The "free trade in States" which Count von Bismark prophe-
sied two years ago has thus been accomplished, but the ultimate form to be taken by Prussian supremacy is still uncertain. A thousand rumours are current in Germany, and the arrangements probably vary from day to day, but as -yet this seems to us the most trustworthy account :—Prussia absorbs the Elbe Duchies, Hanover, Hesse Cassel, North Hesse, Darmstadt, Nassau, Frank- fort, Hamburg, and one or two petty duchies into her immediate dominion, which thus includes the entire North from Jutland to the Main, except the two Mecklenburgs, Oldenburg, Saxony, and an enlarged Saxe Coburg Gotha, and will contain about twenty- seven millions of people. The excepted States are to surrender their armies, their marine, the regulation of their commerce, the management of their roads, the gitrrisoning of their fortresses, and their entire postal and telegraph system to Prussia, which will be sovereign in all but minor civil affairs. North Germany is therefore one, while each State south of the Main is to surrender something, in territory and money, and each thus shorn is invited to accept the same terms as Saxony, and send represen- tatives to the general Parliament. The details of the Southern arrangements are stilundecided, butit is probable that the whole South will enter Germany, and will include four States, (1) Bavaria, minus the Palatinate, which will go to Prussia, lest France should seize it, and Franconia, which will be given to the Duke of Saxe Coburg, (2) Baden, (3) Wurtemburg, minus a great territory ceded to Hesse Darmstadt, and (4) Hesse Darm- stadt as reconstructed.
