“I have,” he says, “long learned the difficulties which educated people, who have been well brought up, have to overcome in order to meet the coarseness of our Parliamentary Klopfechter [pugilists] with the necessary amount of indifference, and to refuse them in one’s own consciousness the undeserved honour of moral equality.  The repeated and bitter struggles in which you have had to fight alone will have strengthened you in your feeling of contempt for opponents who are neither honourable enough nor deserve sufficient respect to be able to injure you.”

There was indeed a serious evil arising from the want of the feeling of responsibility in a Parliamentary assembly which had no great and honourable traditions.  He attempted to meet it by strengthening the authority of the House over its own members; the Chairman did not possess any power of punishing breaches of decorum.  Bismarck often contrasted this with the very great powers over their own members possessed by the British Houses of Parliament.  He drew attention to the procedure by which, for instance, Mr. Plimsoll could be compelled to apologise for hasty words spoken in a moment of passion.  It is strange that neither the Prussian nor the German Parliament consented to adopt rules which are really the necessary complement for the privileges of Parliament.

The Germans were much disappointed by the constant quarrels and disputes which were so frequent in public life; they had hoped that with the unity of their country a new period would begin; they found that, as before, the management of public affairs was disfigured by constant personal enmities and the struggle of parties.  We must not, however, look on this as a bad sign; it is rather more profitable to observe that the new institutions were not affected or weakened by this friction.  It was a good sign for the future that the new State held together as firmly as any old-established monarchy, and that the most important questions of policy could be discussed and decided without even raising any point which might be a danger to the permanence of the Empire.

Bismarck himself did much to put his relations with the Parliament on a new and better footing.  Acting according to his general principle, he felt that the first thing to be done was to induce mutual confidence by unrestrained personal intercourse.  The fact that he himself was not a member of the Parliament deprived him of those opportunities which an English Minister enjoys.  He therefore instituted, in 1868, a Parliamentary reception.  During the session, generally one day each week, his house was opened to all members of the House.  The invitations were largely accepted, especially by the members of the National Liberal and Conservative parties.  Those who were opponents on principle, the Centre, the Progressives, and the Socialists, generally stayed away.  These receptions became the most marked feature in the political life of the capital, and