PRINCE BISMARCK AND THE PRUSSIAN RAILWAYS.
THE Prussian Lancltag will meet next Tuesday, and we shall soon learn, probably from the lips of the Emperor when he addresses the Deputies in the White Hall of the Palace, whether the projects for purchasing the private lines of Prussia are to be persevered with. The chances are that they will be taken up and pushed through the Chamber of Deputies. The Ministerial organs, in fact, state that the Landtag will be chiefly occupied next session with financial measures, including schemes for the purchase of the Railways ' • and the Chancellor is not the man to abandon an idea which he has once adopted as his own. If he ever seems to yield to resistance, it is gener-
ally only a feint ; he retires only for the purpose of making later a more furious onset, or of executing some d6tour with his forces, and attacking his adversaries in the rear, and discom- fiting them by craft. La Bruyere, drawing the portrait of a
masterly statesman of his day, refers to his patient con- fidence in the face of opposition. "He is never wearied ; be fatigues others ; he presses them until they are discouraged ; he hardens his heart against difficulties and obstacles ; per- suaded that time alone and its conjunctures bring about things, and guide men's minds to the point which is desired." Such is the Chancellor's way. He has good reason to believe that he is lucky ; and if, on any occasion, he has not gained his point at the first essay, he has generally waited, with assurance rarely deceived that his couarymen would come round to his view, and would give him just what he wanted. He has often told the Progressist Deputies, when they were particularly irritating, or stubborn, or long-winded, that it was useless for them to resist him ; and the remark has been all the more weighty, because experience appeared to justify it so com- pletely. There are plenty of signs that the Chancellor has not forgotten his gigantic plan, as expounded in 1876, for transferring the private railways to the State. The remodelling of the tariff claimed precedence ; the manufac- turers and the distressed farmers, hating Russian corn, had, in the first place, to be satisfied. But now that this is accom- plished, and that he has succeeded in getting a fiscal system to serve his purpose, he may, with the aid of a Landtag packed with his supporters hope to d is as he pleases in regard to the Prussian railways. The time s ripe for accomplishing his object. He is sure to have his own way in both the Reichstag and the Prussian Diet. In an election, in which the only clear issue was "For or against Bismarck," his adversaries suffered a true Sedan.. They were completely routed, and are dispirited; there is the certainty that the Chamber will assent to anything which he proposes, pro- vided only he consents to make some concession to the strong Ultramontane section, in whose hands will be the chief power next Session ; and Herr von Puttkammer, the new Minister of Public Worship, appears to be willing to undo some por- tion of Dr. Falk's work. It is true that all the railway com- panies are not inclined to accept the terms which the Govern- ment have offered ; they wish, naturally enough, a better offer ; and the shareholders of the Berlin, Potsdam, and Magdeburg railway, for instance, have rejected the proposal of the Government by three to one. But the Chancellor has many means at his disposal for bringing to a complaisant frame of mind companies which oppose him. The Prussian Govern- ment already own or control a vast portion of the existing system, so that any company which stood out for better terms than those offered could be crushed ; three lines—the Berlin and Stettin, the Magdeburg and Halberstadt, the Cologne and Minden companies—have assented to the proposals ; and in the
i case of most lines, there s the law of 1838 to fall back upon, a law which empowers the Government to purchase every line, thirty years after its opening, for twenty-five times the average dividend during the last five years. Whenever the question
on of buying-up the Railways by the State is again. discussed n this country, the issue will turn on statistics, the relative cost of private and public systems, and a variety of allied economical consider- ations. But if the Reichstag ever approves of the schemes of the Imperial Government for purchasing the lines not already under their control, the reasons determining the Deputies will be very different. Figures will probably go for little. Political considerations will be in the front, and will be decisive. No one believes that the existing private lines would be worked much cheaper 'by the State, for, putting the very small private companies out of the question, we find that the present State lines require twice as many bands to do the same work as the private lines, and that goods are carried at lower rates by the latter. But the Chancellor has other things of more moment to him than pounds, shillings, and pence to think of. He does not want to make money by the project, and he is not to be deterred from it by the croakings of statis- ticians. In the pursuit of the absorbing object of his later years, he labours to make the power of the Chancellery felt in every nook of the Empire. More and more, authority must be concentrated
in Berlin. The centrifugal forces which impel every State belong- ing to the Empire to fly off into a sphere of isolation must be counteracted. Prince Bismarck is not of the Kreuz Zeitung school of statesmen,—a knot of bumptious squires, who have brought to the capital all the crotchets and prejudices of parishes or little country towns, and who will have it that Germany
should be virtually incorporated in Prussia. He has himself said that the most dangerous form of Particularism is Prus- sian Particularism ; and he has not scrupled, in* filling the chief offices of the State, to pass over high Prussian func- tionaries, and to give preference to Hessians and Mecklen- burgers. His trusty henchman, Herr von Billow, who died a few days ago, came from Mecklenburg, and had been in the service of Denmark before he was transferred by the Chancellor to the Foreign Office at Berlin. The key to most of Prince Bismarck's projects is this persistent desire to inspire the Empire with power and life, to make it self-existing, before he quits the management of affairs. He has done much for this object. The Army and the Navy are now the affairs of the Empire ; the diplomatic service is now an Imperial service. A Bank of Germany has been established, and many local institutions have been destroyed ; a new cur- rency, symbolic of the Empire, is in circulation. The tele- graphs and postal service are worked by the State. A common system of criminal law and a common code of legal procedure for all Germany have been created ; and a Court of Appeal, supreme throughout the Empire, sits at Leipzig. In organising Alsace and Lorraine, the Chancellor has taken care to put the railways into the possession of the Empire. Already about 11,000 kilometres of the whole Prussian railway system are controlled from Berlin ; and if the State acquired the remaining 5,000 kilometres, this would, as a writer in the Deutsche Rundschau for this month points out, give Prussia the control of half the railways of Germany, and enable her to exercise over them an irresistible influence. The effect of such a change in binding firmly all parts of the Empire together—the power acquired of gaining popularity by lowering the tariffs—would be immense ; and Prince Bismarck may well think that it is worth while to sacrifice not a little, in order to clothe the Empire with so much authority.
But what say the National Liberals, they who talk so much of economy, and who have so much to say in their programmes
about finance The answer is not very clear. Many of the National Liberals, as usual, do not know what to say. Herr von Bennigsen talks to the Hanoverian Liberals about the expediency of assenting to the Government projects, pro- vided "the necessary guarantees" in the interest of the public are given. But the public has heard so much futile, fruitless talk from him and his friends in the past about " guarantees," that it is in no mood to listen to them. Their opinion on the question perhaps does not much matter, for they are, for the time, virtually an extinct party. It is unpleasant to think that, in the determination of all questions relating to the railways, the influence of the Liberals will be prac- tically null. They comprise eminent economists, statis- ticians, and men of business,—the very persons whose judgment should be weighty in regard to any project of finance. But the country will not listen to them, just at present ; and we cannot much wonder at it. They have declined in numbers since the election of 1874, and the de- cline of their influence has been still more rapid. They have suffered themselves to be used for any purpose, and they are now thrown aside like a cast-off glove. They have fetched and carried for Prince Bismarck all these years. They have been not too nice about the means which they sanctioned. They have been as obsequious as if it had been flat treason to differ from the Chancellor ; and they forgot their very name and the reason of their existence as a party, when the Prince submitted the measures for gagging Socialism. What wonder was it, if the public got disgusted with the flabby, squeezable something which they called their principles ? By the discipline of obscurity, they may be taught that it is not expedient, to say nothing of what is right, for a party to make itself the tool of a statesman, however great, and to suppress or attenuate its principles at his dictation.
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