ould prefer to
say) the difficulty may have been foreseen and yet no provision have
been made for it, simply because none could have been made consistently
with Frederick William IV.'s maxim, 'A free people under a free king'--a
maxim which sounds well, but which, when the people are bent on going in
one way and the king in another, is difficult to reconcile with the
requirement of the constitution that both must go in the same way. In a
republic, where the legislature and chief magistrate are both chosen
representatives of one people, no protracted disagreement between them
is possible. In a monarchy where a ministry, which has lost the
confidence of the legislature, resigns its place to another, the danger
is hardly greater. But in a monarchy whose constitution provides that
king and people shall rule jointly, yet both act freely and
independently, nothing but the most paradisiacal state of humanity could
secure mutual satisfaction and continued harmony. Prussia is now
demonstrating to the world that, if the people of a nation are to have
in the national legislation anything more than an advisory power, they
must have a determining power. To say that the king shall have the
unrestricted right of declaring and making war, and at the same time
that no money can be used without the free consent of Parliament, is
almost fit to be called an Irish bull. Such mutual freedom is impossible
except when king and Parliament perfectly agree in reference to the war
itself. But, if this agreement exists, there is either no need of a
Parliament or no need of a king. It makes little difference how the
constitution is worded in this particular, nor even what was intended by
the author of this provision. What is in itself an intrinsic
contradiction cannot be carried out in practice. Whether any formal
change is made in the constitution or not, a different mode of
interpreting it, a different conception of the relation of monarch to
subject, must become current, if the constitution is to be a working
instrument. Prussia must become again practically an absolute monarchy
or a constitutional monarchy like England. Nor is there much doubt which
of these possibilities will be realized. And not the least among the
causes which will hasten the final triumph of Liberalism there, is the
exhibition of the strength of republicanism here, while undergoing its
present trial. When one observes how many of the more violent Prussian
Conservatives openly