“that the Supreme Being regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other systems of government, with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of primogeniture was a divine institution anterior to the Christian, and even to the Mosaic, dispensation; that no human power, not even that of the whole legislature, no length of adverse possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could deprive the legitimate prince of his rights; that his authority was necessarily always despotic; that the laws by which, in England and other countries, the prerogative was limited, were to be regarded merely as concessions which the sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume; and that any treaty into which a king might enter with his people was merely a declaration of his present intention, and not a contract of which the performance could be demanded.”

The statement exactly expresses the ideas on the subject attributed abroad to the Emperor.

The distinguished German historian, Heinrich von Treitschke, writes of King Frederick William IV, the predecessor of Emperor William I, as follows:—­

“He believed in a mysterious enlightenment which is granted ‘von Gottes Gnaden’ to kings rather than other mortals.  All the blessings of peace, which his People could expect under a Christian monarch, should Proceed from the wisdom of the Crown alone; he regarded his high office like a patriarch of the Old Testament and held the kingship as a fatherly power established by God Himself for the education of the people.  Whatever happened in the State he connected with the person of the monarch.  If only his age and its royal awakener had understood each other better!  He had, however, in his strangely complicated process of development, constructed such extraordinary ideals that though he might sometimes agree in words with his contemporaries he never did as to the things, and spoke a different language from his people.  Even General Gerlach, his good friend and servant, used to say:  ‘The ways of the King are wonderful;’ and the not less loyal Bunsen wrote about a complaint of the monarch that ’no one understands me, no one agrees with me,’ the commentary—­’When one understood him, how could one agree with him?’”

It was this king, be it parenthetically remarked, who said, when his people were clamouring for a Constitution, in 1847:  “Now and never will I admit that a written paper, like a second Providence, force itself between our God in Heaven and this land”—­and a few months later had to sign the document his people demanded.

Von Treitschke, writing on the last birthday of Emperor William I, thus spoke of the doctrine: 

“A generation ago an attempt was made by a theologizing State theory to inculcate the doctrine of a power of the throne, divine, released from all earthly obligations.  This mystery of the Jacobins never found entrance into the clear common sense of our people.”

Prince Bismarck’s view of the doctrine was explained in a speech he made to the Prussian Diet in 1847.  He was speaking on “Prussia as a Christian State.”  “For me,” he said,