No. 137.
Mr. Bancroft to Mr. Fish.
Berlin, May 26, 1873. (Received June 12.)
Sir: The session of the Prussian Diet, which came to a close the last week, was marked by legislation of the widest interest.
In pursuance of the design to consolidate the unity of the German Empire, it was necessary to take from the central Prussian Parliament its disproportionate influence and power. This could be done through two channels: first, a transfer of legislative power of a general or international character to the German Parliament; and next, by the process of decentralization, to distribute as far as possible the domestic affairs of the kingdom of Prussia to provincial bodies. To this end the Prussian Parliament, after a passionate, long-continued, and most obstinate opposition in the House of Lords, has introduced a new organization of the circles of the provinces by a system which has gone far toward establishing local self-government throughout the provinces and their subdivisions.
The new policy brought with it the abolition of what remained in several parts of Prussia of legislative authority attached to the possession of a certain class of estates. In Hanover and elsewhere this abolition had taken place before annexation to the kingdom of Prussia.
During the long and bitter struggle in the House of Lords, those members who sit in that house as representatives of the rural nobility were more obstinately opposed to progress than the hereditary peers. A part of the Prussian House of Lords consists of delegates chosen by landholders in whose families knightly estates have been held for at least one hundred years. It was from among these men that the liberal measures of the government encountered implacable opposition. Just so, in the House of Lords of Great Britain, the elective peers of Scotland and the elective peers of Ireland are more obstinately devoted to the party of the past than the hereditary peers. Among the latter, liberal men are found; the former, with great unanimity, resist all reforms.
The other class of measures is of still more general interest. The belief in the infallibility of a foreign and alien sovereign brings with it an allegiance and a subordination with no clearly defined bounds. The war of France against Germany was stimulated from the Vatican, and after the peace the same influence was exercised against the successful organization of the German Empire. Herein lay the seeds of a political conflict. Further, the great excommunication was used by the Catholic prelacy as an implement of strength and of aggression. Now the great excommunication interferes with the civil rights of the individual excommunicated, and the government would not tolerate the ban which interrupted social and commercial relations. The idea of the supremacy of the state is deeply fixed in the people of the German Empire, especially in Prussia. After much reluctance and deliberation the government resolved to assert the paramount authority of the laws of the state against every encroachment or disobedience growing out of a co-ordinate or pretended superior allegiance to a foreign alien power.
The Prussian constitution recognized the right of public worship by independent self-governing churches. It now adds that the right is to be exercised under the laws of the state and subject to the supervisions of the state as ordered by law. The idea of interfering with freedom of conscience is utterly disclaimed, but the rights of the state are to be [Page 291] maintained against attacks under the veil of religion. To carry out the objects of the ministry, the royal government proposed two laws: one to regulate the relations of the state to the education, appointment, and removal of the ministers of religion; the other to fix the limits of ecclesiastical disciplinary power. Henceforward every spiritual officer in a Christian church in Prussia must be a German and free from objections on the part of the government. He must have gone through a course at a German gymnasium, and a three years’ course at a German university or in some seminary that the state regards as equivalent. The state does not assume the theological examination, but the candidate must pass an examination on the part of the state, extending to philosophy, history, German literature, and the classical languages; and no one but a person thus thoroughly educated can be appointed, even temporarily, a minister of religion. Nominations by ecclesiastical superiors must be communicated to the government, which any time within thirty days after a nomination may veto the appointment. All theological seminaries stand under the supervision of the state.
With regard to ecclesiastical discipline, punishments must be confined to the circle of religion; are not to be decreed for acts of obedience to the laws of the state or as menaces to prevent obedience to those laws; nor to influence the exercise of the right of suffrage. The disciplinary powers within the church itself, of the prelates over their subordinate officers and ministers of religion, must likewise find their limits in the rights of sovereignty of the state.
To give efficacy to these laws by a third enactment, a royal tribunal for church matters is established with appropriate jurisdiction.
Just as these laws are promulgated here, the sad news arrives from France that a coalition of its three hostile monarchical factions has overthrown the government of Thiers, which was just promising rest to the country under a regular republican form of government. The only policy in which all three parties of the pretenders are united is that of ultramontanism. The feud between the two branches of the Bourbons has never been reconciled, and between them and the Bonapartists never can be reconciled. For the moment, the clerical influence predominates, but not with healing on its wings. It will keep the wound open rather than let it be healed by the establishment of a republic. The present President of France is a duke, with a family devoted in the extremest degree to the Catholic church and papal pretensions, and, in the consciousness that he has not France with him, gives a brutal admonition that he has the army at his beck. The leading minister is in like manner a duke, and of principles which are known to the world, because he is an author, and in a history of the church he has made the clerical sentiment paramount to historical criticism.
France, after nearly a century of convulsions and revolutions, is subjected again to the dangers of civil war, and this time by a coalition of its clergy and its rival pretendants. The coalition may cry out for monarchy in the abstract, but cannot proceed another step forward toward the establishment of monarchy without falling to pieces.
I remain, &c.,