ual protection for
all citizens as against foreign powers, the constitution contains
little that relates to the status or privileges of the individual.
There is in it no bill of rights, and it makes no mention of abstract
principles. Among instruments of its kind, none is of a more
thoroughly practical character.[283]

[Footnote 283: The text of the constitution, in
German, is printed in A. L. Lowell, Governments and
Parties in Continental Europe, 2 vols. (Boston,
1896), II., 355-377, and in Laband, Deutsches
Reichsstaatsrecht, 411-428; in English, in W. F.
Dodd, Modern Constitutions, 2 vols. (Chicago,
1909), I., 325-351, and in Howard, The German
Empire, 403-435. Carefully edited German texts are:
L. von Roenne, Verfassung des deutschen Reiches (8th
ed., Berlin, 1899); A. Arndt, Verfassung des
deutschen Reiches (Berlin, 1902). On the formation
of the Imperial constitution see A. Lebon, Les
origines de la constitution allemande, in _Annales
de l'Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques_, July,
1888; ibid., Etudes sur l'Allemagne politique
(Paris, 1890).]

*213. Federal Character of the Empire.*--The political system of Germany
to-day is the product of centuries of particularistic statecraft,
capped, in 1871, by a partial centralization of sovereign organs and
powers. The Empire is composed of twenty-five states: the four kingdoms
of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Wuerttemberg; the six grand-duchies of
Baden, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Saxe-Weimar, Mecklenburg-Strelitz,
and Oldenburg; the five duchies of Brunswick, Saxe-Meiningen,
Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and Anhalt; the seven (p. 204)
principalities of Schwarzburg-Sonderhausen, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt,
Waldeck, Reuss Aelterer Linie, Reuss Juengerer Linie, Lippe, and
Schaumburg-Lippe; and the three free cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and
Luebeck. These states vary in size from Prussia, with 134,616 square
miles, to Bremen, with 99; and in population, from Prussia, with
40,163,333, to Schaumburg-Lippe, with 46,650. There is, in addition,
the _Reichsland_, or Imperial domain, of Alsace-Lorraine, whose status
until 1911 was that of a purely dependent territory, b