turns the members of the lower branch of the Prussian
Landtag.

CHAPTER XIV (p. 274)

THE MINOR GERMAN STATES--ALSACE-LORRAINE

*293. Essential Similarity of Political Institutions.*--The
preponderance of Prussia among the twenty-five states comprised within
the German Empire is such as to lend the governmental system of that
kingdom an interest and an importance which attaches to the political
arrangements of no one of the remaining members of the federation. No
description of German governments would be adequate, none the less,
which should ignore wholly the minor states. A number of these states,
especially Bavaria, Baden, Wuerttemberg, and Saxony, are of
considerable size, and the populations which are governed within them
approximate, or exceed, the populations of certain wholly independent
European nations, as Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Portugal, and
several of the states of the southeast. It would be unnecessary,
however, even were it possible, to describe in this place twenty-five
substantially independent German governmental systems. Despite no
inconsiderable variation, there are many fundamental features which
they, or the majority of them, possess in common. All save
three--Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck--are monarchies. All save
two--Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz--have written
constitutions[403] and elective legislative chambers. In every one of
the monarchies the total lack of anything in the nature of ministerial
responsibility to a parliamentary body leaves the way open for the
maintenance of vigorous and independent royal authority, and it is not
too much to say that in all of them, as is pre-eminently true in
Prussia, the principle of autocracy lies at the root of both the
organization and the methods of government. Local governmental
arrangements and systems of administration of justice have been
copied, in most instances, from Prussia. It will suffice to speak very
briefly, first of a few of the more important monarchies, and
subsequently of the city-state republics.

[Footnote 403: The texts of these constitutions, in
the form in which they existed in 1884, are printed
in Stoerk, Handbuch der deutschen Verfassungen.
Even in the Mecklenburgs there are certain written
instruments by which the curiously mediaeval system