and permanent danger. He was answered that no man could foretell the fate of the American Republic in the course of the coming generations or centuries; but so far it must be admitted that the experiment of building up a federation of commonwealths under absolutely democratic institutions had been, upon the whole, a great success in both a political and a material respect. The problem of government was no doubt growing more and more complicated and difficult, both in the Union and in the several States, and might get beyond solution when the population should number hundreds of millions. There were even then symptoms of decadence, not material but moral; but the world had witnessed several serious popular aberrations which were followed by a return, sooner or later, to correct ways. Certainly, much could be expected of a people that successfully cut the cancer of slavery out of its body politic, at the cost of a million lives and of thousands of millions of dollars.
The Prince agreed to this and said that, for America, the existing democratic form of government was just as natural as a monarchy for Germany, and, indeed, the only feasible one. "I should be a devoted Republican, too, if I lived in America," he remarked. Mr. Villard ventured the inquiry whether Bismarck was satisfied with the workings of universal suffrage, the immediate adoption of which, upon the formation of the German Empire as the political basis of national life, was thought one of the boldest strokes, if not the very boldest, in his career. The Prince answered: "It cannot be said that the results of universal suffrage have been altogether satisfactory, but I always looked upon it as a just concomitant of, and compensation for, the general liability of our people to military service. Moreover, its adoption was indispensable as a sort of cement in the construction of the edifice of the Empire, as well as a means of overcoming the traditional centrifugal tendencies of some of our smaller potentates and tribes. The worst outgrowth of general suffrage he considered the So-
