Bismarck’s Failed Compromise Bill
—The bill which has been introduced by the Bismarck Cabinet into the Prussian House of Representatives, satisfies nobody and disappoints everybody. It does not abolish the May laws, but gives to the government discretionary power to hold them in abeyance as long as it deems it convenient to do so. The government is full of mistrust toward Rome, therefore it does not want to abrogate the May laws. Yet it finds it necessary to make peace with the Romanist party; therefore it is ready to abstain from executing the May laws. Thus the bill is a temporary and a half-and-half measure. It makes no peace, but establishes a kind of truce between Germany and Rome. The Romanists scorn the bill, because it does not annihilate the May laws, and the Liberals hate it, because it makes concessions to the power of Rome without demanding even the shadow of a concession from the other side. Even the two conservative factions of the “Land-tag” disliked the bill from the beginning. The House received the first reading of the bill very coldly. It was evident that the measure was a failure. Yet it was intrusted to a commission of twenty-one members. They discussed it, pondered it, examined it, and at last repudiated it. Indeed, if this bill was to be the coach in which the old German Chancellor was to go to Canossa, it has broken down completely before he started! The situation in Germany is grave. It is watched with much anxiety by all earnest and thoughtful men. It would be a206great calamity if Bismarck, after having fought and defeated so many other foes, should at last fall a victim to Rome, as the Greek Hercules fell at last a victim to a crafty woman.—Christian Weekly.