--les trots tronfons, of
which Rouher spoke--the North, the South, and Austria,
and calculated that allies could be found south of the Main
and on the Danube. This view of the south was a pure
illusion, which sprang from an incurable persistence in
interpreting German thought and feeling in 1867 by the
light of a history that was as dead as Frederick Barbarossa
or Louis xiv. The conditions that had made the policy
of Richelieu and Mazarin, Louvois and ' the dance of the
Louis d'ors,' even of Napoleon 1. and the Confederation
of the Rhine feasible, had vanished by 1848--never to
return. It was the same fatal prepossession which had
ruined Napoleon's Italian policy; for it had led him to
suppose that Italy in 1859 could be really carved out into
a north, a centre, and a south, animated by a common
sentiment of Italian Nationalism, but retaining the
dynastic Particularism which could only exist on de-
nationalisation propped up by foreign bayonets. At the
Tuileries, in the Corps Legislatif, on the boulevards, and
in the 'estaminets de province,' Wittelsbach pride, the
clerical press, and the Radical critics and caricatures of the
south were regarded as proofs that the red trousers of the
French army would receive a warmer welcome in Bavaria
than. the blue uniform with red facings from the north.
Bismarck entertained no such foolish illusions. The
south he knew was as German as the north. But it was
much more anti-Prussian. It had never come under the
influence of Prussia to the extent that the non-Prussian
efficiency with which the
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 243
States north of the Main had; it had not assimilated the
principles and postulates of the Prussian State, which
were repugnant to all its traditions and outlook on life.
But that repugnance did not involve any readiness to
accept either French culture or political domination, still
less the principles of the Second Empire. Quite the
contrary. A Ludwig of Bavaria, a Prince Hohenlohe, a
von der Pfordten, a Bray, a Dollinger, a Varnbiiler, a Dal-
wigk, the representatives of the various warring parties
--Unionists, Clericals, Radicals, Particularists, Democrats
--that made the south such a tangle of conflicting
aims and such a confusion of discordant voices, carried
beneath their party robes as stout and patriotic German
hearts as any that beat north of the Main. Because they
were such good Germans they were so anti-Prussian, and
had not yet learned to bow the knee in the house of Hohen-
zollern; they were not ready yet to accept incorporation
on the terms of the North German Confederation, or to be
de-Germanised in order to be baptized by platoons into
Prussianism.
Bismarck on his side was decided in his refusal to sacri-
fice the assured Prussian hegemony in the north to South
German dynasticism, Clericalism, and Radicalism. Had
he been willing in 1866 to risk a war with France and
Austria he would have overcome the external but not the
internal obstacle to unification; had Germany been vic-
torious in such a war, the unification that would have
crowned the victory would have been very different to
the loosely jointed settlement achieved in 1867. But
Bismarck never took unnecessary risks, particularly to
achieve ends not in themselves absolutely urgent. Every-
thing therefore pointed to delay; but a halt implied that
everything meanwhile must be done by practical administra-
tion and cautious diplomacy to improve the conditions that
made for the ultimate acceptance of the Prussian solution
by the south. The chart of the future was studded with
rocks--many of them sunken, many just awash when the
national tide was at its full--but Bismarck's navigation was
in the next three years masterly. He had secured the sub-
stance in the offensive and defensive military conventions, in
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? BISMARCK
themselves a shattering refutation of the dreams dreamed
at the Tuileries; the Unitarians must be sedulously
nursed and continuously denied; the economic bonds
must be tightened into a halter round the neck of the
south; France and Austria must be carefully cherished in
the conviction that union was neither desired nor possible.
The unitarian force of Nationalism could be trusted to
work of itself, all the stronger if it was drenched from
time to time with Prussian cold water. France, not
Prussia, must be represented as the obstacle to union;
France which coveted the Bavarian Palatinate, which
threatened Bavaria and Baden because it was the unlawful
occupant of German Alsace and Lorraine. 'You cannot,'
Bismarck said, 'ripen opinion in the south by holding a
lamp under it,' and when Baden, the most Unitarian of the
Southern States, and the friends of Baden in the Reichstag,
repeatedly pleaded for its incorporation with the North
German Confederation, Bismarck put the demand on one
side with courteous firmness. The Treaty of Prague was
against it; it would be a breach of faith with Napoleon,
whose heart was hard, and it would annoy Bavaria and
Wurttemberg, who ought not to be annoyed. 'Why,'
he asked, 'skim off the cream, and leave the rest of the
milk to go sour? '
But, above all, make Prussia strong. The new Prussia
was not ready. She had to be hammered together.
Time was required for the Prussian bureaucracy to Prus-
sianise the north, for the General Staff to impose Prussian
organisation on the Federal forces and screw them up to
the Prussian concert pitch, for Germany to accustom
itself to the Prussian praesidium of the Hohenzollern
monarchy, for himself as Federal Chancellor to acquire
the moral prestige over the north that had taken four
hard years from 1862 to 1866 to acquire in Prussia itself.
When the north was really unified--kneaded, moulded,
and hardened by the Prussian leaven--the anti-Prussian
south could be swallowed--perhaps. The damping down
of Junker Particularism, the quarrels with the Kreuz-
zeitung and . the Conservatives, the entente with National
Liberalism that disquieted Roon and angered Prince
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 245
Frederick Charles and the fierce militarist Conservatives
of the old guard, were not without their influence on the
south. Bismarck, like other great Conservative leaders,
whose political imagination is as strong as their fidelity
to the essentials of the Conservative creed, had to educate
a party that did not desire to be educated. He had not
strained soul and body beyond endurance to win victories
for Liberalism. He was leading a rebellious and incredu-
lous Junkertum through the wilderness to the promised
land of an assured supremacy. Their faith faltered; why
not be content with the flesh-pots of the old Prussianism?
The Junker camp swarmed with Korahs, Dathans and
Abirams. Round the King the malcontents swarmed,
and the King was at heart as Prussian as the most reaction-
ary squire from the old March. He showed it by his
resentment at Junker sedition. When Conservatives
behaved as if they were middle-class parliamentary Liberals
William turned his royal back on them at levees, or rated
the rebels in the language of the Prussian War Book.
The strength of German Nationalist feeling was con-
vincingly shown in the Luxemburg affair, that came to a
head while the Constitution was still on the anvil. The
establishment of the Confederation of the North had
destroyed the legal and political status of the duchy in
the dissolved Bund of 1815. Napoleon, obsessed with the
policy of pourboires, grasped at the opportunity of acquir-
ing Luxemburg, linked by a personal union with Holland
through the house of Orange-Nassau. Bismarck main-
tained throughout that he would acquiesce in the annexa-
tion--it would please Napoleon and be no danger to
Prussia--provided that France would settle rapidly with
Holland and present him with a fait accompli. But he
warned Napoleon that he could not, and would not, on
behalf of the Confederation formally guarantee the trans-
action beforehand. In the spring of 1867, with the
Constitution unsettled, he had no desire yet to quarrel
with France, but he could not come to the Reichstag and
confess that he had agreed to the cession of what Germany
regarded as German territory. It is probable that this
line of action was sincere, and that, in presence of a fait
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 246
BISMARCK
accompli, he could have persuaded the militant Nationalist
Liberals that a war for Luxemburg was unjustifiable and
not worth the cost. But Bismarck forgot that others had
good reason to distrust his sincerity and his methods.
The King of Holland, in fear of Prussian aggression on
Limburg, was prepared to close with Napoleon, provided
that the contract had been first approved of by Prussia.
concentrates in lines precise and unmistakable the first
of the two great chapters in the Bismarckian solution of
the German problem. The text of the Constitution is
stamped throughout with the imprint of his personality,
genius, principles, and ideals.
The interest therefore of the eleven months' toil in
constitution-making lies as much in what was rejected as
in what was accepted, in the omissions no less than in the
inclusions, in the extreme rigidity of some, and the ex-
treme flexibility of other, parts of the framework. The
three main organs were the Presidency (Praesidium),vested
in the King of Prussia, the Federal Council (Bundesrat),
and the Parliament (Reichstag). Legislation and taxation
were shared between the Council and the Parliament, the
concurrence of both organs being required for the validity
of laws or taxes. The originality of the Confederation
lay in the functions assigned to, and the relations estab-
lished between, the Praesidium, the Council, and the
representative Parliament. As President, the King of
Prussia was not a sovereign in the ordinary sense. He was
not a member of the Council, nor was his consent necessary
to Federal legislation or taxation. He did not preside
over the Council, the Chairman of which was the Federal
Chancellor. But as President he summoned and dissolved
the Reichstag, concluded treaties, declared peace and
war, and represented the Bund in all external relations;
he promulgated the laws, and in peace and in war was
commander-in-chief of the combined Federal forces, to
whom the oath of allegiance was taken. The Council was
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 229
not an upper chamber of the legislature. It was a syndi-
cate of governmental delegates, appointed in assigned
numbers to the members of the Bund* who voted as units,
representing the assigned vote, on the instruction of their
respective governments. The Council was thus consti-
tuted not over, but out of, the States; its deliberations
were secret; its decisions were taken on a majority of
votes; it had the initiative in legislation, and it could
reject bills passed by the Reichstag. Through its various
committees, dealing with defined subjects, it acted as a
semi-executive organ. The Parliament was an assembly
of representatives sitting in a single chamber, and chosen
by direct and universal manhood suffrage from equal
electoral districts. It voted the Federal budget, and its
consent was necessary to all legislation. The one Federal
minister was the Chancellor, appointed by the Presidency,
responsible to the Bund as a whole, and in his chancellery
were concentrated the Federal executive and administration.
The Chancellor was not responsible directly either to the
Reichstag or the Bundesrat. He could not be dismissed as
the result of a parliamentary vote, but he was intended to
act as the spokesman of the Council in all matters of policy,
administration, or legislation, and it was his duty to submit
to the Presidency all matters in which the Praesidium was
the executive organ, and to countersign all notifications
in which the Presidency acted on behalf of the Bund.
This Constitution was, broadly, an adaptation of the old
Federal organisation, fundamentally modified in four
directions--the increased powers assigned to the Presi-
dency, the creation of the Federal Chancellor, the inclusion
of a popular and representative legislature, and the relations
established between the Council and the Parliament. It
was ingeniously organised to meet the two chief defects of
the old system: the absence of real unity in consequence
of the unimpaired sovereignty of the member-States, and
the limited competence and lack of coercive power of the
Federal organs. The new Federal system was a real unity;
it could legislate for and impose its Federal will on the
1 Seventeen votes were assigned to Prussia; twenty-six were assigned to the
other twenty-one States which composed the Federation.
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? BISMARCK
whole Bund in all matters denned in the Constitution as
a Federal concern. It no less ingeniously combined the
demand for popular representation and a share of all
Germans in the government of the Confederation with
the claim of Prussia to be the preponderant and directing
power. It gratified the dynasties by the position assigned
to the governments in the Council, which, although not
a Congress of Princes, was a syndicate made from the
princedoms; it recognised local particularism by leaving
the legislatures of the member-States intact in their diver-
sity of franchise and institutions, and their powers only
impaired by the transfer of defined Federal concerns to the
dual central organ of Bundesrat and Reichstag. Lastly,
and by no means least, it created a chancellorship with
powers vague and ill-defined enough to satisfy the person-
ality and ambition of a Bismarck. The position of Federal
Chancellor was what Bismarck wished to enjoy. The
office was the keystone of the Federal arch, and the whole
structure was pieced together to maintain the keystone in
its central position.
Bismarck's share, in speech, in writing, and in oral con-
ferences in the prolonged discussions from December to
June, would make more than a volume. He came to the
creative task, not merely with the glamour of an acquired
prestige, and the force of an overpowering personality, but
with an experience unrivalled in Germany of diplomacy,
administration, and knowledge of men and institutions.
Bismarck was in the plenitude of his physical and mental
powers in 1866-7--onry a Titan could have carried the
burden, and even he very nearly collapsed under it--and
he revealed in the making of the Constitution the inflexible
tenacity of aim and principle, the inexhaustible variety of
resource, the complete absence of scruple, the combina-
tion of brutal strength, velvety suppleness, and Prussian
mastery of detail that had marked his ministerial presi-
dency. No man knew better that he was fighting now to
impose the Bismarckian solution--to impose himself, his
principles, ideals, and interpretations of life--on Germany.
It was the joy of achieving that supreme ambition, the
consciousness of realising at last all that made life worth
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 231
living, all the full-blooded sense of what it was to be a
German and a Prussian, that inspired him to resist every
party, principle, or proposal opposed to the German State
he desired to establish.
Hence the procedure in the making of the Constitution.
He first concluded alliances, as noted, with the States to
be federated; then drew up the original draft, and on
behalf of Prussia obtained the ratification of the text
through plenipotentiaries by whom the governments were
pledged. The constituent Reichstag was thus confronted
with an agreed scheme, amendment of which in any funda-
mental sense was exceedingly difficult, for it must be made
the occasion for re-reference to the governments behind the
Reichstag. The Constitution passed by the Reichstag was
finally submitted to all the legislatures, with the warning
that emendation would involve a re-submission to every
State and the Reichstag as a whole for its concurrence.
Its final acceptance en bloc was thus secured. Apart from
his personal authority in argument, Bismarck had two
great weapons at his disposal. First, the power of Prussia.
If Prussia would not agree, the proposal must come to
naught; and Prussia was practically himself. The Lower and
the Upper House of the Landtag would act as he advised.
They were "strong enough to veto where they could not
create. Secondly, the critical external situation which made
rapid decision urgent. Bismarck used this consideration
both privately and in public with great skill. For while the
Constitution was on the anvil the Luxemburg crisis and
the danger of a war with France had to be faced and sur-
mounted. The European situation had indeed the same
driving influence that it had in 1689 on the English Revo-
lution and the passing of the Declaration of Rights.
'Work quickly,' Bismarck said in a famous sentence. 'Put
Germany in the saddle and she will soon ride. '
German pride, fed on its imperial history, lamented
the absence of a Kaiser and a Reich, a sovereign and an
empire. Prussian Junkertum deplored the emasculation
of the Prussian monarchy, which it desired to see ruling
North Germany as it ruled Prussia, by direct authority
and unquestioned prerogative. The tenderness to the
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 232
BISMARCK
petty States exasperated the fierce governing class, which
would gladly have treated Prussia's allies with magisterial
militarism. But above all, Liberals and Radicals strove
to secure fundamental constitutional rights (firundrechte),
defined in the Constitution, a Federal ministry and an
administration representative of, and responsible to, the
Reichstag. The Bundesrat, dissevered from the Reichs-
tag, ought in their view to be an Upper House the com-
position and action of which could be controlled, in case
of conflict with the representative organ. But against
everything savouring of parliamentary government and
ministerial responsibility, in the British sense, against
everything that would make the Reichstag a policy-making
and government-making organ, Bismarck set his face like
flint, and all such proposals were rejected.
There is not the slightest doubt that, had Bismarck
so chosen, the Constitution could have conferred on the
new Confederation responsible parliamentary government.
The responsibility for the rejection, and the consequences
in the history of Germany that followed from its rejection,
rests with Bismarck; and the reason for his refusal is plain.
Parliamentary government in the Confederation would
have involved a drastic re-writing of the Prussian Consti-
tution, and a no less drastic reorganisation of the Prussian
system. How could a responsible Federal Chancellor
combine his office with the Minister-Presidency of Prussia,
responsible only to the Prussian Crown? Three things
were essential in Bismarck's eyes. Policy and the responsi-
bility for policy must be vested in organs outside parlia-
mentary control; the army must be withdrawn from
parliamentary interference; and behind the Federal
Chancellor must stand a Prussia, the strength of which
would be at the disposal of an unfettered Prussian Crown,
supported by Prussian Junker tradition. He secured the
first through the Bundesrat, the second through the
alliances that preceded the making of the Confederation,
and the clause in the Constitution that fixed for five years
(i. e. until 1871) the composition and number of the
Federal army, and placed it under the supreme command
of the Praesidium; the third by incorporating a Prussia
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 233
unreformed, intact, and unrepentant in the Bund. Hence-
forward Moltke and the General Staff could work, unim-
peded, on the army, and complete its preparation for its
final task; Bismarck could shape and direct policy, un-
hindered by Federal ministerial colleagues, and controlling
a Bundesrat in which Prussia had seventeen votes out of
forty-three, and the manipulation of which was withdrawn
from public knowledge or parliamentary influence.
The democratic franchise occasioned deep misgivings
in many quarters. It is very questionable whether
Bismarck's later interpretation--that it was blackmail to
democracy--really represents what he thought in 1866,
or really felt until he retired. It seems more accurate to
infer that he desired a representative assembly- which
would mirror as accurately as possible the German people,
enable the government to gauge the currents in the nation
as a whole, and provide an organ for the concentrated expres-
sion of national policy and for influencing public opinion.
All these ends could be achieved with safety if the powers
of the representative body, nominally large, were in reality
checked and circumscribed, as they were in the Constitution
at every point. Universal suffrage conferred a superb
democratic glamour on a truly anti-democratic system.
And Bismarck early in his career was convinced that the
danger of Liberalism came not from the uninstructed
masses but the educated and independent middle and
professional classes. When he wrote his memoirs at the
close of his life the industrial revolution had done its work
and the democracy had largely been transformed into an
urban industrial proletariat; he wrote with twenty years'
bitter experience of the weapon forged by Windthorst
and the Clerical centre, by Bebel and the Socialist Demo-
crats, from universal manhood suffrage. In 1867 Bismarck
could understand and sympathise with the Socialism of
Lassalle; neither Prussia nor Germany were industrial-
ised; seventy per cent, of the population still lived in the
country, and the framing and carrying of a restricted
franchise for the Reichstag was, as he said, a matter so
controversial and difficult as to prohibit its consideration.
Universal suffrage was not ideal, but it was simple, popular,
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 234
BISMARCK
and practical; its adoption in the Federal Constitution
would not involve the demand for its extension to Prussia
or other States, averse from it in principle. 'Direct
election and universal suffrage,' Bismarck pronounced, ' I
consider to be greater guarantees of Conservative action
than any artificial electoral law. ' Bismarck's conception
of a Parliament was that of our Tudors--a perpetual
royal commission to lay the wishes of the nation at the
feet of the throne; a national organ with defined powers,
limited by the prerogatives of the Crown. The opinion
of Parliament could be ascertained and neglected, if
need be, but the Legislature could always be made a
grand ally for affixing the national seal on all enterprises,
where it was essential the Crown should appear both to
the nation itself, and to foreign states, as the representative
executor of a sovereign national will. Between policy
imposed on and endorsed by the nation, and policy
made by the nation, the difference was fundamental
and final.
July I, 1867, when the Constitution was promulgated,
was the K8niggratz of Liberalism in Germany. Foiled in
1848, thwarted in 1862, Liberalism and the Liberal pro-
gramme had practically their last real chance in 1860-7.
The effort to renew the struggle in 1871 was the flash of
powder damped by disuse. The rejection in the Consti-
tution of every vital element and principle of the Liberal
programme, coupled with the equally decisive failure to
modify the Prussian Constitution, provides a critical date
in the history of Germany and of Europe. For ten years
Germany had been gathering itself at the cross-roads--
for four it had stood expectant, waiting for the decision
that would mark its route, and it now was set marching
towards unification indeed, power, opulence, discipline,
and the high places of the universe, but not towards the
ideals of character and law and self-government that were
the dream of the golden age of aspiration. National
Liberalism was enmeshed in the iron cage of the new
Federal Constitution; it enjoyed a great political influence,
but neither political authority nor power, which were re-
served to the Federal Council, and in that Council the
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 235
principles of the governing caste in Prussia achieved an
invincible supremacy.
The real character of the victory won by Bismarck
between 1866 and 1867 was concealed for ten years. And
the reason lay in the dual programme of National Liberal-
ism since 1848--unification and constitutional self-govern-
ment through responsible parliamentary administration.
The task of internal unification began with 1867 when the
framework of the organisation had been completed, and
to the achievement of this task the national Liberal leaders
and their devoted followers contributed a driving power,
ability, and work, that cannot be overestimated. Indeed,
without the unselfish and patriotic labours of men such as
Bennigsen, Lasker, Forckenbeck, Miquel, supporting the
efforts of the ministerial chiefs of departments, Delbriick,
Stephan, Falk, and Camphausen, Bismarck could never have
achieved the remarkable results accomplished by 1880.
Liberalism was endeavouring partly to find in legisla-
tion and executive action a compensation for the failure to
obtain responsible parliamentary government; with the
inevitable consequence that the bureaucracy, the guiding
levers of which were controlled by the governing class,
was enormously strengthened. Public opinion was
steadily imbued with the conviction that liberty and law
as character-building elements in national life, would be
more rapidly and efficiently worked out through co-or-
dinated governmental action from above, than through
the slow, disappointing, and patchworky progress of
representative institutions and the friction of warring
parties. The Reichstag, thus, was transformed into a
legislative machine and a debating club, banked up against
the dead wall of the Prussian Landtag in which the
administration could always command, if its political
authority was questioned, a solid Conservative majority.
'The Army' or 'the Crown' in danger played the part
that 'the Church in danger' played in the evolution of
constitutional government in England. For in each case
first principles of the established State were the root of
the controversy.
Hence with unification practically completed by 1879,
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? BISMARCK
it was impossible for National Liberalism to resume in the
industrialised and soaring Germany of 1879tae programme
of self-government through representative institutions.
It had itself assisted to build the breakwaters and the dams
which barred the parliamentary waters from trickling into
the reservoir of political power where policy was made.
Its old ideals, mildewed by neglect, fell to the impotent
Radicalism led by Richter, and the economic war of
classes led by Bebel--both, and from one point of view, not
unjustly termed 'enemies of the Empire' (Reichsfeind-
lich). For the aims of both could only be realised by
taking down the whole imperial engine, riveted into the
chassis of the Prussian State, and rebuilding it on a different
pattern and for wholly different purposes. The speci-
fication of that imperial engine is written out in the text
of the Constitution of the North German Confederation.
The counter-specification had been elaborated in 1849.
One important consequence of the defeat of Liberalism
cannot be omitted. The National Liberalism of 1850-66
had regarded England as its moral ally--the country which
had inspired its programme and supplied the ideas, the
precedents, and the example of constitutional self-govern-
ment--and the Liberals, with no desire to make an Eng-
lish Germany, hoped that by realising the same ends in
government and the same type of state as England, looked
forward to a great political entente in which two great
nations, working in their respective spheres and under a
differentiated Nationalism, could achieve common ideals
and purposes. The complete failure of Great Britain to
understand the character of the struggle waged in Ger-
many from 1850 onwards, and to grasp the meaning of
1867, the absence of sympathy, the obstacles placed by
British policy in the way of German achievement, the
hostile criticism, and, still worse, the patronising approval,
killed the enthusiasm for England in the great Liberal
camp. England, too, presently fell under the hypnotism
of Bismarck in its attitude towards German affairs, in
complete ignorance of what Bismarck and Bismarckianism
really were, or what they meant for Great Britain and
Europe. The old feeling and ideas continued to be con-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 237
centrated in the court and circle of the Crown Prince and
Princess, but Germany steadily moved away from them.
The Franco-German war completed the disillusionment.
England had failed. Her principles and her ambitions were
as dangerous to the new Empire as the adoption of her
system of government would be disastrous. Industrialism
was superimposed on the political divorce: it made absolute
the decree nisi for the two countries. England and the
British Empire were regarded first as neutrals who had
betrayed, and then as rivals who would bar, the realisation
of the complete German programme. The extirpation of
'English' influence in every sphere--dynastic, political,
intellectual, and economic--grew to be the ideal of the
Nationalism that laboured for the Empire as the expres-
sion of Power--German Power.
The intellectuals and the universities slowly ranged
themselves on the anti-British side. The conversion of
a Treitschke, a Sybel, and a Mommsen to the new gospel
was far more significant than at first sight appears; for in
the new Germany the universities were to be even more
potent in moulding the minds of the young generation
than-in the epoch of the German renaissance. The in-
fluence of authority in the matters of spirit and intellect
more than kept pace with the increase of authority in
politics and administration. The organisation of intellect
came to be regarded as essential as the organisation of the
army, the civil administration, or the tariff union. To a
Realpolitik a Realwissenschajt is an indispensable element of
national power, since it controls the empire of man in the
universe of spirit, and provides the material weapons for
maintaining die control and extending its scope. When
Bismarck finally broke with the economic policy of Free
Trade in 1879, the last of the English chains which
'fettered' the evolution of a national Germany was
shivered. Cobdenism, Manchesterism, Adam-Smithianis-
mus, and the influence of the British school of individualism
were eliminated from State policy and economic action.
The emancipation of the German intellect was the corol-
lary to the emancipation of the German nation from the
bondage of 'Walsch' and foreigner. It gave a new
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? BISMARCK
interpretation, and a new sphere, to the conception of
a Teutonic Central Europe. Henceforward Great Britain
--the incarnation of everything intellectual, political, and
economic that was the antithesis of the German Empire--
could by a subtle and inevitable transition in German
thought be transformed from the rival into the enemy.
Not until that enemy had suffered the fate of Austria
and France would the German Empire be safe and the
continent of Europe purged of political heresies.
Bismarck had not failed to grasp the position established
in 1867. His virtual alliance with, and reliance on, the
National Liberal party demanded great skill in political
management lest Bennigsen and his colleagues should
become the riders and he the horse. The Conservatives
of the Kreuzzeitung were angered to bitterness with ' the
lost leader,' and for the ten years after 1867 Bismarck was
exposed to vehement attacks from the Right. The social
and court influence of Conservatism was far greater than
that of any other party, and the ramification and enlace-
ment of its roots enmeshed every organ of authority--the
Crown, the War Office, the General Staff, the Civil Service,
and the local administration, above all, in the agricultural
districts. For many years it was not possible to counter-
balance the great industrials, because they were only in the
making, as yet, against the powers vested in tradition, estab-
lished institutions, and a social caste that provided the
higher personnel. Bismarck could not shatter the sources
of Junker authority without emasculating the Prussia by
whose brute weight he controlled the Confederation, and,
later, the Empire. His ally was the Crown, and his weapons
were the doctrine of passive obedience as the life-blood of
Conservatism and unwavering confidence in himself. He
emphasised the principles of his youth. Conservatism, if it
acted against the Crown and its government, was guilty of
intolerable indiscipine, equivalent to mutiny and treachery.
If it came to an open breach the Crown would act--and it
did. In his private correspondence with Roon he could
say what could not be said in public. Some characteristic
and illuminating quotations will be relevant here: 'If the
government has not at least one party in the country
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 239
which does not support its principles and policy, then the
constitutional system is impossible: the government will
manoeuvre and intrigue against the constitution; it must
either create an artificial or aim at a transitory majority.
It succumbs then to the weakness of a coalition-ministry
and its policy fluctuates, which is pernicious to the State,
and especially so to the Conservative principle. ' (Feb-
ruary 6, 1868. ) 'Every state which values its honour and
independence must recognise that its peace and security
rests on its own sword--I believe, gentlemen, we are all
united on that point. . . . Just as a roof protects against
the rain, a dam against inundation, so our army protects
our productivity in its full measure. ' (May 22, 1869. )
'The form in which our King exercises Imperial rights
in Germany has never been of great importance in my
eyes; to secure the fact that he exercises them, I have
strained all the strength God has given me. . . . ' (To
Roon, August 27, 1864. )
'1 can emphatically maintain this: does not the Pre-
sidium of the North German Confederation exercise in
South Germany such an Imperial authority as has not been
in a German Emperor's possession for five hundred years?
Where is the time since the first Hohenstaufen when there
has been in Germany an unquestioned supreme command
in war, an unquestioned certainty of having in war the
same enemies and the same friends? The name counts
for something . . . the Head of the North German Con-
federation has in South Germany a position such as no
Emperor since Barbarossa has had, and though Barbarossa's
sword was victorious his power was not based on treaties
and generally recognised. ' (To Roon, February 24, 1870. )
'It is absolutely certain in my conviction that I have
found the chief influence which I have been privileged to
exercise, not in the Imperial, but in the Prussian Power.
. . . Cut away from me the Prussian root, convert me
into a pure Imperial minister, I believe I should have as
little influence as every one else. ' (Reichstag, March 13,
1877. )
One other remark reveals much. 'The stronger,'
Bismarck said (March 28, 1867), ' the influence of Parlia-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 240
BISMARCK
ment on the State, the more necessary is it to maintain a
stern discipline in the civil service. ' He had learned in the
constitutional conflict what an invaluable weapon the
Prussian civil services could be in counteracting the
Liberal opposition. The assimilation of the annexed pro-
vinces, the Prussianisation of the Confederation, was largely
to be achieved through the organised Beamtenstand, dis-
ciplined and deployable under the Crown as efficiently as
the army, and kept as free from parliamentary interference.
The classical authority is the royal proclamation of
January 4,1882, which summarises the position as correcdy
in 1867 as in 1882: 'Executive orders of the King require
the countersignature of a minister . . . but it is incorrect
and tends to obscure the constitutional rights of the Crown
if their execution is represented as dependent on a re-
sponsible minister and not on the Crown . . . it is the
duty of my ministers to protect my constitutional rights
against doubt or misrepresentation. I expect the same
duty from all officials . . . all officials who are entrusted
with the execution of my governmental commands and
are removable from their service under the law of dis-
cipline are required under the obligation of their oath of
service to maintain the policy of my government even at
elections. '
The future relations of the new Confederation with the
South German States were a knotty problem. Bismarck's
views are susceptible of very various interpretation. It
is certain that he contemplated union between south
and north, as the consummation of the work of 1867. It
is no less certain that he recognised more deeply than
many of his critics the external and internal difficulties
in the realisation of such a union. It has been held by
many then, and since, that the fluid and elastic element in
the Constitution of 1867 was deliberately emphasised to
permit a subsequent incorporation of Bavaria, Wiirttem-
modification of the main lines of the Federal structure.
It has, on the other hand, been argued that the Consti-
tution of 1867 was deliberately provisional, and that Bis-
marck intended to recast the whole system on an imperial
Baden,
without substantial
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 241
pattern. Bismarck can be quoted for and against both
these interpretations. The truth would seem to be that
he had not really decided, and could not really decide,
when and how union with the south would be possible.
The form would turn on the particular situation, Euro-
pean as well as German. 'It is impossible to see in
advance with sufficient clearness the ways of Divine Provi-
dence. ' (August 13, 1875. ) When Miquel maintained
that' the line of the Main is no longer a line of separation,
but simply a stopping station at which we draw breath,
as an engine takes in coal and water, in order to proceed
on our route,' Bismarck could reply that 'we all carry
national union in our hearts; but for the calculating
statesman the necessary comes first and then the ideally
desirable . . . if Germany attains its goal in the nine-
teenth century, I should regard that as a great achieve-
ment; if it were reached in ten or five years it would be
something quite extraordinary, an unexpected crowning
gift from God. . . . I have always said to the National
Liberals that I look on the matter with a hunter's eyes.
If I lay a bait for game I do not shoot at the first doe, but
wait until the whole herd is busy feeding. '
Apart from the obligations1 implied rather than defined
in the Treaty of Prague--which France regarded as a
positive prohibition of complete union--and in the main-
tenance of which in all probability she would have the
support of Austria, Bismarck recognised the grave internal
objections and obstacles to union. Dynasticism, Parti-
cularism, Radicalism, and Clericalism were very strong in
the south. The Wittelsbach monarchy in Bavaria had a
historic tradition of independence that made its fusion in
a truly Federal Constitution, and its subordination to a
Hohenzollern presidency, virtually impossible in 1867;
the Radicals were predominant in Wiirttemberg and the
Clericals very powerful in Bavaria. Representation of
the south in the Reichstag of 1867 on the basis of universal
1 Article 4 of the Treaty of Prague ran: 'H. M. the Emperor of Austria
. . . also agrees that the German State to the south of this line shall form a
union, the national connection of which with the Northern Confederacy is
reserved for a more defined agreement between both parties, and . which u ti
maintain an international independent existence.
B. d
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 242
BISMARCK
suffrage would have made formidable additions to the
National Liberals and Centre parties, and completely
swamped the Conservatives. The Federal Council would
have had an anti-Prussian majority; and the parliamen-
tary situation was sufficiently difficult already, without
swelling the volume of discontent created by the dis-
possession of the dynasties in Hanover, Nassau, and Hesse-
administrative incorporation of the annexed territories
was being carried out by the Prussian bureaucracy.
French statesmen, it is true, were congratulating them-
selves and France that Germany was now definitely split
into three clearly marked divisions--les trots tronfons, of
which Rouher spoke--the North, the South, and Austria,
and calculated that allies could be found south of the Main
and on the Danube. This view of the south was a pure
illusion, which sprang from an incurable persistence in
interpreting German thought and feeling in 1867 by the
light of a history that was as dead as Frederick Barbarossa
or Louis xiv. The conditions that had made the policy
of Richelieu and Mazarin, Louvois and ' the dance of the
Louis d'ors,' even of Napoleon 1. and the Confederation
of the Rhine feasible, had vanished by 1848--never to
return. It was the same fatal prepossession which had
ruined Napoleon's Italian policy; for it had led him to
suppose that Italy in 1859 could be really carved out into
a north, a centre, and a south, animated by a common
sentiment of Italian Nationalism, but retaining the
dynastic Particularism which could only exist on de-
nationalisation propped up by foreign bayonets. At the
Tuileries, in the Corps Legislatif, on the boulevards, and
in the 'estaminets de province,' Wittelsbach pride, the
clerical press, and the Radical critics and caricatures of the
south were regarded as proofs that the red trousers of the
French army would receive a warmer welcome in Bavaria
than. the blue uniform with red facings from the north.
Bismarck entertained no such foolish illusions. The
south he knew was as German as the north. But it was
much more anti-Prussian. It had never come under the
influence of Prussia to the extent that the non-Prussian
efficiency with which the
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 243
States north of the Main had; it had not assimilated the
principles and postulates of the Prussian State, which
were repugnant to all its traditions and outlook on life.
But that repugnance did not involve any readiness to
accept either French culture or political domination, still
less the principles of the Second Empire. Quite the
contrary. A Ludwig of Bavaria, a Prince Hohenlohe, a
von der Pfordten, a Bray, a Dollinger, a Varnbiiler, a Dal-
wigk, the representatives of the various warring parties
--Unionists, Clericals, Radicals, Particularists, Democrats
--that made the south such a tangle of conflicting
aims and such a confusion of discordant voices, carried
beneath their party robes as stout and patriotic German
hearts as any that beat north of the Main. Because they
were such good Germans they were so anti-Prussian, and
had not yet learned to bow the knee in the house of Hohen-
zollern; they were not ready yet to accept incorporation
on the terms of the North German Confederation, or to be
de-Germanised in order to be baptized by platoons into
Prussianism.
Bismarck on his side was decided in his refusal to sacri-
fice the assured Prussian hegemony in the north to South
German dynasticism, Clericalism, and Radicalism. Had
he been willing in 1866 to risk a war with France and
Austria he would have overcome the external but not the
internal obstacle to unification; had Germany been vic-
torious in such a war, the unification that would have
crowned the victory would have been very different to
the loosely jointed settlement achieved in 1867. But
Bismarck never took unnecessary risks, particularly to
achieve ends not in themselves absolutely urgent. Every-
thing therefore pointed to delay; but a halt implied that
everything meanwhile must be done by practical administra-
tion and cautious diplomacy to improve the conditions that
made for the ultimate acceptance of the Prussian solution
by the south. The chart of the future was studded with
rocks--many of them sunken, many just awash when the
national tide was at its full--but Bismarck's navigation was
in the next three years masterly. He had secured the sub-
stance in the offensive and defensive military conventions, in
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? BISMARCK
themselves a shattering refutation of the dreams dreamed
at the Tuileries; the Unitarians must be sedulously
nursed and continuously denied; the economic bonds
must be tightened into a halter round the neck of the
south; France and Austria must be carefully cherished in
the conviction that union was neither desired nor possible.
The unitarian force of Nationalism could be trusted to
work of itself, all the stronger if it was drenched from
time to time with Prussian cold water. France, not
Prussia, must be represented as the obstacle to union;
France which coveted the Bavarian Palatinate, which
threatened Bavaria and Baden because it was the unlawful
occupant of German Alsace and Lorraine. 'You cannot,'
Bismarck said, 'ripen opinion in the south by holding a
lamp under it,' and when Baden, the most Unitarian of the
Southern States, and the friends of Baden in the Reichstag,
repeatedly pleaded for its incorporation with the North
German Confederation, Bismarck put the demand on one
side with courteous firmness. The Treaty of Prague was
against it; it would be a breach of faith with Napoleon,
whose heart was hard, and it would annoy Bavaria and
Wurttemberg, who ought not to be annoyed. 'Why,'
he asked, 'skim off the cream, and leave the rest of the
milk to go sour? '
But, above all, make Prussia strong. The new Prussia
was not ready. She had to be hammered together.
Time was required for the Prussian bureaucracy to Prus-
sianise the north, for the General Staff to impose Prussian
organisation on the Federal forces and screw them up to
the Prussian concert pitch, for Germany to accustom
itself to the Prussian praesidium of the Hohenzollern
monarchy, for himself as Federal Chancellor to acquire
the moral prestige over the north that had taken four
hard years from 1862 to 1866 to acquire in Prussia itself.
When the north was really unified--kneaded, moulded,
and hardened by the Prussian leaven--the anti-Prussian
south could be swallowed--perhaps. The damping down
of Junker Particularism, the quarrels with the Kreuz-
zeitung and . the Conservatives, the entente with National
Liberalism that disquieted Roon and angered Prince
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 245
Frederick Charles and the fierce militarist Conservatives
of the old guard, were not without their influence on the
south. Bismarck, like other great Conservative leaders,
whose political imagination is as strong as their fidelity
to the essentials of the Conservative creed, had to educate
a party that did not desire to be educated. He had not
strained soul and body beyond endurance to win victories
for Liberalism. He was leading a rebellious and incredu-
lous Junkertum through the wilderness to the promised
land of an assured supremacy. Their faith faltered; why
not be content with the flesh-pots of the old Prussianism?
The Junker camp swarmed with Korahs, Dathans and
Abirams. Round the King the malcontents swarmed,
and the King was at heart as Prussian as the most reaction-
ary squire from the old March. He showed it by his
resentment at Junker sedition. When Conservatives
behaved as if they were middle-class parliamentary Liberals
William turned his royal back on them at levees, or rated
the rebels in the language of the Prussian War Book.
The strength of German Nationalist feeling was con-
vincingly shown in the Luxemburg affair, that came to a
head while the Constitution was still on the anvil. The
establishment of the Confederation of the North had
destroyed the legal and political status of the duchy in
the dissolved Bund of 1815. Napoleon, obsessed with the
policy of pourboires, grasped at the opportunity of acquir-
ing Luxemburg, linked by a personal union with Holland
through the house of Orange-Nassau. Bismarck main-
tained throughout that he would acquiesce in the annexa-
tion--it would please Napoleon and be no danger to
Prussia--provided that France would settle rapidly with
Holland and present him with a fait accompli. But he
warned Napoleon that he could not, and would not, on
behalf of the Confederation formally guarantee the trans-
action beforehand. In the spring of 1867, with the
Constitution unsettled, he had no desire yet to quarrel
with France, but he could not come to the Reichstag and
confess that he had agreed to the cession of what Germany
regarded as German territory. It is probable that this
line of action was sincere, and that, in presence of a fait
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:47 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp. 49015000251497 Public Domain in the United States, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 246
BISMARCK
accompli, he could have persuaded the militant Nationalist
Liberals that a war for Luxemburg was unjustifiable and
not worth the cost. But Bismarck forgot that others had
good reason to distrust his sincerity and his methods.
The King of Holland, in fear of Prussian aggression on
Limburg, was prepared to close with Napoleon, provided
that the contract had been first approved of by Prussia.
