367.] Such in its main outlines is the new Constitution of Germany.

On the whole, it has worked well.

That it has fulfilled all the expectations aroused in that year of triumph and jubilation will surprise no one who knows that absolute and lasting success is attained only in Utopias, never in practical politics.

In truth, the suddenness with which German unity was finally achieved was in itself a danger.
The English reader will perhaps find it hard to realise this until he remembers that the whole course of recorded history shows us the Germans politically disunited, or for the most part engaged in fratricidal strifes.

When they first came within the ken of the historians of Ancient Rome, they were a set of warring tribes who banded together only under the pressure of overwhelming danger; and such was to be their fate for well-nigh two thousand years.