Prince Bismarck has made a great attempt to govern the
second elections, of which a hundred are slowly coming off, by threatening through all his organs to resign. He will no longer, he says, be an object for all the malignities of forty-five millions of men who owe everything to him. Germany is not now governable, except through an arrangement with the- Clericals, and he will leave some other man to carry that out. This threat has proved inoperative ; the beaten Conservatives are voting for Social Democrats, and in twenty-six elections only that party, the Progressists, and the Centre have prospered, the Conservatives returning but one Member. Whether the Social Democrats' party can be attracted to the Prince is doubt- ful; but it is supposed that their leaders, Hassenclever and Liebknecht, who are returned, and Bebel, who may be returned for Hamburg, will steadily resist his internal policy. Nobody be- lieves, however, in the resignation. The Chancellor, who is sixty- six, is fatigued and out of temper ; but we repeat, his probable, course will be to make bargains about his financial measures, let everything else wait, and go on governing Germany until some great crisis arrives, when he will be too necessary to he opposed.
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