The Upper House of the Prussian Diet has accepted Prince
Bismarck's School Inspectors' Bill by an unexpectedly large majority (49), in a house of 201 members. The Prince, in his able speech, laid great emphasis on the King's approbation of the Bill, and arrogated to the Government so much more means of judging of the necessity of such a Bill than outsiders, that he almost made it a folly, if not a crime, for the Opposition, with no means of judging, except personal observation, the newspapers, and the statements made in debate, to presume to form an independent. opinion on the subject at all. Prince- Bismarck certainly pushes the theory of the practical infallibility of a Government as compared with independent politicians wonderfully far ; and though we hold him quite right in taking power to remove clerical school inspectors and to substitute trustworthy laymen wherever he thinks it desirable, we cannot help thinking that the sensation created in Germany by his "revelations" of a Catholic conspiracy was strangely out of proportion to the character of his facts. Prince Bismarck got his Bill, but he argued for it almost as if he had proposed a Bill for suppressing Catholic worship and expelling the Jesuits from Germany, instead of a Bill for authorizing the substitution of lay for church-school inspectors at the discre- tion of the Administration, at a coat estimated in the Budget at only £3,000. Prince Bismarck was evidently making a great. display of power against the Papal party,—a reconnaissance in force,—not fighting a serious battle.
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