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]
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