the Darwinians for the sake of effect. Yet he appears to have spoken as if by instruction, for it seems the determined plan of the Imperial Government not to allow that measure of freedom in speech which has become the established policy in other leading countries.
Constitutional government in Prussia, however, is but a recent thing, having sprung up within a generation; while the new German Empire was constituted by the treaties made at Versailles in January, 1871, during the Franco-German war. Taking into account, therefore, the previous discipline of the people, and the coercive military character of German state policy, too much in the way of liberality is certainly not to be expected in a short time. But it is nevertheless interesting and instructive to see how things hang together, and how one thing involves and leads to another in a thoroughly arbitrary form of government.
The German Empire, made up by the recent amalgamation of twenty-six states, and containing about 43,000,000 people, sustains an army on a peace footing of 1,283,791 soldiers, with 31,843 officers and upward of 300,000 horses. Military service is compulsory, and the army is sustained by conscription. The strengthening of the measures by which the military system is maintained is illustrated by the following paragraph which recently appeared in the newspapers: "Sixty young men having quitted the district of Thaun, Alsace, to avoid conscription, they have been sentenced, by default, to 1,200 marks fine, or 200 days imprisonment, and to the seizure of their property to that amount."
That the maintenance of such a vast army in time of peace by grinding taxation, and for purposes of despotic violence, should have engendered a profound spirit of revolt against the institutions and social order of the country, is not surprising. Socialism is but the correlative of a rampant imperialism—the shadow of Bismarck. Did the Chancellor expect that people with their eyes open would not observe, and in this age that they would not think and comment upon what they saw? At any rate, he resolved to stifle all expressions of Socialistic doctrine in the German Empire, and this he is no doubt at present quite able to do. The effects of the Socialist law are thus represented by a writer in Berlin: "The Prussian and German police in general is an admirable piece of machinery. It is almost as thorough and effective as the German army. It has never done its work better than in hunting down the Socialists. Up to December 22d, 144 clubs, 44 newspapers, and 157 books and pamphlets had been suppressed." The slaughter, or "pigsticking," as the Chancellor is said to have grimly styled the game, has gone on briskly since that time; and the columns of the "Reichsanzeiger" give no sign that the authorities are becoming weary or merciful. The chief Socialist leaders have been turned out of Berlin, and it is difficult for them to find in Germany rest for the soles of their feet. Some are in prison. A few have emigrated in despair to America. In a few weeks perhaps no trace of the Socialist agitation will be discernible on the face of German society. But will the danger be gone when it is put out of sight? The Chancellor can not draw a cordon round the Fatherland and exclude the poisonous literature printed in London, Brussels, Verviers, or Geneva, The malady will not be cured because it is driven into the system. The seductiveness of Socialist opinions will not be a whit less than it is because the Government appears to dread them, and to have no confidence in the weapons of reason against the wild ideas that have taken hold of multitudes.
Believing in no half-way policy, Bismarck has cow pushed his tactics a step further; the gagging of the people
