It is true that an innovation properly belonging only to a
parliamentary government was introduced some seven years ago,
viz., that the ministers must answer questions (as in Great Britain)
put them by the members of the Reichstag. But there the likeness
to a parliamentary government begins and ends.

The members of the Bundesrat are named by the Princes of the
twenty-five States making up the German Empire. Prussia, which
has seventeen votes, may name seventeen members of the Bundesrat
or one member, who, however, when he votes casts seventeen votes.
The votes of a State must always be cast as a unit. In the usual
procedure bills are prepared and adopted in the Bundesrat and
then sent to the Reichstag whence, if passed, they return to the
Bundesrat where the final approval must take place. Therefore,
in practice, the Bundesrat makes the laws with the assent of
the Reichstag. The members of the Bundesrat have the right to
appear and make speeches in the Reichstag. The fundamental
constitution of the German Empire is not changed, as with us, by
a separate body but is changed in the same way that an ordinary
law is passed; except that if there are fourteen votes against
the proposed change in the Bundesrat the proposition is defeated,
and, further, the constitution cannot be changed with respect
to rights expressly granted by it to anyone of the twenty-five
States without the assent of that State.

In order to pass a law a majority vote in the Bundesrat and Reichstag
is sufficient if there is a quorum present, and a quorum is a
majority of the members elected in the Reichstag: in the Bundesrat
the quorum consists of such members as are present at a regularly
called meeting, providing the Chancellor or the Vice-Chancellor