Prince Bismarck has this time evidently been seriously ill. He
has been subject for some weeks to incessant and nearly intolerable attacks of rheumatic pain, forcing him to keep his bed, disabling him from work, and impeding his usually rather reckless modes of eating and drinking. These attacks become more severe every year, and as the Prince is now sixty-eight, his friends grow alarmed, not so much for his life, as for his continued power of enduring the fatigue of office. His retirement would make a great difference in Europe. Every nation out- side Germany would feel as if a weight were lifted off it, while in Germany Parliament would at once become comparatively free. It has been the determination of the people not to part with the man who made Germany, which has made Liberal Germany so powerless. Its leaders always shrank in the last
resort from compelling him to resign, and contented themselves with a passive though obstinate veto upon any project which would have made the Empire independent of their votes. No one but Prince Bismarck could have carried the second vote of a seven years' military budget, and even he could not carry the Tobacco Monopoly Bill.
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