in the hostile Reichstag of 1884, in which the Socialists, Clericals, and Progressives together commanded a majority, a series of important laws were passed.  Once, indeed, the majority in opposition to the Government went beyond the limits of reason and honour when they refused a vote of L1000 for an additional director in the Foreign Office.  It was the expression of a jealousy which had no justification in facts; at the time the German Foreign Office was the best managed department in Europe; the labour imposed on the secretaries was excessive, and the nation could not help contrasting this vote with the fact that shortly before a large number of the members had voted that payments should be made to themselves.  The nation could not help asking whether it would not gain more benefit from another L1000 a year expended on the Foreign Office than from L50,000 a year for payment of members.  Even this unfortunate action was remedied a few months later, when the vote was passed in the same Parliament by a majority of twenty.

Notwithstanding all their internal differences and the extreme party spirit which often prevailed, the Reichstag always shewed determination in defending its own privileges.  More than once Bismarck attacked them in the most tender points.  At one time it was on the privileges of members and their freedom from arrest; both during the struggle with the Clericals and with the Socialists the claim was made to arrest members during the session for political utterances.  When Berlin was subject to a state of siege, the President of the Police claimed the right of expelling from the capital obnoxious Socialist members.  On these occasions the Government found itself confronted by the unanimous opposition of the whole House.  In 1884, Bismarck proposed that the meetings of the Reichstag should be biennial and the Budget voted for two years; the proposal was supported on the reasonable grounds that thereby inconvenience and press of work would be averted, which arose from the meeting of the Prussian and German Parliaments every winter.  Few votes, however, could be obtained for a suggestion which seemed to cut away the most important privileges of Parliament.

Another of the great causes of friction between Bismarck and the Parliament arose from the question as to freedom of debate.  Both before 1866, and since that year, he made several attempts to introduce laws that members should be to some extent held responsible, and under certain circumstances be brought before a court of law, in consequence of what they had said from their places in Parliament.  This was represented as an interference with freedom of speech, and was bitterly resented.  Bismarck, however, always professed, and I think truly, that he did not wish to control the members in their opposition to the Government, but to place some check on their personal attacks on individuals.  A letter to one of his colleagues, written in 1883, is interesting: