THE GERMAN EMPEROR'S DEFEAT. T HE real importance of the recent
votes in the German Parliament rejecting great Bills proposed by the Imperial Government, consists in this, that the Emperor is no longer accepted as the leader of the people in domestic affairs. His position, it must be remembered, is not that of a constitutional Sovereign, as we in England understand it, but rather what that of an American President would be if he were not bound to vacate office. William II. appoints his own Ministers ; they are responsible to him only ; and if they are defeated in Parliament, he is not bound to remove them, though he occasionally does it, not out of deference to Parliament, but as a punishment to themselves for failure. No defeat, therefore, shakes his position as supreme head of the Executive, nor can Parliament directly order him to modify his plans. The revenue is raised until the taxes are repealed, a change which requires his consent ; and he can go on, therefore, unless he wants fresh money, in calm disregard of his Parliament's displeasure, as indeed he is doing just now. In ordinary times, and with a different Sovereign, the prerogative would be sufficient for any- thing ; and a deadlock between Monarch and people might continue for twenty years without greatly im- peding the machine. William II., however, desires to be more than a mere Sovereign ; he wishes actually to rule, to be his own Prime Minister, to propose new things, and to carry out large schemes of internal policy. To occupy this immense position successfully, he must have the support either of the representatives or of the people who elect them; and hitherto he has had it. The people authorised him to carry his half-Socialist laws for pro- tecting workmen against accident and old age ; they backed him when he made his immense demand for every healthy lad in Germany as a conscript ; they sanctioned all his Free-trade Treaties, although they were savagely opposed by the strongest single party in the State ; and they have allowed him to manage foreign affairs, as in the great Zanzibar arrangement, practically at his own dis- cretion. Now, however, they are recoiling from his side. His Majesty has wished all along to pay for the great addition to his Army by means of indirect taxes, and the people will not allow it. They would not, it was recently admitted by Prince Hohenlohe, submit to a further tax on bread ; they have rejected a tax on beer ; and they flung out on Saturday the only practicable alternative, a surcharge on tobacco. The Imperial fiscal policy is, in fact, for the time rejected, and the Treasury must get along with deficits as it best can, until the Emperor has conciliated some great section of the electors,— probably the agrarians by a swerve in the direction of bimetallism. Then the Emperor has fallen in some degree a prey to the hardfisted chiefs of the Prussian bureau- cracy, and has made up his mind that the State wants further powers for repressing Socialism, sedition, and incite- ments to mutiny. Considering the immense powers already intrusted to the Government, the Emperor was probably mistaken even from the Prussian officials' point of view, but still he ordered great anti-revolutionary Bills to be prepared and defended in the House. They would not have been unreasonable Bills in a free country, but they contained elastic clauses which hard Judges could interpret hardly ; and the people felt sure they would be hardly interpreted. The people, therefore, rose in protest. Petitions are not very common in Germany, but twenty-two thousand separate petitions were sent up against these Bills, and not one in their favour. The Socialists raved against them ; the Liberals declared them fatal; even the Old Conserva- tives doubted if they might not be turned into weapons against themselves. The Catholics might still have accepted the Bills, and with the aid of a faithful remnant of Tories have passed them ; but they refused to do it unless the repressive clauses were applied to attacks on religion, on the Catholic mysteries, and on marriage, and all Germany cried out that free discussion would, under their " improvements," come to an end. Even the Government was disinclined to go so far, and at last it appeared that the Bills, with the exception of a clause punishing incitements to mutiny, had no hearty defenders anywhere. The representatives, however, being deter- mined to give the Government a check, threw out even that clause, and then the Liberal leader, Herr Richter, proposed that there should be no more debate. It was time, he thought, to be done with the pro- posals, and accordingly they were voted down clause by clause without another word of discussion. The treatment of them, in fact, was almost contemptuous; but the Government, convinced that the nation as well as the representatives were against it, and a little afraid, we fancy, of mutiny even in the Federal Council, where the Southern representatives had raised difficulties, made no further fight, and have, it is believed, decided not to attempt a penal dissolution.
The blow for the Emperor is a bad one. It is perfectly true, as we have already pointed out, that his legal authority remains unimpaired, that he can retain Prince Hohenlohe as the Chancellor of the Empire, and even continue to trust Herr Koller, who told the Reichstag, almost in so many words, that it was a law-making machine,—that is, only "a body to which the Emperor sent down laws to be accepted or rejected." But William II. aspires to a better position than this. He wishes to do big things, and to do them he must carry a majority of his people at least so far with him that they will acquiesce in his proposals. Prussians will be horrified by the remark, but there is something of the Caesar in their Sovereign's attitude,—of the man, that is, who, though claiming every power, and especially all initiative, still professes to be rather the embodiment of the people than their ruler from above. He has suc- ceeded several times in that role, but he has failed this time, and the consequences to his authority may be serious in two ways. One way is that the confidence in him as Premier will be a good deal diminished. An able Premier does not propose Bills which a whole people dislike, or suggest taxes which are repudiated the moment they are examined. This diminution of trust will, to some degree at least, daunt both the Emperor and his advisers, while it will increase the readiness of his people to criticise all future acts. Much of his power depended upon his nearly unbroken success, failure rousing in Germany, as else- where, that spirit of bitter criticism which is at least as common among Germans as any other race. Moreover, the incident must bring home to the Emperor a very unpleasant conviction, that if he is to keep his as- cendency over the public mind, he must share it in part at least with somebody else. He cannot go down to the Reichstag himself, and persuade its jarring groups to give him a majority, and he must there- fore find some one who can. He is not bound, as a Radical contemporary suggests, to bend to the repre- sentatives, and accept a Ministry virtually of their election ; but he will be compelled to seek a Minister who can keep the Reichstag and the Monarch in tolerable accord. Prince Bismarck was such a man, and so, in a very different way, was Count Caprivi ; but Prince Hohenlohe is not. He is a great, though worn, administrator, but be is clearly not a great Par- liamentarian. The Emperor may find a more capable man for the special duty ; but if he does, it fol- lows of necessity that he must trust him with a considerable share of power. No mere " instrument,' however able, has ever managed a Chamber well. It is not only that no man of that sort ever becomes a great orator, but that no man without power can adapt himself to a representative body, seize the right moment for conciliation or defiance, or make a sudden "arrangement " which, in the crisis before a division, secures the support of the necessary group. The Emperor will not like parting with even that much of power ; but it is difficult to conceive how he can avoid it. He has, of course, the alternative of neglecting Parliament, and going on, in- different to its favour or hostility ; but if he chooses that course, he gives up almost his only chance of exercising a great and successful initiative. The Emperor is neither required nor besought to find a Mr. Gladstone, who would drive him mad in a week ; but a Sid- mouth will not do. He must find a Pitt, and the Pitt who will exert his faculties to the full while exercising no power, and quell every mutiny without coming visibly to the front, is a kind of man who never existed ; and in the present condition of men's minds is almost unthinkable The Emperor has, in fact, two courses before him,—to part with some of his power by relinquishing his position as leader, or to part with some of his power in favour of a capable colleague. We shall see very soon which course his Majesty will choose.
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