England and Germany are both constitutional monarchies, but both the monarch and the Constitution in Germany are different from the monarch and the Constitution in England.  The British Constitution is a growth of centuries, not, like the German Constitution, the creation of a day.  The British Constitution is unwritten, if it is stamped, as Mary said the word “Calais” would be found stamped on her heart after death, on the heart and brain of every Englishman.  The German Constitution is a written document in seventy-eight chapters, not fifty years old, and on which, compared with the British Constitution, the ink is not yet dry.  In England to the people the Constitution is the real monarch:  in Germany the monarchy is to the people what the British Constitution is to the Englishman; and while in England the monarch is the first counsellor to the Constitution, in Germany the Constitution is the first counsellor to the monarch.

The consequence in England is representative government, with a political career for every ordinary citizen; the consequence in Germany is constitutional monarchy, properly so-called, with a political career for no common citizen.  Neither system is perfect, but both, apparently, give admirable national results.  And yet, of course, an Englishman cannot help thinking that if Herr Bebel were made Minister to-morrow, Social Democracy would cease to exist.

The people acquiesce in the Hohenzollern view, not indeed with perfect and entire unanimity, for the small Progressive party demand a parliamentary form of government, if not on the exact model of that established in England.  The Social Democrats, evidently, would have no government at all.  Many English people suppose that Germans generally must desire parliamentary rule and would help them to get it, for multitudes of English people are firmly persuaded that it is England’s mission to extend to other peoples the institutions which have suited her so well, without sufficiently considering how different are their circumstances, geographical position, history, traditions, and national character.  A very similar mistake is made in Germany by multitudes of Germans, who believe it is Germany’s mission to impose her culture, her views of man and life, on the rest of the world.

The Prussian view of monarchy, expressed in the words “von Gottes Gnaden” ("By the Grace of God"), is a political conception, which, under its customary English translation, “by Divine Right,” has often been ridiculed by English writers.  Lord Macaulay, it will be remembered, in his “History of England,” asserts that the doctrine first emerged into notice when James the Sixth of Scotland ascended the English throne.  “It was gravely maintained,” writes Macaulay,