BOOKS.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE.*
PIIFFENDOEF, after the Peace of Westphalia, comparing the Germany of his day with the league of Greek States led by Agamemnon against Troy, called it "an abortion, a certain irregular body like unto a monster." The Saxon jurist's sarcastic parallel was matched by Voltaire, who said the "Holy Roman Empire" was "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire." Napoleon, the National- Verein, Moltke, and the man of "Blood and Iron" completed the work begun by "decay's effacing fingers," so that when William L was crowned at Versailles as " Deutscher raiser" by the Grand Duke of Baden the civil and spiritual rulers of the " monster's " three hundred principalities had shrunk to twenty-four Royal and municipal potentates, who were afterwards joined by the Statthalter of the newly recovered avulse imperil. Elsass and Lothringen.
The scene in the Hall of Mirrors is the virtual stashing. point of this treatise on the organisation of the new Germany, in which the admirable American author explains the apparatus of the Imperial Government, and details the division of administrative, financial, and judicial functions between the central power and the individual States. The text, though specifically juristical, and not, except in places, historical, never falls under the influence of Dr. Dryasdust : it is laboriously accurate, and supported by excellent explanatory notes, which our daily lecturers on foreign affairs should study. German writers occasionally blunder on English topics, but they would not call the House of Lords the London County Council, or give the Commons the name of a foreign Legislature. Absurdities as Brobdingnagian as these have been perpetrated here, an historian lately speaking of the German Imperial Council, the Bundesrath, gave that body the name of the Austrian Chamber, the Reichsrath, a designation trans- ferred by an encyclopaedia of portentous pretensions to our familiar acquaintance the Reichatag !
Dr. Howard's description of the process of planting the Versailles Germany into the saddle, as Bismarck expressed it, has appropriate glances at the building up of the Confederation of the North after Austria was definitely shown the door in the Seven Weeks' War, and be explains the movement of 1870, started by the States south of the Main which had held aloof from the Union of 1866. The boundaries of the legislative and supervisory powers of the new Empire were elaborately traced in Article IV. of the Constitution, which embraces the Army and Navy, domicile, citizenship, the Customs tariff, consumption or Excise duties, coinage, patents, the post and telegraphs, civil and criminal law and procedure, strategic railway construction and general traffic rules, and various minor matters. With the author's exhaustive description of • the sphere of the Imperial suzerainty it is interesting to compare his generalised record of the rights not surrendered by the twenty-five confederated Powers. He says :—
" What, then, remains as the exclusive field of State legis- lation ? Every State has the absolute control of its own organi- sation. It determines the laws of succession and settles ques- tions which arise over its internal administration in accordance • The German Empire, By Hint Estes Howard, Ph.D. London Macmillan and Co [So. Si set.] with its own constitution. It has the right to determine what that constitution shall be, subject only to, the condition that there shall be nothing in its organic law that is contrary to the Imperial Constitution. It makes its own budget, and ita legislative bodies enact laws concerning a huge part of its internal affairs. Police regulations touching public meetings ; fire and building regulations ; water rights ; road laws so far as these do net fall within the competence of the Empire ; matters of ordinary credit not represented by the banks ; the regulation of the domestic agricultural situation ; the breeding of cattle ; forestry, mines, hunting. and fishing ; the relation of Church and State; the control of public instruction—all these matters fall within the competence of the individual State, and are provided for by State legislation. In general, it may be said that where the Empire has not legislated on any subject, and has not the competence so to legislate, that field is. left free to State legislation. Where, however, both State and Empire have legislated upon a matter, the federal law takes the precedence."
The Empire does not maintain a bureaucracy of its own to effect the execution of its laws : that administrative work devolves on the officials of the State concerned. But to this there are exceptions. For example, the machinery and methods of the law, as fixed subsequently to the issue of the Constitution, include a Supreme Civil Court of original and appellative juris- diction designated the ffeichsgericht, consisting of ninety-one life-members nominated by the Bundesrath. and appointed by the Emperor. The author might have explained that the Court was to have sat in Berlin, but that, the feeling having arisen that the atmosphere of the Spree would not be particularly favour- able to the maintenance of the purity of the ermine, the Saxon city of Leipsio was eventually chosen for the residence of the tribunal. The German people and their representatives remembered how the superior Courts of Berlin had supported Bismarck's vindictive prosecution of Count Henry Arnim for alleged misconduct during his diplomatic employment in Paris by sentencing the patriotic ex-Ambassador first to nine months' imprisonment, and afterwards, on his publication of a certain offensive pamphlet, to five years' penal servitude. The members of the new German Court cut a better figure than their Prussian colleagues, the independence of some of whom was lately loudly challenged in the dissolved Reichstag. Many of us can remember that when, in the first year of the present Emperor's reign, the great Reichskanzler, enraged at the unwelcome appearance of "the Crown Prince's Diary," caused the arrest of its publisher, Dr. Geffaken, the Court of Leipsio interposed in the victim's favour by quashing the arraignment.
The Particularist aspects of the edifice are numerous. You have the twenty-three army corps of the Empire, the majority of which nre tinder the War Lord's supreme com- mand, and must treat all orders issued by him to the Prussian
Army as commands addressed also to themselves. Yet the •
complete military obedience of some of the States is only to
be reached by a circuitous road. There is no Imperial Mr. Haldane to telephone direct from Berlin to the barracks of Bavaria, Saxony, and Wfirtemberg : there is only a Prturian Minister of War, who transmits to the Ministers of War at Munich, Dresden, and Stuttgart such commands as the Emperor is entitled-to issue. Whitehall will say "Rubbish !" but we assert that when the word is " Mobilise !" all the twenty-three corps can be entrained at from three to twenty- four hours' notice in carriages long since marked off for this particular work, the troops finding at certain stations on the railway tables already spreadmith dinner or supper.
Territorial individualism has a buttress in the institution known as the Bundesrath. The fifty-two members of the Federal Council are not an elected Senate or a House of Lords ; they are sent to Berlin by the .rulers of the .separate States, with mandate:1 minutely regulating their attitude and votes. The legislation of the Empire originates, as a rule, with the Bundesrath: Bills passed by them are forwarded to the Reichs- tag, which. returns each measure, accepted, amended, or rejected, to the superior Council, whose final sanction makes them laws. Dr. Howard takes the powers of Imperial control exercised by the permanent Committees of this body too seriously ; the Committee of Foreign Affairs, e.g., is a com- plete sham. Strange to relate, the Constitution treats the Members of the Bundesrath as Foreign Ministers or Charges d'Affaires, and lays on the Emperor the duty of seeing that they have the full enjoyment of exterritorial rights, so that their place is with the foreign diplomatic body. No such curule and social dignity honours the occupants of the three hundred and ninety-seven seats of the Reichstag: digito monstrari et dicier hic sat enjoyed by the Members for Birmingham or the City does not attach to an Imperial 31.P.. for Hamburg or Dresden. However, he puts money in his purse by his election, receiving a salary of 2150 a year (a detail- ignored by the author), with free tickets on State and Private railroads during the Session, and he may be recom- pensed for expenditure incurred on Special Committee work. The Constitution says : "The Members of the Reichstag, as ditch; shall draw no compensation." But since to this Verbal prohibition no penalty attaches, the Social Democrats can pay their M.P. partisans at their discretion,—a facility, however, not treated as an open matter of business like the allowances to certain of our Labour Members. A German election does not cost the candidate fifteen shillings per vote, as., is the case in Kent : he will only incur a trifling expendi- eh're for agents, meetings, &c. Canvassing on the English scale is unusual ; the "polling-day scenes" of Worcester and Huddersfield are unknown ; the polling-booths are arranged in schools or other public buildings, or they may be fitted up gratuitously by restaurant-keepers, who are glad cif the thirsty universal suffragist's patronage. The voter is given an envelope for his ticket by a volunteer attendant, whose w:ork is gratuitous, like that of the local Boards concerned in the control of the election: these authorities are, however, refunded by the State for their expenditure on the official paper forma which record the results of the poll. The corporeal discomforts of St. Stephen's are not suffered by the official occupants of the splendid new palace on the Konigs- Plate, where, as the papers report, the Empire now accommodates its Members with a hairdressing saloon and a gymnastic hall fitted with up-to-date Sandow apparatus. The duration of these halcyon days of easy-chair legislation is an uncertain quantity, for, owing to the growth of popula- Oon, a House of three hundred and ninety-seven Members laths Vastly below the proportional figures assigned to the Reichstag by law, and Radical agitation demands a Parliamentary increase conformable to the Constitutional arithmetic. But then, remarks the author in one of his rare political Comments, "a new appointment would increase the repre- Sentation from the large cities, where social democracy
"niost numerously in evidence." On this we may observe that until the Parliamentary followers of Mr. Keir Hardie Muster in a strength of a hundred, their figure will not be the proportional equivalent of the Social Democratic group df the late Berlin Assembly.
The reader unlearned in the law will care less for juriatical Subtleties regarding the Kaiser's titular dignity, its existence as an accessoriutn of the Prussian Crown, and similar niceties, than for explanations touching the Imperial cash-box. The Kaiser, 'as such, has no Civil List but for his Prussian resources he Would be penniless as a ruler, the Imperial Budget Law only granting him a small yearly sum for special gratuities. This parsimony is justifiable, for while the Hohenzollerns have Vast personal means in domains, castles, forests, and the like, :besides, extensive funded wealth and family trust property, the promotion of the King of Prussia to Imperial sunk has not Made the Royal expenses much heavier than before. Inter- nationally considered, the Emperor is the sole representative of the Empire, for neither the Bundesrath nor the Reichstag Is authorised to contract relations with foreign Powers, although a particular treaty may be invalid without the approval of these bodies. Observe, however, that the Con- Stitutional inability of the separate States in regard to formal treaty business does not debar them from the luxury of repre- sentation at any point of the globe where they may wish to fly their flag. Bavaria, to cite an illustrative instance, main- tains a considerable diplomatic and consular staff in various Capitals in and out of Germany, a compliment returned, of course, by the recipients. No shakings of the mailed fist can alter the fact that, except in the ease of an enemy's invasion Of the Empire, war cannot be made without the consent of the 'Bundesrath, the question of the reality of such foreign attack 'On German territory being, however, left to the Emperor's judgment. The Federal Council is continuously in Session, the Kaiser - cannot prorogue the Reichstag for more than thirty days without its consent, and the new Assembly must be convoked within three months after its election. A legislative Veto not being granted him by the Con- stitution, be must publish, ?totems miens, all laws passed by the Reichstag and Bundesrath, and may only refuse to
issue 'them for defects of form, not from disapproval of their contents. When the author says that the Kaiser; as such, has no right of initiation in Imperial law-giving, but calls this a mere paper rule, "constantly violated in practice," conformably to the "unwritten Constitution of the Empire," we do not know of any recent facts which authorise his belief. Indisputable, however, is the fact that the want of an Imperial power of veto does not prevent the King of Prussia from practically blocking any law which is unacceptable to himself and his Government. By bringing "peaceful persuasion" to bear on the princelets of the Empire, he can, in practice, obtain such an addition to hid own seventeen votes as will give hits a majority in the B nudes Lath.
As to the Reichskanzler, he is, in the first place, the King of Prussia's Plenipotentiary to the Federal Council, over which he presides as of right. He is not a Prime Minister with a Cabinet; he is the Chief administrative authority of the Empire, officials like, for instance, Herr von Tschirschky, the German Foreign Minister, being mere chefs de bureau, subject to his unquestioned control at the Courts of the confederated States he can only advise. A discussion of his elastic relations with the Kaiser would involve references not only to the theoretical "Excellenz " and " Majestfit," but also to the human Prince Billow and William II.; personages from whom our bumble commentary respectfully stands aloof.
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