the current year.  This announcement was badly received; the House was distrustful, and they interpreted it as an attempt to return to the old practice of deferring consideration of the Budget until the beginning of the year to which it applied.  The first discussion in which Bismarck took part was not in the House itself, but in the Budget Committee.  The Committee proposed a resolution requiring the Government at once to lay before the House the Budget for 1863, and declaring that it was unconstitutional to spend any money which had been expressly and definitely refused by the House of Representatives.  On this there took place a long discussion, in which Bismarck spoke repeatedly; for the discussions in Committee, which consisted only of about thirty members, were conversational in their nature.  There was no verbatim report, but the room was crowded with members who had come to hear the new Minister.  They were not disappointed.  He spoke with a wit, incisiveness, and versatility to which, as one observer remarked, they were not accustomed from Prussian Ministers.  He warned them not to exaggerate their powers.  The Prussian Constitution did not give the House of Representatives the sole power of settling the Budget; it must be settled by arrangement with the other House and the Crown.  There was a difference of opinion in the interpretation of the Constitution; all constitutional government required compromise; a constitution was not something dead, it must be enlivened; it was interpreted by custom and practice; it would be wiser not to hasten this practice too quickly; then the question of law might easily become one of power.  It was not the fault of the Government that they had got into this position; people took the situation too tragically, especially in the press; they spoke as though the end of all things was come; “but,” he added, “a constitutional struggle is not a disgrace, it is rather an honour; after all we are all children of the same country.”  A true note, but one which he was not always able to maintain in the struggle of the coming years.  Then he expounded the view of the German character which we have learnt from his letters:  it was customary to speak of the sobriety of the Prussian people; yes, but the great independence of the individual made it difficult in Prussia to govern with the Constitution; in France it was different; there this individual independence was wanting; “we are perhaps too educated to endure a constitution; we are too critical”; the capacity for judging measures of the Government and acts of the Representatives was too universal; there were in the country too many Catilinarian existences, which had an interest in revolutions.  He reminded them that Germany did not care for the Liberalism of Prussia, but for its power; Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, might indulge in Liberalism; Prussia must concentrate its power and hold itself ready for the favourable moment which had already been passed over more than once; Prussia’s boundaries, as fixed by the Congress of Vienna, were not favourable to a sound political life; “not by speeches and majority votes are the great questions of the time decided—­that was the great blunder of 1848 and 1849—­but by blood and iron.”  He appealed for confidence:  “Do not force a quarrel; we are honest people and you can trust us.”