The legislation on which we are entering with this bill has to do with a question which will probably stay on your calendar for a long while.  The previous speaker has correctly said that “it opens up a very deep perspective,” and it is not at all impossible that it may also make the moderate Socialists judge more kindly of the government.  We have been talking of a social question for fifty years; and, since the passage of the law against the Socialists, I have been constantly reminded, officially, from high quarters, and by the people, that we gave a promise at that time.  Something positive should be done to remove the causes for Socialism, in so far as they are legitimate. I have received such reminders daily.  Nor do I believe that this social question, which has been before us for fifty years now, will be definitely settled even by our children and children’s children.  No political question ever reaches so complete a mathematical solution that the books can be balanced.  Such questions arise, abide a while and finally give way to other historical problems.  This is the way of organic developments.

I deem it my duty to take up this question quietly and without party vehemence, because I do not know who else could do this successfully if not the Imperial Government.  It is a pity that party questions should be mixed up in it.  The previous speaker has referred to a supposedly active exchange of telegrams between “certain parties” and “an high official,” which in this case, I must believe, means me.  I am mentioning this, in passing, because he said the same thing a few days ago in another speech.  Gentlemen, this is a very simple matter.  I receive thousands of telegrams; and, being a polite man, I should probably reply also to a telegram from Mr. Richter, if he were to honor me with a friendly despatch.  When I am cordially addressed in a message, I have to reply in cordial terms.  I cannot possibly have the police ascertain to what party the senders belong.  Nor am I so diffident in my views that I should wish to catechize the senders as to their political affiliations.  If anybody takes pleasure in making me appear to be a member of anti-semitic societies, let him do so.  I have kept away from all undesirable movements, as my position demands, and I could wish that also you gentlemen would refrain more than heretofore from inciting the classes against each other, and from oratorical phrases which fan class-hatred.  This refers especially to those gentlemen who have bestowed their kind attention upon the Government and upon me personally.  When we heard the representative, Mr. Lasker, say the other day that the policy of the government was aristocratic, this term was bound to render the whole aristocracy and what belongs to it suspected of selfishness in the eyes of the poor men, at whose expense the aristocracy seemingly exists.  When such expressions fall on anti-semitic ground, how is it possible to avoid reprisals?  The anti-semites