reverse of them.

The German Emperor believes, and assumes his people to believe, that
the Hollenzollern monarch is specially chosen by Heaven to guide and
govern a folk entrusted to him as the talent was entrusted to the
steward in Scripture. Until 1848, a little over sixty years ago, the
Emperor (at that time only King of Prussia) was an absolute, or almost
absolute, monarch, supported by soldiers and police, and his wishes
were practically law to the folk. In that year, however, owing to the
influence of the French Revolution, the King by the gift of a
Constitution, abandoned part of his powers, but not any governing
powers, to the folk in the form of a parliament, with permission to
make laws for itself, though not for him. To pass them, that is; for
they were not to carry the laws into execution--that was a matter the
King kept, as the Emperor does still, in his own hands.

The business of making laws being, as experience shows, provocative of
discussion, discussion of argument, and argument of controversy, there
now arose a dozen or more parties in the Parliament, each with its own
set of controversial opinions, and these the parties applied to the
novel and interesting occupation of law-making.

However, it did not matter much to the King, so long as the folk did
not ask for further, or worse still, as occurred in England, for all
his powers; and accordingly the parties continued their discussions,
as they do to-day, sometimes accepting and sometimes rejecting their
own or the King's suggestions about law-making. Generally speaking,
the relation is not unlike that established by the dame who said to
her husband, "When we are of the same opinion, you are right, but when
we are of different opinions, I am right." If the Parliament does not