TOPICS OF THE DAY.
PRINCE BISMARCK'S RESIGNATION : ITS CAUSES.
rE resignation of Prince Bismarck is a strange and yet a, ce most natural event. It is strange, because, as a friend suggests, there is something of retribution in it, the very Prince whose claim he urged against that of his father being the one to accept his resignation ; but it is natural too. The moment it became clear that the Emperor intended to govern for himself, it became also clear that the govern. ing days of the great Chancellor were numbered. It was as impossible for the Emperor to feel free under the shadow of that great authority, as for any of his Ministers. The first Emperor could, not only because of his great age, which always tells heavily in favour of a superior in dealing with a subordinate, but because of some inner sense of dignity in the man, and because he was to Prince Bismarck the Sovereign of his earlier manhood, the patron who had made him, the chief whose commands he had taken a thousand times. No young man could occupy that posi- tion towards the Prince, and when that young man began to govern as well as reign, to consult other men —always an irritation to the Chancellor, who has in him a deep trace not so much of jealousy as of the monopolising spirit—to accept other ideas, to indicate original plans, even to issue orders, as he must have done about this Labour Conference, at variance with the advice he had received from his great Minister, it was certain from that Minister's character that he would resign. It was impossible, how- ever loyal he might be, or however attached to the Emperor personally, that he should consent to become in any degree an effaced personage in Germany ; and he was becoming one. During his last long holiday at Friedrichsruhe, for in- stance, the Emperor practically ruled alone in every depart- ment except foreign affairs. Prince Bismarck is probably himself not aware of the degree to which he has become, so to speak, Emperor rather than Minister ; how fully he has concentrated power in his own hands ; how strongly he has kept down equals ; how constantly the world, as well as his own subordinates, have recognised that his was the final decision to be awaited ; and how deeply this position has gratified his inner pride. He has the tempera- ment of a working Sovereign ; can bear no colleagues ; loves adjutants, his son excepted, only as Sovereigns do ; feels in every fibre, even when unconscious of feeling it, that the position of final referee is the only one which he could endure. This position he could. no longer hold. The legal right belongs to his energetic young master, who in every speech, in every order, in every arrangement for his per- petual journeys, gave evidence that he intended to exercise his rights, and be First Minister within his own realm. So long as this attitude was confined to military affairs, the Chancellor submitted, for military affairs have always been the peculiar province of the Prussian Kings ; but the Emperor soon turned to civil government, and we suspect, if the truth were known, to foreign affairs also, and the Chan- cellor felt all independent authority slipping rapidly away. He was even invited some months since to allow all Prussian Ministers to report direct to the King without his interven- tion. He resolved to resign, and this the more readily because his opponent was no rivalwhom he could combat or crush, but his Sovereign himself, whose rights he acknowledged, whom he was glad. to believe competent to rule, of whom he was probably, in some recess of his mind, even personally proud. He was willing his King should try to reign without him, and being willing, felt at once the full burden of his age, of his mihiss foreign cares, of that burden of actual work which, in A, personally governed State, no actually governing ruler cvl either avoid or evade. He would rule Germany, or his master @hotild?. that was the sum of his conclusions ; and a.,e it 'a& certain tb,44 jEtt master must, he resigned. It seems to be believed. in Germany that the immediate occasion of his final decision was the Emperor's resolve to deal with the social question in a new spirit, and though the point is of minor importance, and there is much obscurity as to the precise point of difference, the social question may have been the secondary cause. In the first place, Prince Bismarck is by birth and habit of life a Prussian landlord, and has the feeling in- ParaIlly Axed in his mind that the peqple of Prussia is the peasant people, the oountry fr-POlg der§ whom stein created, among whom be himself has always preferred to live, and for whose sake he has passed such a body of protective laws, that one of the griefs of the artisans is the artificial price of food. He dreads and dislikes the spirit of the cities, with their bustling, vulgar, democratic life ; and though he imbibed some Socialist ideas in his earlier career, regards them as ideas for removing discontent, not as ideals to be attained for themselves. He proposed to the old Emperor plans for introducing kindly palliatives in the lot of artisans, and especially of artisans who were wounded in their work ; but he was prepared to fight Socialism as he would have fought rebellion or active Particularism, by the- strongest measures of repression, one of them, the expul- sion clause, being even uselessly cruel. He would, to maintain this policy, have made almost any Parliamentary alliance, even one with the Clericals, but he would make no alliance with the Freisinnige, who could not, for decency's sake alone, concede his measures of Socialist repression.. To see his policy given up in this respect, and replaced by a policy either of concession or of autocratic philanthropy —for there are two views of it—must have been exceedingly galling, more especially if the alternative policy struck him as dangerous for the future, a plunge into the unknown. He is said to have declared that in all such questions every concession led to another ; but this is not satisfactorily confirmed. At all events, he could not approve it, and could not but feel, when it was adopted, that he was set aside, and set aside, too, in favour of what he views as " English ideas," and has regarded all his life with more- or less of scorn. Whether, as the well-informed corre- spondent of the Telegraph affirms, he believed that his master was falling under English influences in general, it is impossible to say, nor is it needful to decide. To see his policy on such a subject abandoned for another, was quite enough ; must have been, in fact, equivalent in his mind to seeing the Conservative ideal of the objects of government abandoned for the Liberal one ; and would be amply sufficient to bring all other sources of discontent to a head. It would be evidence to himself that his ruling day was over, and except as ruler he would not understand himself. The Prince therefore resigned, leaving in his fall a vast vacancy, the filling up of which no man living may confidently predict.
The great Chancellor trained no one to follow him, perhaps doubted. if the fitting person could be found, and his real successor is the Emperor himself. It was necessary, however, that the Chancellorship should be filled, and, to the surprise of the world, the Emperor has selected General Caprivi, a descendant of the great House of Monte- cuculi, whose representative in the seventeenth century defeated Turenne, and played so great a part in the affairs. of Austria. The judgment of this selection is as yet uncertain, and will furnish a good test of the question whether the young Emperor, in addition to his super- abundant energy, does or does not possess his grand- father's pre-eminent capacity for choosing men. At. present, General Caprivi is only known as an elderly soldier of fifty-eight who has commanded an army- corps with complete success ; who as " First Lord. of the Admiralty "—to use the proper English equivalent —earned the Emperor's personal and warm favour ; who speaks well, though briefly, in Parliament ; and who has the gift of impressing men with whom be is brought in contact. To make such a man Prince Bismarck's suc- cessor, is either an act of audacity indicating an ominous degree of self-will, or it is evidence of genius for governing, and the world must wait to decide which of the alterna- tives is true. What is certain is that a great figure, a very pillar of the State, has disappeared, and that once more in Prussia, as in Germany, a Hohenzollern steps forward, at the age of Frederick the Great, with the declaration : " I am competent to rule, and I will do it."
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