impeachment.  In Germany, where the parliamentary system of government does not exist, and where there is no upsetting Ministries by a hostile majority, and no parliamentary vote of censure or impeachment, no Minister, including the Chancellor, is responsible, in the English sense of the word, to Parliament; accordingly, a German Chancellor may continue in office in spite of Parliament, provided of course the Emperor supports him.  At the same time the Chancellor to-day is to some indefinable extent responsible to Parliament, and therefore to the people, in so far as they are represented by it, for he must keep on tolerable terms with Parliament as well as with the Emperor, or he will have to give up office.  How he is to keep on terms with a Parliament consisting of half a dozen powerful parties and as many more smaller fractions and factions is probably the part of his duties that gives him most trouble and at times, doubtless, very disagreeably interferes with the placidity of his slumbers.

There is no struggle for government in Germany between the Crown and the people:  Germans have no ancient Magna Charta, no Habeas Corpus, no Declaration of Rights to look back to on the long road to liberty.  In the protracted struggle for government between the English people and their rulers, the people’s victory took the form of parliamentary control while retaining the monarch as their highest and most honoured representative.  Socially he is their master, politically their servant, the “first servant of the State.”  In Germany there has never, save for a few months in 1848, been any struggle of a similar political extent or kind.  German monarchs including the Emperor, have applied the expression “first servant of the State” to themselves, but they did not apply it in the English sense.  They applied it more accurately.  In Germany the State means the system, the mechanism of government, inclusive of the monarch’s office:  in England the word “State” is more nearly equivalent to the word “people.”  To serve the system, the government machinery, is the first duty of the monarch, and government is not a changing reflection of the people’s will, but a permanent apparatus for maintaining the power of the Crown, harmonizing and reconciling the sentiments and interests of all parts of the Empire, and for conducting foreign policy.

It may be objected that legislation is made by the Reichstag, that the Reichstag has the power of the purse, and that it is elected by universal suffrage; but in Germany the Government is above and independent of the Reichstag; legislation is not made by the Reichstag alone, since it requires the agreement of the Federal Council and of the Emperor, and—­what is of great practical importance—­Government issues directions as to how legislation shall be carried into effect.  The law of 1872 passed against the Jesuits forbade the “activity” of the Order, but the interpretation of the word “activity,” and with it the effects of the law, were left to the Government.