Take, for instance, the question of diplomatic representation; Bismarck wished to give the real power to the King of Prussia, but at the same time to preserve the external dignity and respect due to the Allied Princes.

He arranged that the King of Prussia as President of the Confederation appointed envoys and ambassadors to foreign States; from this time there ceased to be a Prussian diplomatic service, and, in this matter, Prussia is entirely absorbed in Germany.

It would have been only natural that the smaller Allied States should also surrender their right to enter into direct diplomatic relations with foreign Powers.
This Bismarck did not require.

Saxony, for instance, continued to have its own envoys; England and France, as in the old days, kept a Minister in Dresden.

Bismarck was much criticised for this, but he knew that nothing would so much reconcile the King of Saxony to his new position, and it was indeed no small thing that the Princes thus preserved in a formal way a right which shewed to all the world that they were not subjects but sovereign allies.