-----------
Balance in favor of nine months,
ending June 30, 1891 31,436,100

BISMARCK IN THE GERMAN PARLIAMENT.

BY EMILIO CASTELAR.

I cannot pardon the historian Bancroft, loved and admired by all, for
having one day, blinded by the splendors of a certain illustrious
person's career, compared an institution like the new German empire
with such an institution as the secular American Republic. The
impersonal character of the latter and the personal character of the
former place the two governments in radical contrast. In America the
nation is supreme--in Germany, the emperor. In the former the saviour
of the negroes--redeemer and martyr--perished almost at the beginning
of his labors. His death did not delay for one second the emancipation
of the slave which had been decreed by the will of the nation,
immovable in its determinations, through which its forms and
personifications are moved and removed. In America the President in
the full exercise of his functions is liable to indictment in a
criminal court; he is nevertheless universally obeyed, not on account
of his personality and still less on account of his personal prestige,
but on account of his impersonal authority, which emanates from the
Constitution and the laws. It little matters whether Cleveland favors
economic reaction during his government, if the nation, in its
assemblies, demands stability. The mechanism of the United States,
like that of the universe, reposes on indefectible laws and
uncontrollable forces. Germany is in every way the antithesis of
America; it worships personal power. To this cause is due the
commencement of its organization in Prussia, a country which was
necessarily military since it had to defend itself against the Slavs
and Danes in the north, and against the German Catholics in the south.
Prussia was constituted in such a manner that its territory became an
intrenched camp, and its people a nation in arms. Nations, even though
they be republican, which find it necessary to organize themselves on
a military model, ultimately relinquish their parliamentary
institutions and adopt a Caesarian character and aspect. Greece
conquered the East under Alexander; Rome extended her empire
throughout the world under Caesar; France, after her victories over the
united kings, and the expedition to Egypt under Bonaparte, forfeited
her parliament and the republic to deliver herself over