ism_; in old days Particularism found its support in
the dynasties, "now it is," he said, "in the Parliaments.

"Do you really believe," he said, "that the great movement which
last year led the peoples to battle from the Belt to the Sicilian
Sea, from the Rhine to the Pruth and the Dniester, in the throw
of the iron dice when we played for the crowns of kings and
emperors, that the millions of German warriors who fought against
one another and bled on the battle-fields from the Rhine to the
Carpathians, that the thousands and ten thousands who were left
dead on the battle-field and struck down by pestilence, who by
their death have sealed the national decision,--that all this can
be pigeon-holed by a resolution of Parliament? Gentlemen, in this
case you really do not stand on the height of the situation.... I
should like to see the gentlemen who consider this possibility
answer an invalid from Koeniggraetz when he asks for the result of
this mighty effort. You would say to him: 'Yes, indeed, for the
German unity nothing is achieved, the occasion for that will
probably come, that we can have easily, we can come to an
understanding any day, but we have saved the Budget-right of the
Chamber of Deputies, we have saved the right of the Prussian
Parliament every year to put the existence of the Prussian army
in question,' ... and therewith the invalid must console himself
for the loss of his limbs and the widow as she buries her
husband."

It is interesting to compare this speech with the similar speech he made
after Olmuetz: how great is the similarity in thought and expression, how
changed is the position of the speaker! He had no sympathy with these
doubts and hesitations; why so much distrust of one another? His
Constitution might not be the best, it might not be perfect, but at
least let it be completed. "Gentlemen," he said, "let us work quickly,
let us put Germany in the saddle; it will soon learn to ride." He was
annoyed and irritated by the opposition he met.

"If one has struggled hard for five years to achieve that which
now lies before us, if one has spent one's time, the best years
of one's life, and sacrificed one's health for it, if one
remembers the trouble it has cost to decide quite a small
paragraph, even a question of punctuation, with two and twenty
Governments, if at last we have agreed on that as it here lies
before us, then gentlemen who ha