affairs according to his Majesty's orders, and putting aside the resolution passed by the Chamber of Deputies on the 23rd September of that year (viz., the vote which rejected-a vote repeated and disregarded for four years in succession-the military budget brought forward and adhered to by His Majesty's Government).'

*

many parliamentary Liberals, may in some sort be regarded as the Nemesis of Parlia

mentarism.

Edgar Quinet, the veteran and very honest apostle of the principles of 1789,' wrote in his 'Allemagne et Italie,' at a date so far back as October, 1831:

'This [German] race is ranging itself under the dictatorship of a people not more enlightened than its other populations, but more acquisitive, more ardent, more exacting, more versed in affairs. To the charge of that people it confides its ambitions, its rancours, its rapines, its ruses, its diplomacy, its violence, its glory, its exteritself the honest and obscure exercise of its nal force and aggrandisement-reserving to internal liberties. Since the close of the middle ages the force and initiative of the German States passes from South to North along with the whole movement of modern civilisation. It is Prussia then that Northern Germany is beginning to make its instrument of aggrandisewill push Prussia slowly forward to the murder ment?-Yes!-and if let alone, North Germany of the old kingdom of France.'

Then follows a passage which has acquired portentous import since the date at which it was written :

Prussia possesses three Parliaments and one Bismarck; and the one Bismarck has hitherto been more than a match for the three Parliaments. Whether coercing or creating Parliaments-ignoring all constitutional control by those existing, or inaugurating universal suffrage for those newly called into existence, Count Bismarck's eight years' administration of Prussia militant is something unprecedented in history. One governing principle may be traced throughout his conduct of affairs-the principle of repudiating parliamentarism as a master while using it as an instrument. In carrying out that principle per fas aut nefas, through evil or good report, he may be said to have boldly staked his life, and to have barely saved it. Not to mention the five revolvershots of young Blind, delivered Unter den Linden on the eve of Count Bismarck's war upon Austria in 1866; not to mention the grave risk of parliamentary impeachment, and its possible consequences, if his Austrian war had turned out a failure instead of a triumph,* the successive sessions of the three Prussian Parliaments nearly killed him in 1868. The 'Prussian Landtag,' which had opened in the previous November, closed on the 23rd of February; the North-German Reichstag'raine, still bleed at the heart of Germany, as opened on the 23rd of March, and, shortly after, the Zoll Parliament.' By June the over-tasked Minister-President was fairly thrown on his back, and lay for months at his country-house at Varzin, like Chatham at Hayes, unable to talk to any one on business or to open a letter. The 'Book of Bismarck' places on record his obstinate nervous sleeplessness, against which his admirers and sympathisers, amongst the public, sent him all sorts of specifics. Amongst others an old soldier advised him to smoke daily a pound of Porto-Rico tobacco. Bismarck in reply presented the brave with a pipe and sundry pounds of the kindly prescribed narcotic, requesting him to have the obligingness to smoke it for him. The shaken nerves of the all-powerful Minister, whose unsparing sayings and doings had shaken the nerves of so

constitutes itself in its interior, it exercises a 'In proportion as the Germanic system repowerful influence on the populations of the same language and origin, which had been detached from that system by force in past ages. We must not disguise from ourselves that the old wound of the treaty of Westphalia, and the cession of the provinces of Alsace and Lor

That old wound, amongst a people who rumithe treaties of 1815 at the heart of France. nate so long over their recollections and aspirations, is still traceable in all their ambitions and all their rancours which date but of yesterday. It has long been a grievance of the popular party in North Germany against the German governments that they did not force back these provinces from France in 1815, and in their own phrase, did not hold the fox fast when they had him in their net. What durst not be attempted in 1815 has since become a sort of fixed idea of German national ambition.'

It is only a short time ago that one of the great objects of apprehension amongst all who amused themselves with casting the horoscope of European futurity was PanSlavism. In the future, as in the past, the empire of the air, and the dominion of ideas, were assigned by common consent to Germany; and Pan-Teutonism never occurred for a moment as a word of menace of war and conquest to Europe. It must be frankly owned, however, nobody ever took Prussia for a realm of ideology, nor Count Bismarck for a dreamer of dreams or seer of visions. What he sees and handles is men and things

proclaims modern Germany the legitimate inheritrix of the right of conquest made good by ancient Germany over the enervated and corrupted Roman empire. All those races which have mixed their blood and enriched their language with the surviving populations and traditions of the antique culture and civilisation-just in proportion as they have drawn from other fountains than 'the pure well of German undefiled '—are themselves defiled and corrupted, and unworthy of empire in Europe. The modern English language, the modern French race have alike been corrupted by such admixtures. It might perhaps be worth asking Herr Wolfgang Menzel if he is quite certain whether Norman energy may not have made on the whole, in England, a mixture rather vigorous than otherwise with. Saxon solidity whether Prussia herself may not partly owe her ascendancy over the purer German races to the fact that the Prussian border people, warlike from age to age, is not pure German?

in the concrete; he is no devotee of 'Geist,' | ger and Philistines in all parts of Germany no professorial apostle of the Idea.' (In our younger days it used to be called 'the Divine Idea-the Divine' has somehow dropped out of the vocabulary of later German philosophism.) That Germany should dream dreams, and Prussia lend her military strength and skill to realise them, was a combination which only of late years presented itself to prophetic forecast. A combination more formidable to all who feel themselves likely to come in collision with it cannot easily be imagined, than that between a race which ruminates on the past, apd deems itself destined to recover in the future the European empire which it claims to have held and lost --and an armed nation like the Prussians, never addicted to day-dreams, ever docile to the drill-sergeant, and always ready to draw the sword in the cause of Pan-Teutonism, when that cause can be shown to coincide with the aggrandisement of Prussia. Nothing could seem less substantial in matter-of-fact foundation than the Schleswig-Holstein Schleswig-Holstein' enthusiasm of six or seven years back in Germany. Nothing could have been used more dexterously as the stepping-stone to substantial Prussian aggrandisement. Nothing can now seem wilder than the Pan-Teutonic readings of European history since Charlemagne, with which the German professorial-political press is at this moment teeming. But if these readings find faith with the youth of Germany, the rank and file are thus found for armies ready to place themselves under Prussia's command for future wars of conquest.

The French fixed idea of 'natural boundaries' is fairly transcended in extravagance by the notions now zealously disseminated in Germany of what is termed German nationality, as the only legitimate basis of dominion for the future wherever any vestige of that nationality is extant. The most comprehensive and complete form, in which we have met with the German claims to something like universal dominion founded on these notions, is in a pamphlet entitled Unsere Grenzen,' by Wolfgang Menzel. We give precedence of notice to this publication because it made its appearance before the war of 1870, and also because it lays a basis broad enough to support whatever rights of conquest and dominion Pan-Teutonism can ever have to assert over the mixed and mongrel races, which, according to the author, and all his Pan-Teutonic followers in the German press, have corrupted and degraded their blood and language by Latin, Celtic, or Sclavonic admixtures. Herr Wolfgang Menzel, then-a popular periodical Polyhistor, much read for many years by Pfahlbür

What we have ventured to designate as the Pan-Teutonic creed widely preached throughout Germany may be shortly summarised as follows: Whatever portions of Europe are inhabited by populations sprung from the same stock as the great German nation, especially if they ever acknowledged any sort of allegiance to the never compact and now long defunct so-styled Holy Roman Empire, are to be regarded without exception as wrongfully wrenched from German dominion; and it is a question of time only, and policy, when Germany is to claim them back again. The more successful the graft of any scion of the old German stock on any other non-German national body, the more complete the assimilation to such other body of the population of any province which, at any period since the days of Charlemagne, owed allegiance (however indifferently paid) to the Holy Roman Empire, or the more triumphantly, throughout a long course of ages, any such province may have vindicated an independent national existence for itself the more heavy the arrear of wrong demanding. reparation to the aggrieved German Fatherland-the more guilty all accessories to the protracted degradation and corruption which must have been undergone by any race which has been made to cease to be German; nay, worse, to become something else. It does not seem clear that England may not be called to account for having suffered Norman to spoil the good work of Saxon invasion, and the importation of Welsch' idioms to adulterate the purity of the language of the Nibelungen Lied.

But if the reconquest of England is ad

journed indefinitely by the moderation of on his back, when is he likely to get him off Herr Wolfgang Menzel, that of German again? The future conquests of Pan-TeutonSwitzerland, Flemish Belgium, and Holland ism are no more to be made, than Count Bisare regarded as mere questions of time by marck predicted the past were to be made, the more impetuous mind of Dr. Adolph by parliamentary speeches, but by blood and Wagner, who writes since Sedan. Not that iron.' It is for the German Hengst or he would resort, at present, to force of arms,Horsa' to bethink himself how much of the to recover for Germany these abtrünnige' blood may be his, how much of the iron members of the much mutilated Pan-Teutonic may enter into his own soul. body. All he would stipulate for immediately are certain rectifications of frontier at the expense of Switzerland, Belgium, and, perhaps, Holland. But he tells the Swiss, Flemings, and Hollanders alike, that they are a set of stupid Particularists' for fancying they have any valid claims to separate existence, which can be opposed for a moment to the paramount claim of the Mighty Mother of all Teutons to call them back at some future auspicious day under her eagle wings. Swiss heroism is fabulous; Swiss republicanism takes saucy airs on itself, not to be tolerated in the neighbourhood, now drawing closer, of the Prussian drill-sergeant. Dutch nationality might, it is reluctantly admitted, have had some excuse for asserting itself in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries against the Houses of Austria and Bourbon, but can have no prospect of permanently asserting itself now against the House of Hohenzollern. It is the manifest destiny' of great states to annex little ones in their neighbourhood, especially if the latter have the misfortune to be derivable by professorial antiquarian research from a common race. If they object to absorption, that only shows the more plainly their perverse Particularism,' and makes it the more necessary that they should be brought betimes for their good under the Prussian drill-sergeant.

When we see Germany, to repeat the words of Edgar Quinet, confiding to the charge of Prussia its ambitions, its rancours, its rapines, its ruses, its diplomacy, its violence, its glory, its external force and aggrandizement; we are involuntarily reminded of the Horse in the Fable who had the whole range of a meadow to himself, but a stag coming and damaging the pasture, the horse, anxious to have his revenge, asked a man if he could not assist him in punishing the stag; "Yes," said the man, " only let me get a bit in your mouth, and get upon your back, and I will find the weapons.' The horse agreed, the man mounted accordingly, and the Horse has been from that time forward the slave of Man.'

We leave the moral of the fable to the consideration of the German Hengst' or 'Horsa.' It is certain he has put a man on his back, and run down the Gallic stag. Remains the question-having got the man

It is the curse of war that the high feelings, with which it may have been at first entered upon, soon become sadly mingled with the animal ferocities and avidities which are the shameful parts of our nature. Nothing in history is less religious in their course than wars of religion-nothing more unprincipled than wars of principle if principles are to be judged by actions. And even if the original merits of the cause at issue should not suffer alteration, the relative positions of the parties engaged in the contest often so change as to transfer the sympathies of disinterested and dispassionate spectators from the one to the other. This has been signally instanced in the later stages of the international conflict now raging. The hypocrisy of the French attack upon Germany, to liberate Germany from herself-or, in plain terms, to bring French arms in aid of German disunion, in order to keep the sources of that disunion open-has been succeeded by the sincere efforts of French patriotism to free French soil from the invader. It now needs an effort of imagination to bring back before the mind's-eye the opposite picture which French success would have realised by carrying fire and sword through German towns and villages. What meets the eye actually is the ruthless requisitions and reprisals of armed force in France—a country but yesterday so flourishing and with which we have of late been in such intimate commercial and social intercourse. But the progress of war effects changes in the spirit of those who take part in it, as well as of those who merely assist' as spectators. The taste of blood,' or rather, let us say, the excitement of military adventure and enterprise, often effects a complete and very rapid revolution in the feelings and characters of men who took up soldiership at first with reluctance as a public duty. A recent 'military correspondent along the communications' of the German army in France states that two out of three Prussian soldiers, with whom he came in casual and friendly contact in village-quarters, 'said they liked war, and hoped it would continue. The third had seen enough of it, and wished it to end. I saw a wedding-ring on his finger.'

'What would be the feelings of Englishmen,'

says the same Correspondent, if they saw enemies all round them scattered through the pleasant suburban villages, and threatening fearful reprisals for every act of resistance? How would the people of Richmond, Sydenham, and Wimbledon endure to know that their villas were used as hospitals for typhus patients, their cottages filled with foreign soldiery, their libraries scattered, their bedsteads and pianos broken up for fire-wood, their velvet cushions thrown down in heaps as couches for troopers covered with mud? Yet this is exactly the condition of the country round Paris, and the German army is one of the least cruel and best disciplined in Europe. Let me add one word. The chiefs of this army assert that an invasion of England is not only possible but almost certain of success. They say it only requires to be well planned and vigorously executed. If the people of England will put this together with the fact that throughout Germany, and especially throughout the German army, there has arisen just such a feeling as was expressed in America at the height of the Alabama agitation, they surely will not grudge to the Government the means for putting our army in a state to make a fair fight of it, if ever the time comes when our manhood shall be called upon to show itself or acknowledge a decadence in public virtue. I am no alarmist, but I cannot see hosts of warriors, representing, be it remembered, every rank and class in Germany, speaking openly of their grudge against England, and determination to repay us for the acts of our merchants, without saying, as best I can, that if we will carry on the trade in arms we must be prepared with arms in our hands to defend our liberty in this matter."*

We dare not, at this hour, undertake to anticipate the ultimate issues of the Prussian ascendancy at present attained in Germany, nor to predict what conquests a Prusso-German empire may meditate next, when that of France is accomplished, or whether the classes which, in Prussianised Germany as elsewhere, have to bear the main burthen of war, will exhibit enough of pacific and con stitutional energy to exercise that due degree of parliamentary control over the executive government, which will be absolutely necessary to keep in check for the future the warlike impulses of the Prussian aristocracy. It must for ever remain one of those questions which the actual course of events has relegated to the domain of conjectural, and may be deemed idle speculation-whether Count Bismarck's recipe of blood and iron was the only one which could have terminated the secular' rivalry of influence and action between Austria and Prussia in Germany. Blood and iron have terminated

it

that incompatible dualism, and have further terminated the pretension of France to pronounce the ne plus ultra of German national union. These are immense achievements, and none can contradict King William's testimony that their author has placed Prussia on a previously unattained pinnacle of elevation-at which, we will add, giddiness may well be apprehended for the steadiest heads. In what degree great national ends justify whatever means are used to attain them is a question of political ethics too apt to be set aside by the human passions and immediate interests concerned. One thing we may say, without fear of contradiction, of Count Bismarck's policy-that few men, in a century which does not greatly dare, whether for good or evil, would have been capable either of hazarding such stakes or playing out such a game.

about was the only, or even the best, means by which the needed radical cure could be effected, military command which has been the proximate is an open question. At all events, the unity of result, and the confirmation and extension of the Customs Union, open very different prospects for the future of Germany from any which that illfor, while fractured and divided, as they came knit congeries of tribes could possibly have looked forth from the alembic of the Congress of Vienna.. Assuredly he who has been the main instrument of this great change deserves well of his own rectitude, done in pursuit of a great and generally country. Certain acts of doubtful moral admitted laudable object, may and will be censured; yet, if we look to what Germany was, and what has been accomplished within her limits, it is impossible to withhold admiration from the clear perception which shaped events, tained; nor does it seem possible for even his bitdifficult to withhold approval from the result atterest enemies to avoid admitting that M. de Bis-marck takes rank among the ablest men of the age.'

Sir Alexander Malet, however, took the above estimate of Count Bismarck's well-deservings of Germany at a time when it could still be added to the list of his remarkable exploits,' that, after all his successes, he still maintained peace with France.'

Government of India, presented to Par- the system which generally commutes all liament. 1856 to 1870. punishments into a money payment.

PROBABLY no subject may seem more difficult of approach to the ordinary English mind than the revenue system of our great Indian Empire. Yet, divested of unnecessary details and complications, the system is one of remarkable simplicity, and the object of the present paper is to try to place it before our readers in an accessible and tangible form, so far at least as is necessary to understand its essential features. We would first briefly sketch the methods of raising a public income handed down to us by Native rulers, then examine the changes and improvements which we have ourselves introduced, and finally try to exhibit in brief compass the incidence of taxation and the salient points of our present financial position in India.

The main revenue of all Indian Native States is derived from the land-so much so that the land revenue alone is properly termed' revenue,' all other items being lumped together as 'extras.' This land revenue is undoubtedly in substance the whole, or nearly the whole, rent of the land, so far as it can be levied by a great Government taking customary rents as distinguished from competitive rents. The proper customary rent is supplemented by various cesses whenever a little addition can be borne. A good deal of the gross receipt is deducted by village and district officers and other officials before reaching the Government treasury; but these deductions represent, in fact, the expenses of management, which must be incurred under any system. Frequently a still larger proportion of the revenue is anticipated by assignments to the commanders of troops and other State creditors. This is merely a mode of paying public services from the revenues. And numerous personal assignments are, what would be, in a European budget, payments from the Civil List. Directly or indirectly, then, the State appropriates nearly the whole of the revenue or rent yielded by the land.

The list of 'extra' items levied in a Native State is very formidable, but they may all be put under two or three heads. The extra cesses on the land revenue, to which allusion has already been made, are alone sufficient to make a long category of taxation, though they are, for the most part, well-understood percentages added to the revenue proper. The rest may be classed under Saer, or customs and fines. The Saer comprise numerous transit and market dues locally levied on crossing each local boundary and at every market. The fines are the result of

There was also throughout India a very universal and not inequitable system of levying from non-agriculturalists, who were not otherwise directly taxed, a certain small payment as the price of protection, known as the Moturpha or Atrafee tax. It sometimes took the shape of a personal tax on tradesmen, sometimes of a tax on the instruments of trade.

Salt, spirits, tobacco, opium and other drugs were not usually the subject of special taxation, and did not contribute to the revenue, except in so far as they were taxed with other articles in the general system of market and transit duties. It may be said, then, that the revenues which have been mentioned are the only regular sources of income to the majority of the Native States. In some parts of the south a considerable revenue was raised by a monopoly of tobacco, pepper, and betel-nut, but such arrangements were local and exceptional.

In Mahommedan States a considerable percentage is levied on sales regularly registered, but in times when there is little regu lar government and record probably little is obtained from this source, except in the chief towns.

It may be taken as an indirect mode of taxation in all Native States that the ostensible remuneration of the public servants employed in the civil administration is almost nominal, and they really live by the levy of fees, fines, and presents, voluntary or extorted.

Under the village system there is, too, a good deal of what we should call local taxation, that is, the self-governing village communities, through their chiefs and elders, collect, by assessment on the members of the community, and expend for local purposes, a good deal in addition to the public demand. Their local purposes are not our purposes-they do not make roads nor undertake sanitary reforms-but they have their feasts, and hospitalities, and religious establishments, and their bribes to great men, and the compensation for plundered property, which they are forced to make good.

The accounts are kept so differently, and so much of the revenue never actually reaches the treasury, that it is almost impossible to compare the Native receipts from any particular territory with those under British rule; but the Native taxes, though vexatious and frequently repeated, are small in amount, and it may be generally said that the total receipts of 'extra' revenue in a Native State fall far short of the proportion to the land