great predecessor, Frederick the Great, took quite a different view of the relative rights and obligations of sovereign and subjects. According to Bluntschli, Frederick the Great deserves to be reverenced as the father of constitutional monarchy on the Continent. No one more energetically contended against the doctrine that the king is lord and master of his State. No one more definitely maintained that monarchy is an office, and the king is only the chief servant of the State. The whole mediaeval theory of divine right and proprietary rule was unhesitatingly cast on one side by him as false and pernicious. Referring to the Kaiser, Bismarck once said: "I cannot stand him any longer. I cannot make genuflexions, or crouch under the table like a dog. . . . I cannot tack on as a tail to my career the failures of arbitrary and inexperienced self-conceit for which I should be held responsible."
Whatever may have been, however, the views of Frederick the Great, they counted for very little when the constitution of the new empire was drawn up and promulgated by Bismarck in 1870. According to that constitution, the imperial power exercises exclusively the right of legislation as regards military matters by land and sea, the finance of the empire, the customs of German commerce, the post offices, and the telegraphs and railways necessary for the defence and the development of the constitutional compact. The executive power is entrusted to the King of Prussia, who at the same time is the German Emperor, and governs by means of a single responsible minister who takes the name of Chancellor. The Chancellor is responsible only to the Emperor and not even to the constituent princes and States, much less the German people. The legislative power belongs to two assemblies, the Bundesrath, to which we have already referred, and the Reichstag. This latter chamber corresponds in some rough sort of fashion to our own House of Commons, its members being elected, however, by direct universal suffrage. Its powers are very limited. It is almost entirely a machine providing supplies, without possessing any real financial control. There are no cabinet or delegates of the majority of the Reichstag. There is, in fact, no majority in it; there is no party system; there are only party squabbles. As we have already pointed out, the executive is vested in the Emperor. The Reichstag cannot, therefore, control the executive. If it were to attempt to do so, it would be attempting something which is unconstitutional. A truly constitutional position is when the Emperor declares and acts upon his intentions. The position in the Reichstag is roughly comparable to that which would obtain in our Parliament
