failed. On the other hand, it seemed scarcely probable that if the Chancellor wished to retain any semblance of a party following in the Landtag or the Reichsrath he would have run so obvious a risk of alienating the Conservatives and National Liberals, who could still form a majority, in the illusory hope of being able to reconstitute a majority out of the discordant elements of which the minorities in both Chambers were composed. These are, however, questions of which the future can alone furnish the key. The first practical outcome of Prince Bismarck's tenure of office as Minister of Commerce, was the appointment by Royal decree (Nov. 19) of a Committee of Trade on Agriculture, whose functions it was to examine all economical questions, and to report on the needs of the country. The committee or council was to be formed of seventy-five members named for five years; of these, forty-five were to be chosen by the King for twice that number elected by the Chamber of Commerce, the trade corporations, and the Agricultural Associations. The remaining thirty, of whom at least one-half were to be actual working men, were to be selected by the Ministers of Commerce, Public Works, and Agriculture, and their names to be approved by the King.

The idea of extending the system of the Zollverein so as to include Austria-Hungary, the Danubian and Scandinavian States, and, if possible, Holland and Switzerland, which the German Chancellor is supposed to nurse, made but little progress during the year, in consequence of the difficulties arising from the antagonism between the rival productive tariffs of the two empires.

The origin of the Judenhetz, which to the disgrace of Liberal Germany has been recently allowed to occupy so prominent a place in home politics, can scarcely be attributed to any particular date. From the very commencement of the year the orthodox clergy of Berlin, under the leadership of Hofprediger Stöcker, seem to have done their utmost to excite public feeling against the Semitic race. The Ultramontane press gave its full approval to their comrade, and Professor Heinrich Von Treitschke, the eminent historian, justified it. His argument was that the internal state of Germany, in face of its widespread Socialism and its external policy, produced a condition of things which rendered the preponderance of the Jewish element a source of danger. According to the census of 1871 there were in Spain 6,000 Jews, in Italy 40,000, in France and Great Britain 45,000 each, but in Germany there were 512,000, and in Austria probably not far short of a million. In Prussia alone their number had increased from 124,000 in 1816 to 340,000 in 1875, of whom the majority were emigrants from Eastern Europe, representing the democracy of the race; whilst the Jews of Western Europe were descended for the most part from the aristocracy of the race which had found a home in Spain and Portugal. These arguments were combated with vigour by Professor Graetz and others, who maintained that if the Jews possessed more influence in Germany than elsewhere, it was because their mental capacities enabled them

there to obtain more marked distinction than elsewhere. During the summer more practical questions occupied the public mind, and the ill-feeling which had been aroused by Herr Stöcker's indiscreet utterances slumbered awhile. Towards the close of the autumn, however, it broke out again with increased intensity, and numerous breaches of the peace ensued, in which the Christians were not always the aggressors; and, at length, the question became a Parliamentary one.

On October 26 the Prussian Chambers had reassembled after the recess, and in the election of the officers of the Landtag the Ultramontanes had sustained an unexpected defeat. The Conservatives, who had hitherto voted with the Centre, split up into two portions-the more Liberal thus giving a lesson to the Ultramontanes who had refused to take part in the national festival of the completion of Cologne Cathedral. The reactionary fraction committed the further grave error of associating themselves with the anti-Semitic agitation, of which Herr Stöcker and Professor Henrici had constituted themselves the leaders. By their initiative a petition was laid before the Landtag praying that the movement of the Jewish population should be the subject of police reports; that only the lower places in the public service should be accessible to its members; and, further, that restraints should be placed by the Government on the Jewish immigration. The debate which ensued, whilst giving rise to much declamatory violence, led to no practical results, the members of the Government holding aloof from the discussion after having announced their determination not to permit the question of the civil rights of citizens of any religious denomination to be tampered with.

The Prussian Budget showed a very considerable increase on various heads of expenditure, that of the War Department alone being 30,310,588 marks (1,515,2297.) in excess of the previous year's estimates, but the hope of an equilibrium was held out, the deficit of previous years to be covered by an increase of the land and house tax and a fresh loan. But it was rather against the principle on which financial affairs were being managed that criticism was directed in the Landtag. This system consisted in augmenting the old or creating new imperial taxes, and paying back to the various States a certain portion of the excess. As Herr Richter pointed out, it was proposed to raise 240 millions of marks additional, of which 150 millions would have to be contributed by Prussia; while under the Finance Minister's proposal, seventyeight millions only would be repaid to reduce the burden of the Prussian taxes, or in other words the taxpayer would have to pay his share of the 150 millions more as a German, and his share of 78 millions less as a Prussian.

CHAPTER III.

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY-RUSSIA.

1. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

Austria and the Czech Movement-Change of Ministry-The Slav Influences and the German Alliance-The Emperor's Journey-The Eastern imbroglioThe Danube Navigation-Political Parties.

THE year began in Austria-Hungary with symptoms of agitation among the various nationalities of the monarchy. In Bohemia a movement was got up by the Czechs for the introduction of their language in schools and courts of justice; a similar movement was set on foot by the Ruthenians of Galicia; and some alarm was produced in the Italian districts of the monarchy by the agitation of the Italia Irridenta. These manifestations of nationalist feeling did not, however, lead to any serious results, and satisfactory explanations were given by the Italian Cabinet of the Irridentist demonstration at the funeral of General Avezzana. A more serious incident was the riot which took place in the streets of Buda-Pesth on January 14 and 16, in consequence of the duel between Count Maythenyi and M. Verhovay, in which the latter, a journalist, was severely wounded. The cause of this duel was an attack made on the Hungarian nobility, of which Count Maythenyi is a prominent member, in M. Verhovay's paper, and the bitter hostility shown by the people against the nobles in the riots that followed gave evidence of a class antagonism of a very dangerous kind.

In the Reichsrath some important debates took place on the grievances of the non-German nationalities, the "conciliation" Ministry having first been completed on February 17 by the appointment of Baron Conrad Eybesfeld, a constitutionalist, as Minister of Education, and of Baron Kriegsau, a Conservative, brother-in-law of the ex-Minister Bach, as Minister of Finance. The clerical members of the Reichsrath supported the petition of four Bohemian bishops, asking that the powers of control formerly possessed by the clergy over primary education might be resumed; the Czechs urged that the primary schools should give education in the language of the most numerous nationality of the district; while the Poles advocated the maintenance of the existing system of State control. After much discussion a series of resolutions was passed by the House on April 27, leaving to the Government the initiative of remedying the grievances of the Slav nationalities by laying before Parliament measures for increasing the endowments of non-German schools and teachers. A further concession

to the Slavs was an order issued by the Government to the administrative and judicial authorities in Bohemia, instructing them to make known their decisions in the language used by those applying for them, to issue notifications in the language of those to whom they are addressed, and to conduct criminal trials in the language of the accused. On June 11 another attempt was made by the Government to conciliate the Czechs. It has long been a matter of complaint with the Czechs that the number of representatives which, under the present system of election, they are able to send to the Bohemian Diet, is far below that to which they would be entitled if they were allowed as many representatives in proportion to their population as the Germans. The Government accordingly brought in a bill, nominally to improve the representation of the landowners (who in Austria have separate representatives of their own), but really to increase the number of the Czech members of the Diet. Under the existing system the Bohemian landowners are divided into two electoral bodies, one for entailed and the other for unentailed property; the first sends sixteen representatives to the Diet, and the second fifty-four. Under the Government bill the number of electoral bodies was to be increased to six, and the first of these, comprising the entailed properties and those paying above 10,000 florins in taxes, was to send thirty-two members to the Diet, the remaining thirty-eight being divided among the five other electoral bodies. The result of this arrangement would have been that the thirty-two seats of the first electoral body, and several of the others, would be assured to the Czechs, whose great aristocratic families hold most of the entailed properties, and also of the larger unentailed ones. As was to be expected, the bill was lost in committee by a majority of thirteen German to seven Czech votes; but the Ministry attained their object of demonstrating their wish to give the Slavs a larger share of political power in the monarchy than they have hitherto enjoyed. By so doing, however, they naturally alienated the German element; and it soon became evident that they could not long retain their composite character of representatives both of the German centralist party and of the Slavs, whose instinctive leaning is towards federalism. A new change of Ministry accordingly took place on June 27. Count Taaffe remained Prime Minister, but Dr. Stremayr and Barons von Horst, von KorbWeidenheim, and von Kriegsau were succeeded in the departments of Justice, National Defence, Commerce, and Finance respectively by Baron von Streit, Count Welfersheimb, Herr von CremerAuenrode, and Dr. Dunayevski. The most significant of the new appointments was that of the Minister of Finance: Dr. Dunayevski is the ablest and most energetic member of the Polish section of the Reichsrath, and is regarded as one of the most formidable of the adversaries of the German centralist party. This appointment showed that Count Taaffe had given up his original idea of forming a "middle" party in the House, and

that he would now look chiefly for support to the autonomist majority.

The line thus openly adopted by the Ministry gave great offence to the Hungarians as well as to the Austrian Germans. Threats were even uttered by the chief members of the old Déak party, which had been mainly instrumental in bringing about the dualist system, to the effect that if federalism were to gain ground as a principle of government in Cisleithania, they would begin an agitation in Hungary with the object of making that country entirely independent of Austria, the only link connecting them being that of a common sovereign and army. These utterances, which could hardly be seriously meant, at least testified to the profound dissatisfaction with which the Hungarians viewed the development of a policy of concession towards the Slavs. The Government, however, felt that the position of affairs abroad had become so critical that it could no longer afford to ignore the wants of its Slavonic subjects. The continued agitation in Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia, the pressure put by Europe upon the Porte and its obstinate resistance, and the war preparations of Montenegro and Greece, all portended a new convulsion in the Balkan peninsula, the result of which would probably be the disruption of the Turkish Empire-a result which concerned Austria-Hungary more nearly than any of the other Powers. The union in a single state of the Bulgarians would be a very dangerous precedent for similar claims on the part of Servia and Roumania, which could not be satisfied without depriving Austria-Hungary of large and important portions of her territory, Transylvania being inhabited by Roumanians, and Croatia and Dalmatia by peoples of a race akin to the Servian. Moreover, the encouragement and assistance which the Bulgarian agitators received from Russia showed that the Government of St. Petersburg, notwithstanding its anxieties at home, was steadily pursuing its old policy of intrigue among the Christian nationalities of Turkey, with a view to ultimately inheriting the throne of Constantinople. The success of such a policy would place Austria at the feet of Russia; or rather, as one might say with General Fadeyeff, the way to Constantinople for Russia lies through Vienna, and the break-up of the AustroHungarian monarchy would be a necessary preliminary to the subjugation by Russia of the Balkan peninsula. As a military power, Austria has not much to fear from Russia. Though her army is not so numerous as that of the Czar, she can bring into the field troops which would be quite equal in strength, and probably superior in efficiency, to any that she would have to encounter in the case of a Russian invasion; besides which she would certainly have the support of Germany, which consideration in itself renders the contingency of a direct Russian attack upon Austria very improbable. But Russia has at her command, as against Austria, weapons far more dangerous than those of war. Panslavism is latent in most of the Slavonic provinces of the