under discussion, the budget, since I have been here. Consequently I
am excused, I suppose, from adding anything to what the secretary of
the treasury has said. The previous speaker has mainly concerned
himself with a critique of my personality. The number of times the
word "chancellor" appears in his speech in proportion to the total
number of words sufficiently justifies my assertion. Well, I do not
know what is the use of this critique, if not to instruct me and to
educate me. But I am in my sixty-sixth year and in the twentieth of my
tenure of office--there will not be much in me to improve. You will
have to use me up as I am or push me aside. I, on my part, have never
made the attempt to educate the Honorable Mr. Richter--I do not think
I am called upon to do it; nor have I endeavored to force him from his
sphere of activity--I should not have the means of doing this, nor do
I wish it. But I believe he in his turn will lack the means of forcing
me from my position. Whether he will be able to compress me and
circumscribe me, as toward the end of his speech he said was
desirable, I do not know. I am, however, truly grateful to him for the
concern he expressed about my health. Unfortunately, if I wish to do
my duty, I cannot take such care of myself as Mr. Richter deems
desirable--I shall have to risk my health.
When he said that every evil troubling us, even the rate of interest
and I know not what else, was based on the uncertainty of our
conditions, and when he quoted the word of a colleague of a "hopeless
confusion"--well, gentlemen, then I must repeat what I have said
elsewhere and in the hearing of the Honorable Mr. Richter: Make a
comparison and look about you in other countries! If our conditions
with their ordered activities and their assured future at home and
abroad constitute a "hopeless confusion," how shall we characterize
the conditions of many another country? I can see in no European
country a condition of safety and an assured outlook into the future
similar to that prevailing in the German empire. I have already said
on the former occasion that my position as minister of foreign affairs
made it impossible for me to be specific. But everyone who will follow
my remarks with a map in his hand, and a knowledge of history during
the past twenty years, will have to say that I am right. I do not know
what is the use of these exaggerations of a "hopeless confusion" and
"a lack of assurance and uncertainty of the future." Nobody in the
country believes it; and isn't that the chief thing? The people in the
country know perfectly well how they are off, and all who do not fare
as they wish are pleased to blame the government for it. When a
candidate comes up for election, and says to them: "The government--or
to quote the previous speaker--the chancellor is to blame for all
this," he may find many credulous people, but in the majority he will
find people who will say: "The chancellor surely has his faults and
drawbacks"--but most people will not be convinced that I am to blame
for everything. I am faring in this respect like Emperor Napoleon
twelve years and more ago, who was accused, not in his own country
but in Europe, as the cause of all evils, from Tartary to Spain, and
he was not nearly so bad a creature as he was said to be--may I not
also claim the benefit of this doubt with Mr. Richter? I, too, am not
so bad as I am painted. His attack upon me, moreover, if he will stop
to reflect, is largely directed not against me personally, or against
that part of my activities in which I possess freedom of action,
no--it is directed primarily against the constitution of the German
empire. The constitution of the German empire knows no other
responsible officer but the chancellor. I might assert that my
constitutional responsibility does not go nearly so far as the one
actually placed upon me; and I might take things a little easier and
say: "I have nothing to do with the home policies of the empire, for I
am only the emperor's executive officer." But I will not do this. From
the beginning I have assumed the responsibility, and also the
obligation, of defending the decisions of the Bundesrat, provided I
can reconcile them with my responsibility, even if I find myself there
in the minority. This responsibility I will take as public opinion
understands it. Nobody, however, can be held responsible for acts and
resolves not his own. No responsibility can be foisted on anybody--nor
did the imperial constitution intend to do this--for acts which do not
depend on his own free will, and into which he can be forced. The
responsible person, therefore, must enjoy complete independence and
freedom within the sphere of his responsibility. If he does not, all
responsibility ceases; and _I_ do not know on whose shoulders it will
rest--so far as the empire is concerned it has disappeared completely.
As long, therefore, as Mr. Richter does not change the constitution,
you yourselves must insist on having a chancellor who is absolutely
free and independent in his decisions, for no man can hold him
responsible for those things which he is unable to decide for himself,
freely and independently. Mr. Richter has expressed the wish of
limiting in several directions this constitutional independence of the
chancellor. In the first place, in one direction where it is already
limited and where he wishes to have it disappear entirely. This
concerns his responsibility for those acts in our political life which
the constitution assigns to the emperor in connection with the
decisions of the Bundesrat and the Reichstag. There can be no doubt
that these acts include also those which have to be performed, as the
constitution says, in the name of the emperor; the submission, for
instance, to the Reichstag of a resolve of the Bundesrat. Mr. Richter
has correctly quoted an incident, mentioned in the _North German
Gazette_, concerning the resolves on some collected cases of
accidents, which I considered it incompatible with my responsibility
to submit to you in the name of the emperor. I, therefore, did not do
it. One may well ask: What has the constitutional law to say on this
point? Was I justified in not acting? Was the emperor justified in not
acting! Or was His Majesty the Emperor bound by the constitution to
submit to you the resolve of the Bundesrat?
At the time when the constitution was being drawn I once discussed
this point with an astute jurist, who had long been and still is with
us in an important position--Mr. Pape. He said to me: "The emperor has
no veto." I replied, "Constitutionally he has not, but suppose a
measure is expected of him which he thinks he should not take, and
against which his then chancellor warns him, saying: I cannot advocate
it, and I shall not countersign it. Well, in this case is the emperor
obliged to look for another chancellor, and to dismiss him who opposes
the measure? Is he obliged to accept anyone as chancellor, suggested
perhaps by the other party? Will he look for a second or third
chancellor, both of whom may say: We cannot assume the responsibility
for this bill by submitting it to the Reichstag?" Hereupon Mr. Pape
replied: "You are right, the emperor possesses an indirect but actual
veto."
I do not even go so far, for none of these cases are pressed to their
logical conclusion. Let us, however, take a concrete case, which will
make these matters perfectly clear. Suppose the majority of the
Bundesrat had passed a bill with the approval of Prussia, but Prussia
had made the mistake of not calling upon the Prussian minister
designated to instruct the Prussian delegation in the Bundesrat; or
even--Prussia had consented and the minister had been present, and had
been in the minority also in the Prussian cabinet, and the emperor had
directed him to submit the resolves of the Bundesrat to the Reichstag,
to which the chancellor had replied: "I do not believe that I can
answer for this, or that my responsibility permits me to do it." Then
there results the possibility of the emperor's saying: "If that is so,
I must look for another chancellor." This did not happen; another
thing happened, namely--the resolve was not submitted. The ensuing
situation is this, that the persons entitled to complain--if there are
any--constitute the majority of the governments who passed this
resolve in the Bundesrat.
This points the proper way, and I believe in weighty questions it
would be taken to the end. In the present case if one were to make a
test of what is really right, the majority of the Bundesrat would have
to represent to His Majesty as follows: "We have passed a resolve, and
our constitutional right demands that the emperor submit it to the
Reichstag. We demand that this be done." The emperor might reply: "I
will not investigate the law of the case to see whether I am obliged
to act. I will assume that I am, and I do not refuse to act, but for
the present I have no chancellor willing to countersign the order." In
such a case can the chancellor be ordered to sign, because he shall
and must do so? Can he be threatened with imprisonment as is done with
recalcitrant witnesses? What would then become of his responsibility!
If the chancellor continues to refuse, the majority of the Bundesrat
may say to the emperor: "You must dismiss this chancellor and get
another. We insist that our resolve be laid before the Reichstag. If
this is not done, the constitution will be broken." Well, gentlemen,
why not wait and see whether this will happen, and whether those
entitled to complain will take this course, and if they do, whether
His Majesty the Emperor will not be ready to say after all: "All
right, I shall try to find a chancellor who is willing to submit the
resolve."
I shall, of course, not enter here upon a discussion of the reasons
which determined me in this concrete case. They were reasons not found
in shut-in offices, but in God's open country, and they induced me to
deem the enactment of this law undesirable. I did not possess the
certainty that a majority of this house would have seen the
impossibility of carrying out the law, but I did not wish to expose
the country to the danger--it was a danger according to my way of
thinking--of getting this law. The only moment when I could guard
against this danger was when the law was to be submitted in the name
of the emperor. The constitutional remedy against such a use of an
opportunity is a change of chancellors. I can see no other remedy.
Mentioning the Reichstag brings me to my coöperation with it. Mr.
Richter's ideal is, it seems to me, a bashful, cautious chancellor who
throws out careful feelers whether he may offend here, if he does
this, or offend there--one who does not wait for a final vote of the
Reichstag, but rushes home excitedly, as I have often seen my
colleagues do, exclaiming: "Oh God, the law is lost, this man and that
man are opposed to it"--and three weeks later the law has Passed in
spite of them. I cannot enter upon such a policy of conjecture and
proof by inference of what may be determined in the Reichstag when the
tendency of those who talk the loudest, but who are not always the
most influential, happens to be against a bill; and if Mr. Richter
should succeed in procuring such a timid chancellor anxiously listening
for every hint, my advice to you, gentlemen, is to tolerate him in
this position as briefly as possible. For if a leading minister--and
such he is in the empire--has no opinion his own, and must hear from
others what he should believe and do, then you do not need him at
all. What Mr. Richter proposes is the government of the State by the
Reichstag, the government of the State by itself, as it has been
called in France, by its own chosen representatives. A chancellor, a
minister who does not dare to submit a bill of the ultimate success of
which he is not absolutely sure is no minister. He might as well move
among you with the white sign (of a page) inquiring whether you will
permit him to submit this or that. For such a part I am not made!
To what extent I am ready to submit to the Bundesrat I have already
tried to explain, and I have closed with these words "_sub judice lis
est_" (the case is still in court). I need not say now whether my
constitutional conviction would make me yield to the majority of the
Bundesrat, if they should demand it. This question has not yet arisen;
the majority has not demanded it. Whether I shall maintain my
opposition, if the demand is pressed, to this question I reply: _non
liquet_ (it is a moot-point); we shall see what happens. Such things
are eventually decided by the old law which the Romans were astonished
to find with the Germans, and of which they said, "They call it
usage." Such a usage has not yet developed in connection with the
interpretation of our constitution.
Finally, Mr. Richter has found in me too much independence in a third
direction. He has been pleased to believe--if I understood him
correctly--that the law concerning ministerial deputies would give me
the welcome opportunity of withdrawing to a more ornamental position,
to use his own expression, and to leave the duties and activities to
those who are deputed to represent me, establishing thus also in the
imperial government the famous arcanum of decisions by majorities. But
here, too, I must say that Mr. Richter will have to change the
constitution before I shall be able to subordinate myself to the
highest officials of the empire. How can I appear before you saying:
"Well, gentlemen, I am very doubtful whether I can advocate this
measure, but the secretary in whose bureau it was worked out thinks
so, and following Mr. Richter's advice I have yielded to his
authority. If you do not adopt this measure you will gratify me, but
not the secretary?" This, too, would be an altogether impossible
position, although Mr. Richter is expecting it of me.
The chiefs of the bureaus are not responsible for me, except in so far
as the law of deputies substitutes them for me but I am responsible
for their actions. I have to guarantee that they are statesmen in
general accord with the policy of the empire which I am willing to
advocate. If I miss this accord in one of them, not once but
continually and on principle, then it is my duty to tell him: "We
cannot remain in office, both of us." This, too, is a task which I
have never shirked when it has presented itself. It is simply my duty.
I have never had need of such artful machinations and pyrotechnics as
people claimed I instituted very wilfully last week. You need not
think that ministers stick to their posts like many other high
officials, whom not even the broadest hints can convince that their
time has come. I have not yet found a minister in these days who had
not to be persuaded every now and then to continue a little longer in
office, and not to be discouraged by his hard and exhausting labor,
due to the simultaneous friction with three parliamentary bodies--a
House of Representatives, a House of Lords, and a Reichstag--where one
relieves another, or two, without waiting to be relieved, are in
session at the same time. And when the fight is over and the
representatives have returned home well satisfied, then a bureau chief
comes to the minister on the day after, saying: "It is time now to get
the recommendations for the next session into shape."
The whole business, moreover, while very honorable, is scarcely
pleasurable. Is any one obliged to submit to such public, sharp and
impolite criticisms as a German minister? Is it true of anyone but him
that the behavior customary among people of culture does not prevail
when he addressed? Without the least scruple one says things to him
publicly which one would be ashamed to say to him privately, if one
were to meet him in a drawing-room, for instance. I should not say
this here if the Reichstag did not hold an exceptional position in
Germany in these matters as well as in everything else. Here I have
never had to hear, so far as I remember, as sharp remarks as in other
assemblies. At any rate I have a conciliatory memory. But on the whole
you will agree with me that the tone of our public debates is less
elevated than that of our social gatherings, especially when our
ministers are addressed, but at times even among fellow members,
although of this I am no competent critic. I do not even criticize the
behavior toward the ministers, for I am hardened by an experience of
many years and can stand it. I am merely describing the reasons why no
minister clings to his post, and why you do me an injustice if you
believe that it takes an artful effort to make a minister yield his
place. Not many of them have been accustomed to see a totally ignorant
correspondent tear an experienced minister to pieces in the press as
if he were a stupid schoolboy. We see this in every newspaper every
day, but we can stand it. We do not complain. But can anyone say that
the members of the government--the bureau chiefs frequently fare even
worse--meet in the parliamentary debates with that urbaneness of
demeanor which characterizes our best society? I do not say "no,"
leaving it to you to answer this question. I only say that the
business of being a minister is very arduous and cheerless, subject to
vexations and decidedly exhausting. This brings it about that the
ministers are habitually in a mood which makes them readily give up
their places as soon as they have found another excuse than the
simple: I have had enough, I do not care for more, I am tired of it.
The changes of ministers, however, have not been so many nor so quick
with us as they are in other countries, and this I may mention to Mr.
Richter as a proof of my amiability as a colleague. Count, if you
will, the number of ministers who have crossed the public stage since
I entered office in 1862, and sum up the resignations due to other
than parliamentary reasons, and you will find a result exceedingly
favorable to the accommodating spirit of the German minister when it
is compared with that of any other country. I consider, therefore, the
insinuating references to my quarrelsome disposition and fickleness
distinctly wide of the mark.
In this connection I shall take the liberty of referring with one more
word to the reproaches, often occurring in the press and also in the
Reichstag, that I had frequently and abruptly changed my views. Well,
I am not one of those who at any time of their life have believed, or
believe today, that they can learn no more. If a man says to me:
"Twenty years ago you held the same opinion as I; I still hold it, but
you have changed your views," I reply: "You see, I was as clever
twenty years ago as you are today. Today I know more, I have learned
things in these twenty years." But, gentlemen, I will not even rely on
the justice of the remark that the man who does not learn also fails
to progress and cannot keep abreast of his time. People are falling
behind when they remain rooted in the position they occupied years
ago. However, I do not at all intend to excuse myself with such
observations, for _I have always had one compass only, one lode-star
by which I have steered: Salus Publica, the welfare of the State_.
Possibly I have often acted rashly and hastily since I first began my
career, but whenever I had time to think I have always acted according
to the question, "What is useful, advantageous, and right for my
fatherland, and--as long as this was only Prussia--for my dynasty, and
today--for the German nation?" I have never been a theorist. The
systems which bin and separate parties are for me of secondary
importance. The nation comes first, its position in the world and its
independence, and above all our organization along lines inch will
make it possible for us to draw the free breath of a great nation.
Everything else, a liberal, reactionary, or conservative
constitution--gentlemen, I freely confess, all this I consider in
second place. It is the luxury of furnishing the house, when the house
is firmly established. In the interest of the country I can parley now
with one person, now with another in purely party questions. Theories
I barter away cheaply. First let us build a structure secure on the
outside and firmly knit on the inside, and protected by the ties of a
national union. After that, when you ask my advice about furnishing
the house with more or less liberal constitutional fittings, you may
perhaps hear me say, "Ah well, I have no preconceived ideas. Make your
suggestions, and, when the sovereign whom I serve agrees, you will
find no objections on principle on my part." It can be done thus, and
again thus. There are many roads leading to Rome. There are times
when one should govern liberally, and times when one should govern
autocratically. Everything changes. Nothing is eternal in these
matters. But of the structure of the German empire and the union of
the German nation I demand that they be free and unassailable, with
not only a passing field fortification on one side. I have given to
its creation and growth my entire strength from the very beginning.
And if you point to a single moment when I have not steered by this
direction of the compass-needle, you may perhaps prove that I have
erred, but you cannot prove that I have for one moment lost sight of
the national goal.
[Illustration: PRINCE BISMARCK FRANZ VON LENBACH]
* * * * *
PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
April 2, 1881
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND VON MACH, PH.D.
[Prince Bismarck was trying to fight the revolutionary parties, not
only with such restrictive laws as had been passed against the
Socialists, but also with constructive measures like the one which had
been submitted to the Reichstag on March 8, 1881. It proposed the
insurance of the workingman against accidents, and the founding of a
governmental insurance company. The bill was severely criticized,
notably by Eugen Richter, who did not miss the opportunity of
attacking also the chancellor personally. Prince Bismarck's reply made
a deep impression in the country at large. The bill itself, however,
was so badly amended in the Reichstag, that Bismarck urged the
Bundesrat to reject it, which it did. Several changes, thereupon, were
made in the bill, and, after having been delayed in committee, it was
again brought up for discussion in 1884, when another exhaustive
speech by the chancellor, on March 15, brought about its acceptance.]
Before turning to the subject in hand, I wish to reply to some remarks
of the previous speaker, lest I forget them--they are of so little
weight. He finished by saying that my prestige was waning. If he were
right, I should feel like saying "Thank God," for prestige is a very
burdensome affair. One suffers under its weight, and quickly gets
tired of it. I do not care a farthing for it. When I was very much
younger, about as old as the previous speaker is now, and when I was
possibly still more ambitious than he, I lived for years without
prestige, and was actually disliked, if not hated, by the majority of
my fellow-citizens. At that time I felt better and more contented, and
was healthier than during the years when I was most popular.
Such things do not mean much to me. I am doing my duty, let come what
may.
As proof of his assertion the previous speaker claimed that the
workingmen are refusing the help which the Imperial Government is
trying to offer them. This he cannot possibly know. He has no idea of
what the great mass of the workingmen are thinking. Probably he has
some accurate information of what the eloquent place-hunters are
thinking of the bill, people who are at the head of the labor
movements, and the professional publicists, who need a following of
workingmen--dissatisfied workingmen. But as to the workingman in
general, we had better wait and see what he is thinking. I do not know
whether the full meaning of this question has even yet sufficiently
penetrated into his circles to make it a subject of discussion, except
in the learned clubs of laborers, and among the leading place-hunters
and speakers. In the next election we shall be able to tell whether
the workingmen have formed their opinion of the bill by then, not to
speak of now.
The legislation on which we are entering with this bill has to do with
a question which will probably stay on your calendar for a long while.
The previous speaker has correctly said that "it opens up a very deep
perspective," and it is not at all impossible that it may also make
the moderate Socialists judge more kindly of the government. We have
been talking of a social question for fifty years; and, since the
passage of the law against the Socialists, I have been constantly
reminded, officially, from high quarters, and by the people, that we
gave a promise at that time. Something positive should be done to
remove the causes for Socialism, in so far as they are legitimate. _I_
have received such reminders daily. Nor do I believe that this social
question, which has been before us for fifty years now, will be
definitely settled even by our children and children's children. No
political question ever reaches so complete a mathematical solution
that the books can be balanced. Such questions arise, abide a while
and finally give way to other historical problems. This is the way of
organic developments.