l hierarchy. As his promotion, and his career in fact, is
dependent upon these superiors, he naturally sides with the central
government in all cases of dispute or friction.

Further, and this is important, all officials in Germany are legally
privileged persons. All disputes between individuals and public
authorities in Germany are decided by tribunals quite distinct from
the ordinary courts. These courts are specially constituted, and they
aim at protecting the officials from any personal responsibility for
acts done by them in their official capacity.

In America, and I presume in Great Britain also, any disputes between
public authorities and private individuals are settled in the ordinary
courts of justice, under the rules of the ordinary law of the land.
This super-common-law position of the Prussian official is a fatal
incentive to the aggravating exaggeration of his importance, and to
the indifference of his behavior to the private citizen. There may be
officials who are uninfluenced by this sheltered position, indeed I
know personally many who are, but there is equally no doubt that many
succumb to arrogance and lethargy as a consequence.

How thoroughly Prussia is covered by a network of officialdom, is
further discovered when it is known, that the entire area of Prussia
is some twenty thousand square miles less than that of the State of
California. The whole Prussian doctrine of local self-government, too,
is entirely different from ours. Their idea is that self-government is
the performance by locally elected bodies of the will of the state,
not necessarily of the locality which elects them. Local authorities,
whether elected or not, are supposed to be primarily the agents of the
state, and only secondarily the agents of the particular locality they
serve. In Prussia, all provincial and circle assemblies and communal
councils, may be dissolved by royal decree, hence even these elected
assemblies may only serve their constituencies at the will and
pleasure of the central authority.

It would avail little to go into minute details in describing the
government of Prussia; this slight sketch of the electoral system, and
of the centralization of the government, suffices to show two things
that it is particularly my purpose to make clear. One is the
preponderating influence of Prussia in the empire, due to the
maintenance of power in a single person; and the other is to show how
ridiculously futile it is to re