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.
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.
Robertson - Bismarck
Papal infallibility was a victory of Ultra-
montanism. Against the sovereignty of the modern State,
over all causes and persons, ecclesiastical as well as civil,
throughout its dominions supreme, it arrayed the theory
that in spheres of thought and action, defined not by the
State but by the Church, the competence of civil authority
ceased, and that the jus dirigendi and ihejuscoercendi passed
to spiritual power, intrinsically and in the divine order of
things, superior. France, Austria, and the patrimony of
Peter, were the political strongholds of this creed and
party. The defeat of Austria and France transferred the
struggle to the floors of the Prussian Landtag and the
Imperial Reichstag. What would have been the issue
of this tremendous struggle of principles, cutting down to
the bone of civil life and the fundamentals of society, if
France had won in 1870?
For the present Bismarck had to reckon with French
and German national sentiment. On both sides of the
frontier the high explosive of national passion was stored
up in embarassing plenitude, and any political trifle might
detonate the magazines. Napoleon's repeated and vary-
ing demands had proved not so much what the Emperor
himself desired as what he knew France expected him to
extort. The extreme irritability of French public opinion
was caused by anger, humiliation, and fear, and the danger
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BISMARCK
was all the greater because Napoleon's failure in Mexico
and in European combination with the internal discontent,
imperilled the dynasty and made it imperative for the
Tuileries to re-gild its tarnished prestige with a striking
success in foreign policy. France was corroded with the
worst form of ignorance that can sap a nation's strength,
the ignorance that is steeped in vanity. The boulevards
of Paris and the estaminets de province did not know
Prussia, and they refused to recognise the profound changes
that had made the Germany of 1867 as different from the
Germany of 1815 as that Germany was from the Germany
of 1789. The France of 1867 was inspired with the
axiomatic conviction that it was still the first country of
Europe, the foyer de civilisation, first in science, letters,
the arts and arms.
The irritability of German public opinion was due co
pride and the consciousness of strength. Great things
had been accomplished, but they were only the beginning.
The supremacy in Europe was at last passing into German
hands. The injuries of the past were not yet obliterated,
and the one veto which German Nationalism was not pre-
pared to tolerate was a French veto on the completion of
German unity. After 1866 any French or German states-
man could have made a war with ease in twenty-four hours.
For things simply could not remain as they were in 1866.
Neither Napoleon nor Bismarck could postpone indefin-
itely the collision without abandoning what neither could
abandon. The maintenance of the French Empire and
the imperial dynasty on the throne was Napoleon's, the
completion of German unification was Bismarck's, task.
For Napoleon the tragedy was summed up in the impossi-
bility of refusing war if it was thrust upon him, since refusal
meant another humiliation, and that spelled ruin. The
Treaty of Prague placed the initiative in Bismarck's hands.
Obedient to the opportunism on which his statecraft rested,
he already willed the end in 1866; the means and the
moment would be revealed by circumstances that could
not be predicted in advance but might be made. It
was Bismarck's deepest conviction that true opportunism
consisted as much in creating opportunities as in seizing
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 221
them when they occurred. But as in 1864 or in 1866 the
war that lay ' in the logic of history '--a logic not made by
chance or a blind caprice, but created by statecraft--must
be strictly and essentially ' defensive. ' War must secure,
since policy could not, the conditions on which a German
Central Europe could live for the future with its neigh-
bours. The achievement of these conditions could on
Bismarclrian principles alone prove its justifiability and
necessity.
v
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? CHAPTER V
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE NORTH GERMAN
CONFEDERATION
The Making of the North German Confederation--The War
with France, 1866-1870--The Treaty of Frankfurt--The
Unification of Germany, 1870-1871.
The conclusion of the treaties which established peace was
only part of the complicated and exhausting burden of
work that Bismarck had to shoulder. This enormous pres-
sure of business could not be delegated, except in its de-
tails; and even if delegation had been possible Bismarck
was not the man to permit, in so critical a situation, the
interference of colleagues, military or civil. The gigantic
labour fell on a man already worn out, living on shattered
nerves and an adamantine will. He had returned to
Berlin on August 4, and when on September 20 he took
part in the triumphal entry of the army, every one ob-
served with concern the weary exhaustion in his face and
figure. He had in fact dragged himself from a sick bed
to ride with the generals, Moltke, Roon, Herwarth von
Bittenfeld, Steinmetz, and Vogel von Falkenstein, to re-
ceive the homage of a crowd, delirious with enthusiasm,
and the roses of the girls at the Brandenburg Gate. He
was, and he knew it, the arresting figure in the cavalcade;
men and women along the route had their eyes on the
civilian in the cuirassier uniform, merely a titular general
of brigade, for he was the magician who had achieved the
miracle. To-day it was roses--roses, roses all the way
past the statue of. his master, Frederick the Great--but
had the Crown Prince arrived too late at Koniggratz, it
would not have been even the besoms of the old women
or the stones of a duped democracy. He would have been
lying, face downwards, after the last charge.
222
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 223
The Landtag had been dissolved at the outbreak of war,
and the elections of July 8 reflected the victories. One
hundred and forty Conservatives had been returned, and
had the dissolution been deferred till the end of July it is
probable that the defeat of the opposition would have been
decisive. Junkertum was jubilant. Now was the time to
teach these pestilent Radicals a lesson. The King shared
their views. But Bismarck thought otherwise. It was the
hour for the olive branch that he had plucked at Avignon
in September 1862. The opposition had had their lesson.
National Liberalism--not Junkertum--was the true ally
in the work of unification to come. Not even in his deal-
ings with Austria and the defeated German South did
Bismarck show himself more convincingly a masterly
realist--the statesman who appreciates realities and bends
them to his will--than in his treatment of the Landtag.
'I was in a position to carry out the boldest and most in-
cisive policy of reaction,' he told the Reichstag in 1879,
'with the success and iclat which still attached to me from
Koniggratz . . . if I had thought that absolutism in
Prussia would have better promoted the work of German
unity, I should most decidedly have counselled recourse
to it. ' For himself and for his policy the triumph would
be all the more enduring if he could now hypnotise
National Liberalism into servitude as a loyal agent of his
will. The King, not unnaturally, resisted, supported by
his military advisers, and Bismarck had a hard task, assisted
by the Crown Prince, in persuading his sovereign to accept
what he regarded as a personal humiliation and a public
surrender. Bismarck wrote to his wife (August 3) :--
'Great controversy over the speech from the Throne
. . . these folk see nothing but their own nose and practice
their swimming in the stormy flood of phrases. With
our enemies we can settle up, but our Friends! They all
wear blinkers and see only a speck of the world,'
The Landtag opened on August 5, and the royal speech
indicated that the government would throw a white sheet
over the blue uniform with the red facings. The bill,
introduced by Bismarck, provided an indemnification for
the absence of a legal budget since 1862, and additional
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BISMARCK
credits for 1866. The Budget for 1867 would be sub-
mitted to the Lower House. It was a frank admission that
the government had acted illegally, but the Minister-
President invited the House to close the constitutional
controversy, and to recognise that if the government had
been ' technically' wrong it could not have acted other-
wise under the circumstances, and that peace and pardon
were now necessary in order to proceed with the great
duties that awaited Prussia. Let bygones be bygones;
neither Crown nor Landtag in the future would assail each
other's rights. The era of conflict was over--never to
return. 'The government,' he said, later, 'has gladly
grasped the opportunity to bring the conflict to an end,
in the conviction that it serves no purpose in constitutional
life to drive matters to extremities. Constitutional
fovernment cannot be judged by mathematical, nor even
y juristic, rules. It is a continuous compromise . . .
the making of peace never satisfies every wish, never fulfils
every calculation. '
L. von Gerlach pronounced the bill a blow in the face of
Bismarck's best friends. The Conservatives received the
measure in morose silence, but it passed the Lower House
by 230 to 75 votes, and the Upper House without a
division. The irreconcilables of both camps refused the
olive branch, and from the Indemnity Bill dates a re-
grouping of Prussian and German parties which the or-
ganisation of the new Confederation definitely confirmed.
In September 1866 the Progressive party (Fortschritts-
Partei), which had been the core of the opposition, split up.
Fifteen of its important members, with eight from the
left centre, founded a new party, under Bennigsen's leader-
ship, which on the dissolution of the Nationalverein,
became the powerful National Liberal party. Its raison
d'Hre was to give the new government firm support in its
foreign policy, and to work for complete unity with free-
dom. 'Der deutsche Staat und die deutsche Freiheit
miissen gleichzeitig mit denselben Mitteln errungen
werden. ' A similar split took place in the Conserva-
tive ranks. On October 27, 1867, the Free Conservative
party was founded on the principle that Prussia had
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 225
now entered 'the class of constitutional States. ' 'The
Time of Absolutism had passed. ' The Free Conser-
vatives pledged themselves to support and work for the
'Constitutional monarchy' defined in the Constitution
of 1867. How active political thought and movement
had become under the influence of the years 1866 and 1867
can be best judged by two other party manifestations:
first, the notable Eisenach Programme which founded the
Social Democrats in August 1869; secondly, the German
Popular Party (Deutsche Volkspartet) of South Germany
in September 1868, with its ideal of the complete demo-
cratic State and responsible parliamentary government.
The Eisenach Programme, of which much was to be heard
later, aimed amongst other ends at direct legislation by a
popular legislature, substitution of a national militia for
the standing army, separation of Church and State, aboli-
tion of ecclesiastical teaching in the elementary schools,
complete independence of the judiciary, abolition of all
press laws, legal recognition of trades unions, abolition of
all indirect taxation, substitution of a single progressive
income-tax, and regulation by law of the hours, remunera-
tion, and conditions of labour.
During the short autumn session of 1866 Bismarck, ex-
hausted as he was, astonished the Landtag by his persua-
sive geniality. The old rasping irritability and explosions
of anger were reserved for the ministers of the South and
for Benedetti; it was ail the more remarkable, as he was in
daily pain and tortured by insomnia. But with Bismarck,
as with the great Napoleon, anger, insolence, and menaces
were storm-cones indicating that the situation was critical;
they were intended to drive an adversary into indiscretions.
The surer that his grip on a situation became, the politer
became Bismarck's manners.
The princes of the States north of the Main were sum-
moned to Berlin to confer (August 4); they found a
Prussian minister lavish in the amiability that is easy to the
victorious master of many legions. It was a congress of
roaches presided over by a benevolent pike. The basis of
the new Confederation was laid (August 18) in fifteen
treaties of alliance, in which the contracting parties
B. p
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? 226
BISMARCK
guaranteed the inviolability of their territories, and agreed
to refer to a constituent Parliament, chosen as in 1849 by
direct and universal manhood suffrage, the establishment
of a Federal Constitution. One point alone was settled
in advance. The troops of the allies were placed under
the supreme command of the King of Prussia.
The Landtag ratified the annexations permitted by
the Treaty of Prague. In the bill Hanover,1 Nassau,
Hesse-Cassel, Frankfurt, and Schleswig-Holstein were not
'annexed' but 'taken in possession' by the Crown. Bis-
marck however yielded with grace to the critics and agreed
to annexation pure and simple. After voting a special
military credit the Landtag was prorogued (September 27) . 2
Bismarck's endurance had given out. On September 26
he left for Pomerania, and for the next two months was
seriously ill. His constitution and will were as usual better
that a man should not die till he had smoked 100,000
cigars and drunk 5000 bottles of champagne. His wife
hailed with joy the day, after many weary weeks of pain,
sleeplessness, and black depression, when the Minister-
President once more found joy in the Moselle and Hock
specially selected by a princely host in the island of Riigen;
and with the appetite for wine and tobacco came back the
lust for work and achievement. Devoted friends had been
toiling in his absence on the new Constitution--Roon,
Delbriick, Abeken--and Bismarck called in Hepke, Lothar
Bucher, and Max Duncker. But their drafts failed to
-satisfy. In his solitude he, too, had been toiling to clarify
his ideas, and on his return to Berlin, by a tour deforce at
a single sitting, he dictated to Bucher the scheme of a
Constitution (December 13), copies of which were ready
1 Hanover, like the other annexed principalities, became Prussian territory.
It ceased to be an independent kingdom; the dynasty was dethroned, and the
reigning king became a 'legitimist1 claimant to a throne he no longer
possessed, who refused to recognise the validity of the treaty and the acts
which destroyed his crown and turned the 'kingdom' into an administrative
Prussian province.
1 Saxe-Weimar, Oldenburg, Brunswick, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-
Gotha, Anhalt, the two Schwarzburgs, Waldeck, Reuss (younger branch),
Schaumburg-Lippe and Lippe, Lubeck, Bremen and Hamburg. The two
Mechlenburgs adhered on August 21, feaxe-Meiningen, Reuss (elder branch),
and the kingdom of Saxony on October 21.
Late in life he pronounced
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 227
(December 15) for the Conference of Plenipotentiaries
from the governments. The Conference lasted until
February 7, 1867, when the amended draft was recom-
mended by the governments for acceptance. The
elections for the Constituent Reichstag were held on
February 12, and on February 24 the Reichstag of the
North German Confederation met to discuss the recom-
mended draft. -The Constitution was finally passed on
April 17. The several governments accepted it, as
amended by the Reichstag, and it was then submitted
to the Parliaments of the several States. The Prussian
Landtag agreed by June I; the other States followed suit;
on July 1, 1867,tne Constitution was duly promulgated.
The North German Confederation was now in existence;
one further act was necessary to complete the work. On
July 14 Bismarck was appointed Federal Chancellor--
combining the duties of the new office with the Minister-
Presidency of Prussia. The task of making a Constitution
and of unifying North Germany by a victorious Prussia,
undisturbed either by enemies without or within, had
occupied eleven months of continuous and hard work
(August 4, 1866-July 1, 1867). The man of ' blood and
iron ' had been as long over the task as the dilatory and un-
practical professors, journalists, and idealists, who had toiled
at a larger task in the Church of St. Paul at Frankfurt from
May 13, 1848, to April 11, 1849. The critics, and they
are not few, who assume that men of action can produce
constitutions as easily as omelettes, and that the juristic,
moral, political, and institutional problems that even
partial unification of Germany provided could be solved
by a triumphant sword in a few days, have failed to grasp
the elements of history's lessons. One conclusion that is
certain is, that without the noble and masterly work of the
men of 1848, and the earnest co-operation of the finest
minds and characters in Germany from 1849 to 1866, the
establishment of the North German Confederation could
not have been accomplished in double the time. 'There
is spring in Germany to-day,' said a deputy; but the
intoxicating splendour of that spring had its dawn in
the Liberalism of the Revolution.
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BISMARCK
The North German Confederation was not what National
Liberalism desired, or for which it had worked so long and
with such faith and loyalty. If Max Duncker might well
remark, 'what a contrast between the seventy articles of
the Constitutional text of 1867 and the twenty articles of
the Federal act of 1815,' the comparison measures the
profound change in the principles, temper, and ideals of
the Germany made by Metternich and the Germany
made by Bismarck. But what a contrast also between the
Constitution of 1867 and that of 1849. The difference
was due to 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
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? 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.
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? 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
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? 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
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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
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? 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,
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? 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
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? 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,
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? 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-
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? 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
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? 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.
montanism. Against the sovereignty of the modern State,
over all causes and persons, ecclesiastical as well as civil,
throughout its dominions supreme, it arrayed the theory
that in spheres of thought and action, defined not by the
State but by the Church, the competence of civil authority
ceased, and that the jus dirigendi and ihejuscoercendi passed
to spiritual power, intrinsically and in the divine order of
things, superior. France, Austria, and the patrimony of
Peter, were the political strongholds of this creed and
party. The defeat of Austria and France transferred the
struggle to the floors of the Prussian Landtag and the
Imperial Reichstag. What would have been the issue
of this tremendous struggle of principles, cutting down to
the bone of civil life and the fundamentals of society, if
France had won in 1870?
For the present Bismarck had to reckon with French
and German national sentiment. On both sides of the
frontier the high explosive of national passion was stored
up in embarassing plenitude, and any political trifle might
detonate the magazines. Napoleon's repeated and vary-
ing demands had proved not so much what the Emperor
himself desired as what he knew France expected him to
extort. The extreme irritability of French public opinion
was caused by anger, humiliation, and fear, and the danger
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? 220
BISMARCK
was all the greater because Napoleon's failure in Mexico
and in European combination with the internal discontent,
imperilled the dynasty and made it imperative for the
Tuileries to re-gild its tarnished prestige with a striking
success in foreign policy. France was corroded with the
worst form of ignorance that can sap a nation's strength,
the ignorance that is steeped in vanity. The boulevards
of Paris and the estaminets de province did not know
Prussia, and they refused to recognise the profound changes
that had made the Germany of 1867 as different from the
Germany of 1815 as that Germany was from the Germany
of 1789. The France of 1867 was inspired with the
axiomatic conviction that it was still the first country of
Europe, the foyer de civilisation, first in science, letters,
the arts and arms.
The irritability of German public opinion was due co
pride and the consciousness of strength. Great things
had been accomplished, but they were only the beginning.
The supremacy in Europe was at last passing into German
hands. The injuries of the past were not yet obliterated,
and the one veto which German Nationalism was not pre-
pared to tolerate was a French veto on the completion of
German unity. After 1866 any French or German states-
man could have made a war with ease in twenty-four hours.
For things simply could not remain as they were in 1866.
Neither Napoleon nor Bismarck could postpone indefin-
itely the collision without abandoning what neither could
abandon. The maintenance of the French Empire and
the imperial dynasty on the throne was Napoleon's, the
completion of German unification was Bismarck's, task.
For Napoleon the tragedy was summed up in the impossi-
bility of refusing war if it was thrust upon him, since refusal
meant another humiliation, and that spelled ruin. The
Treaty of Prague placed the initiative in Bismarck's hands.
Obedient to the opportunism on which his statecraft rested,
he already willed the end in 1866; the means and the
moment would be revealed by circumstances that could
not be predicted in advance but might be made. It
was Bismarck's deepest conviction that true opportunism
consisted as much in creating opportunities as in seizing
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 221
them when they occurred. But as in 1864 or in 1866 the
war that lay ' in the logic of history '--a logic not made by
chance or a blind caprice, but created by statecraft--must
be strictly and essentially ' defensive. ' War must secure,
since policy could not, the conditions on which a German
Central Europe could live for the future with its neigh-
bours. The achievement of these conditions could on
Bismarclrian principles alone prove its justifiability and
necessity.
v
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? CHAPTER V
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE NORTH GERMAN
CONFEDERATION
The Making of the North German Confederation--The War
with France, 1866-1870--The Treaty of Frankfurt--The
Unification of Germany, 1870-1871.
The conclusion of the treaties which established peace was
only part of the complicated and exhausting burden of
work that Bismarck had to shoulder. This enormous pres-
sure of business could not be delegated, except in its de-
tails; and even if delegation had been possible Bismarck
was not the man to permit, in so critical a situation, the
interference of colleagues, military or civil. The gigantic
labour fell on a man already worn out, living on shattered
nerves and an adamantine will. He had returned to
Berlin on August 4, and when on September 20 he took
part in the triumphal entry of the army, every one ob-
served with concern the weary exhaustion in his face and
figure. He had in fact dragged himself from a sick bed
to ride with the generals, Moltke, Roon, Herwarth von
Bittenfeld, Steinmetz, and Vogel von Falkenstein, to re-
ceive the homage of a crowd, delirious with enthusiasm,
and the roses of the girls at the Brandenburg Gate. He
was, and he knew it, the arresting figure in the cavalcade;
men and women along the route had their eyes on the
civilian in the cuirassier uniform, merely a titular general
of brigade, for he was the magician who had achieved the
miracle. To-day it was roses--roses, roses all the way
past the statue of. his master, Frederick the Great--but
had the Crown Prince arrived too late at Koniggratz, it
would not have been even the besoms of the old women
or the stones of a duped democracy. He would have been
lying, face downwards, after the last charge.
222
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 223
The Landtag had been dissolved at the outbreak of war,
and the elections of July 8 reflected the victories. One
hundred and forty Conservatives had been returned, and
had the dissolution been deferred till the end of July it is
probable that the defeat of the opposition would have been
decisive. Junkertum was jubilant. Now was the time to
teach these pestilent Radicals a lesson. The King shared
their views. But Bismarck thought otherwise. It was the
hour for the olive branch that he had plucked at Avignon
in September 1862. The opposition had had their lesson.
National Liberalism--not Junkertum--was the true ally
in the work of unification to come. Not even in his deal-
ings with Austria and the defeated German South did
Bismarck show himself more convincingly a masterly
realist--the statesman who appreciates realities and bends
them to his will--than in his treatment of the Landtag.
'I was in a position to carry out the boldest and most in-
cisive policy of reaction,' he told the Reichstag in 1879,
'with the success and iclat which still attached to me from
Koniggratz . . . if I had thought that absolutism in
Prussia would have better promoted the work of German
unity, I should most decidedly have counselled recourse
to it. ' For himself and for his policy the triumph would
be all the more enduring if he could now hypnotise
National Liberalism into servitude as a loyal agent of his
will. The King, not unnaturally, resisted, supported by
his military advisers, and Bismarck had a hard task, assisted
by the Crown Prince, in persuading his sovereign to accept
what he regarded as a personal humiliation and a public
surrender. Bismarck wrote to his wife (August 3) :--
'Great controversy over the speech from the Throne
. . . these folk see nothing but their own nose and practice
their swimming in the stormy flood of phrases. With
our enemies we can settle up, but our Friends! They all
wear blinkers and see only a speck of the world,'
The Landtag opened on August 5, and the royal speech
indicated that the government would throw a white sheet
over the blue uniform with the red facings. The bill,
introduced by Bismarck, provided an indemnification for
the absence of a legal budget since 1862, and additional
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? 224
BISMARCK
credits for 1866. The Budget for 1867 would be sub-
mitted to the Lower House. It was a frank admission that
the government had acted illegally, but the Minister-
President invited the House to close the constitutional
controversy, and to recognise that if the government had
been ' technically' wrong it could not have acted other-
wise under the circumstances, and that peace and pardon
were now necessary in order to proceed with the great
duties that awaited Prussia. Let bygones be bygones;
neither Crown nor Landtag in the future would assail each
other's rights. The era of conflict was over--never to
return. 'The government,' he said, later, 'has gladly
grasped the opportunity to bring the conflict to an end,
in the conviction that it serves no purpose in constitutional
life to drive matters to extremities. Constitutional
fovernment cannot be judged by mathematical, nor even
y juristic, rules. It is a continuous compromise . . .
the making of peace never satisfies every wish, never fulfils
every calculation. '
L. von Gerlach pronounced the bill a blow in the face of
Bismarck's best friends. The Conservatives received the
measure in morose silence, but it passed the Lower House
by 230 to 75 votes, and the Upper House without a
division. The irreconcilables of both camps refused the
olive branch, and from the Indemnity Bill dates a re-
grouping of Prussian and German parties which the or-
ganisation of the new Confederation definitely confirmed.
In September 1866 the Progressive party (Fortschritts-
Partei), which had been the core of the opposition, split up.
Fifteen of its important members, with eight from the
left centre, founded a new party, under Bennigsen's leader-
ship, which on the dissolution of the Nationalverein,
became the powerful National Liberal party. Its raison
d'Hre was to give the new government firm support in its
foreign policy, and to work for complete unity with free-
dom. 'Der deutsche Staat und die deutsche Freiheit
miissen gleichzeitig mit denselben Mitteln errungen
werden. ' A similar split took place in the Conserva-
tive ranks. On October 27, 1867, the Free Conservative
party was founded on the principle that Prussia had
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 225
now entered 'the class of constitutional States. ' 'The
Time of Absolutism had passed. ' The Free Conser-
vatives pledged themselves to support and work for the
'Constitutional monarchy' defined in the Constitution
of 1867. How active political thought and movement
had become under the influence of the years 1866 and 1867
can be best judged by two other party manifestations:
first, the notable Eisenach Programme which founded the
Social Democrats in August 1869; secondly, the German
Popular Party (Deutsche Volkspartet) of South Germany
in September 1868, with its ideal of the complete demo-
cratic State and responsible parliamentary government.
The Eisenach Programme, of which much was to be heard
later, aimed amongst other ends at direct legislation by a
popular legislature, substitution of a national militia for
the standing army, separation of Church and State, aboli-
tion of ecclesiastical teaching in the elementary schools,
complete independence of the judiciary, abolition of all
press laws, legal recognition of trades unions, abolition of
all indirect taxation, substitution of a single progressive
income-tax, and regulation by law of the hours, remunera-
tion, and conditions of labour.
During the short autumn session of 1866 Bismarck, ex-
hausted as he was, astonished the Landtag by his persua-
sive geniality. The old rasping irritability and explosions
of anger were reserved for the ministers of the South and
for Benedetti; it was ail the more remarkable, as he was in
daily pain and tortured by insomnia. But with Bismarck,
as with the great Napoleon, anger, insolence, and menaces
were storm-cones indicating that the situation was critical;
they were intended to drive an adversary into indiscretions.
The surer that his grip on a situation became, the politer
became Bismarck's manners.
The princes of the States north of the Main were sum-
moned to Berlin to confer (August 4); they found a
Prussian minister lavish in the amiability that is easy to the
victorious master of many legions. It was a congress of
roaches presided over by a benevolent pike. The basis of
the new Confederation was laid (August 18) in fifteen
treaties of alliance, in which the contracting parties
B. p
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? 226
BISMARCK
guaranteed the inviolability of their territories, and agreed
to refer to a constituent Parliament, chosen as in 1849 by
direct and universal manhood suffrage, the establishment
of a Federal Constitution. One point alone was settled
in advance. The troops of the allies were placed under
the supreme command of the King of Prussia.
The Landtag ratified the annexations permitted by
the Treaty of Prague. In the bill Hanover,1 Nassau,
Hesse-Cassel, Frankfurt, and Schleswig-Holstein were not
'annexed' but 'taken in possession' by the Crown. Bis-
marck however yielded with grace to the critics and agreed
to annexation pure and simple. After voting a special
military credit the Landtag was prorogued (September 27) . 2
Bismarck's endurance had given out. On September 26
he left for Pomerania, and for the next two months was
seriously ill. His constitution and will were as usual better
that a man should not die till he had smoked 100,000
cigars and drunk 5000 bottles of champagne. His wife
hailed with joy the day, after many weary weeks of pain,
sleeplessness, and black depression, when the Minister-
President once more found joy in the Moselle and Hock
specially selected by a princely host in the island of Riigen;
and with the appetite for wine and tobacco came back the
lust for work and achievement. Devoted friends had been
toiling in his absence on the new Constitution--Roon,
Delbriick, Abeken--and Bismarck called in Hepke, Lothar
Bucher, and Max Duncker. But their drafts failed to
-satisfy. In his solitude he, too, had been toiling to clarify
his ideas, and on his return to Berlin, by a tour deforce at
a single sitting, he dictated to Bucher the scheme of a
Constitution (December 13), copies of which were ready
1 Hanover, like the other annexed principalities, became Prussian territory.
It ceased to be an independent kingdom; the dynasty was dethroned, and the
reigning king became a 'legitimist1 claimant to a throne he no longer
possessed, who refused to recognise the validity of the treaty and the acts
which destroyed his crown and turned the 'kingdom' into an administrative
Prussian province.
1 Saxe-Weimar, Oldenburg, Brunswick, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-
Gotha, Anhalt, the two Schwarzburgs, Waldeck, Reuss (younger branch),
Schaumburg-Lippe and Lippe, Lubeck, Bremen and Hamburg. The two
Mechlenburgs adhered on August 21, feaxe-Meiningen, Reuss (elder branch),
and the kingdom of Saxony on October 21.
Late in life he pronounced
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? NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 227
(December 15) for the Conference of Plenipotentiaries
from the governments. The Conference lasted until
February 7, 1867, when the amended draft was recom-
mended by the governments for acceptance. The
elections for the Constituent Reichstag were held on
February 12, and on February 24 the Reichstag of the
North German Confederation met to discuss the recom-
mended draft. -The Constitution was finally passed on
April 17. The several governments accepted it, as
amended by the Reichstag, and it was then submitted
to the Parliaments of the several States. The Prussian
Landtag agreed by June I; the other States followed suit;
on July 1, 1867,tne Constitution was duly promulgated.
The North German Confederation was now in existence;
one further act was necessary to complete the work. On
July 14 Bismarck was appointed Federal Chancellor--
combining the duties of the new office with the Minister-
Presidency of Prussia. The task of making a Constitution
and of unifying North Germany by a victorious Prussia,
undisturbed either by enemies without or within, had
occupied eleven months of continuous and hard work
(August 4, 1866-July 1, 1867). The man of ' blood and
iron ' had been as long over the task as the dilatory and un-
practical professors, journalists, and idealists, who had toiled
at a larger task in the Church of St. Paul at Frankfurt from
May 13, 1848, to April 11, 1849. The critics, and they
are not few, who assume that men of action can produce
constitutions as easily as omelettes, and that the juristic,
moral, political, and institutional problems that even
partial unification of Germany provided could be solved
by a triumphant sword in a few days, have failed to grasp
the elements of history's lessons. One conclusion that is
certain is, that without the noble and masterly work of the
men of 1848, and the earnest co-operation of the finest
minds and characters in Germany from 1849 to 1866, the
establishment of the North German Confederation could
not have been accomplished in double the time. 'There
is spring in Germany to-day,' said a deputy; but the
intoxicating splendour of that spring had its dawn in
the Liberalism of the Revolution.
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BISMARCK
The North German Confederation was not what National
Liberalism desired, or for which it had worked so long and
with such faith and loyalty. If Max Duncker might well
remark, 'what a contrast between the seventy articles of
the Constitutional text of 1867 and the twenty articles of
the Federal act of 1815,' the comparison measures the
profound change in the principles, temper, and ideals of
the Germany made by Metternich and the Germany
made by Bismarck. But what a contrast also between the
Constitution of 1867 and that of 1849. The difference
was due to 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
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? 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.
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? 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
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? 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
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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
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? 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,
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? 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
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? 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,
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? 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-
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? 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
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? 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.
