universal. The whole country is becoming
protectionist. All young men, even in Hamburg and Bremen, believe in
protection as "the thing." The Prussian landlord, whose soul was steeped
in free trade so long as Prussia was a grain-exporting country,
cherishes protectionist convictions now that she must largely import
cereals. The bureaucrat who had never sworn by other economic lawgivers
than Adam Smith and his followers, now accepts Professor Adolphus
Wagner's ever-changing sophisms. And as for the south and the west of
Germany, why, they adore the man who had fulfilled that dream of
protection in which they, as disciples of Friedrich List, had grown up.
It is true that all large cities, even there, are protesting against the
lately imposed and quite lately increased duties upon cereals; but then,
"can any good thing come out of" large cities? Compared to the
difficulties that impede the action of the free trade party in Germany,
Mr. Bright's and Mr. Cobden's up-hill work sinks into insignificance.

Nothing, to a beginner in the study of Bismarck's character, would
appear so utterly puzzling as his demeanor toward the communists,
socialists, or, as they call themselves in Germany, Social Democrats.
One of his most trusted secretaries is an old ally and correspondent of
Herr Karl Marx, the high-priest of communism, who, toward the end of his
London career, rode the whirlwind and directed the storm of German
socialism. Bismarck himself confesses to having received in private
audience Lassalle, one certainly of the most capable men of modern
Germany, and to whom as its first author, a retrospective inquiry would
trace back the present formidable, closely ruled organization of
socialist operatives of Germany. The first minister of the Prussian
crown was closeted once--people say more than once, but that does not
matter--with the ablest subverter of the modern fabric of society. He
found him "mighty pleasant to talk to." He liked his predilection for a
powerful supreme authority overawing the organized masses, though
"whether he did so in the interest of a dynasty of Lassalles or of
Hohenzollern's" seemed to Herr von Bismarck an open question. After
Lassalle's tragical death in 1864, we observe how the Prussian
government, while watching with Argus-eyes every excess of speech among
liberals, allowed his first successors, Schweizer and others, a vulgar
set of demagogues, such license of bloody harangue as has of late years
got