THE GERMAN GENERAL ELECTION.
FREUSE returns as to the Elections which took place last Tuesday all over Germany are not yet accessible. In many electoral districts, where no candidate got an absolute majority, a second vote will be necessary ; and at the moment when we write, the composition of the new Reichstag cannot be exactly described. But enough is known to indicate the general character of the elections. The National Liberals, it is evident, have again been successful, though their strength is somewhat impaired. The Conservatives have gained a little ; and the Socialists, though they have polled more votes than they did in January, 1877, have lost in Parliamentary strength. These are the chief results of an election which has excited much interest in Germany, and has, in fact, aroused an amount of political feeling unknown there since 1848. The interest of Englishmen in the political affairs of Germany is limited and lukewarm. For ten persons fairly conversant with the internal politics of France, there is not more than one acquainted with those of Germany. Of the leaders of the different parties little is known, —Lasker, Bennigsen, Stauffenberg, Windthorst, are names carrying little significance to English ears, and we doubt whether all educated English- men are acquainted with the directions in which the lines of the great party divisions of that country run. There is a simple explanation of this. In the last elections to the Reichstag, the result was a foregone conclusion. The triumph of the Liberals was a certainty, and foreigners could not be expected to follow with much attention the domestic questions which chiefly interested the electors. The general election which has just taken place is of far more consequence than the previous one, and its effects may be felt far beyond the confines of Germany. It may, in fact, prove a new departure in her political life. For many years Prince Bismarck and the Liberals have worked together in somewhat unnatural alliance. The Liberals have been thankful and grateful to the statesman who, more than any other person, brought about the unity of Germany, and who gave them in 1866 universal suffrage and vote by ballot, and who made amends for his unconstitutional conduct in his early years as a Minister by applying to Parliament for an in- demnity. His absolutist ways are indeed not theirs. Neither Herr von Bennigsen, the leader of the Moderate Liberals, nor Lasker, nor Baron von Stauffenberg, the leader of the Bavarian National Liberals, nor Herr von Forckenbeck feels sympathy with many of the Prince's objects at home, though they think highly of his foreign policy. Still, since 1866, the Government have managed to command the general support of the most power- ful party in the Reichstag, the National Liberals. A union of the one ,hundred and twenty-eight Members constituting this body, the forty-seven Advanced Liberals or Progressists, and the Conservatives or Imperialists, could always de.. feat any combination against the Government on the part of the Ultramontanes, Poles, Social Democrats, and the dis- affected Hanoverian, Alsatian, and Lorraine Deputies. On the whole, the National Liberals have shown great alacrity in defending the Government against its numerous enemies in the Reichstag, and until the failure of the negotiations for the, entrance of Herr von Bennigsen, the leader of the National Liberals, into the Cabinet, owing to the refusal of the Govern- ment to give "Liberal guarantees," there seemed no reason why the Reichstag elected in 1877 should not complete its term of three years.
But grave difficulties arose. The Chancellor desired an enormous increase to the Military Budget, and this request, which the Liberals might have been disposed to yield to if the grant was for a year and subject to Constitutional control, they refused to comply with when it took the shape of a demand for an annual expenditure of £15,000,000 for ten years. This is the sore point, and Prince Bismarck evidently thought that no good was to be done with a Parliament which objects to giving a Government all that it chooses to ask for the Army. No doubt, the pretext for the dissolution was something very different. The Liberals re- fused to support the monstrous Bill which the Government introduced for the suppression of Socialism. They were ready to consider any measure for fighting Socialism with ordinary Constitutional weapons, and in fact, they had long complained that the Government had coquetted far too much with Socialism, and had refrained from applying the existing laws, which are not lacking in severity. They could not forget that the Government had frequently played off the Socialists against the Liberals and Radicals ; that in 1866 Privy Councillor Wagener, speaking in the name of Prince Bismarck, invited Dr. Daring, the well-known economist and writer on mechanics, to prepare a memoir as to the best means of pro- moting the welfare of the working-men, at the public expense, and through the public authorities ; and that in those days, the Government condescended to curry favour with Socialism in order to discredit Liberalism. The Liberals have been the unswerving foes of Socialism in and out of Parliament, and, to charge them, as the Government journals have done, with sympathy with it, is not merely incorrect, but is a curious piece of effrontery. The Government journals have tried to play on the apprehensions and alarm created by the nefarious attempts of H6del and Nobiling on the life of the Emperor, and to stir up prejudices against the National Liberals, as in some vague way involved in the Socialistic movement. The tactics to which the Re'volutionnaires an rebours of May 16th resorted in fighting the French Republican party have been unscrupulously used, and used with as little effect. The middle-classes have refused to believe hireling scribes of the Government who hinted that Bennigsen and Lasker have secret sympathies with Bebel, Most, and Hasenclever. They would more readily have credited this if told of the Chan- cellor, whose right-hand man in the Foreign Office has long been Lothar Bucher, the Hegelian Radical of 1848, the friend of Kossuth and Mazzini, the quondam Deputy conspicuous among those who refused to vote the taxes for the public service in 1848, and the exile of 1850 who fled from his country to escape a State prosecution. The intelligent middle-class are most disposed to look for the cause of the spread of Socialism in the crushing military expenditure, the enforced idleness of a vast portion of the natural bread-winners of the nation, and the industrial depression and discontent which are the consequence.
In one respect the Elections are a cause for congratulation. The Socialists will not have twelve Deputies in the Reichstag, and the country will breathe a little more freely, now that it knows there is not a copsiderable party—considerable, in a House of 397 Members—whose principles are antagonistic to almost all the existing institutions of society. The Socialists will no longer, to quote Herr Bomberger, have in the tribune of the Reichstag an incomparable sounding- board. But there is another side to the matter. At the last general election, 5,535,000 persons voted, and of these, 488,000 gave their votes for the Socialist candidates. It is estimated that many more electors voted on Tuesday, and it seems certain that in spite of harsh, repressive measures— in spite of their inability to hold meetings, or even to state their_ views freely in the Press—the Socialist candidates polled far more votes than they did in 1877. The German election law makes no provision for the representation of minorities. They are practically extinguished, unless they happen to be a local majority. This is the key to the dis- parity between the votes recorded for Socialists, and the actual number of Deputies whom they have returned. Had there existed three-cornered constituencies, or had Reetion an serutin de liste been employed, the Socialist party in the German Parliament would have been greatly strengthened. When the Socialist Most can obtain almost as many votes in the first district of Berlin as Marshal von Moltke, it is premature to speak of Socialism as crushed. Berlin has its Belleville, as dangerous as that of Paris. It is too soon to predict what will be the consequences or the election. But one result will probably be that the Ultramontanes will secure better terms. They have come back from the elections in stronger force. They will be useful in the new Parliament. The Government have shown every disposition to make up their differences, and it is highly probable that the elections will produce a modus vivendi between the Papacy and Prussia.
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