The following table shows the party move ment in the Reichstag from 1871 to the 1912 legislative period: promise with the rapidly growing Clerical party. The National-Liberals were dropped as factio non grata,° because they opposed the special legislation of persecution proposed by Bismarck against the growing Social-Demo cratic party, and the creation of financial in dependence of the empire without political responsibility to the Reichstag.
1878-1887. In the following decade Bis marck depended for the support of his bills mainly on the Conservatives and Clericals. In the year 1879 Bismarck, with the help of the Conservatives and Clericals, changed the tariff policy from free trade to protection. The National-Liberals split over this issue.
1887-1890. In the year 1887 the Reichstag -was dissolved because the government could not find a majority for its demands of a strengthening of the army, necessitated by the threatening "revanche" of France under the leadership of General Boulanger. The result of the election of 1887 was the victory of the government which •found a working majority in the Conservatives and the National-Liberals, a union known in German parliamentary his tory as the Cartell.
1890-1907. In the election of 1890 the Car tell majority broke down and the government had to make further concessions to the Cleri cals in order to win their support. Until 1907 Generally speak ing, the predecessor of the present German Empire was the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation whpse origin may be dated back to the year 800, when Charlemagne, ruler of the Germanic Francs, assumed the Imperial crown of the old Roman Empire, thus reviving the ancient idea of an "imperium mundi.° But in constant struggles with the papacy, which as the osacerdonum mundi° considered itself the master over the imperium and. with the territorial rulers and lords within the empire, the central authority was steadily weakened so that at the end of the Thirty Years' War (1648) the power of the emperor was merely a shadow; the real power being in the hands of the territorial rulers, secular and ecclesiastic, of whom there existed about 300. The German of these times had no national fatherland; his fatherland was the small state in which he was born and reared. A Prussian regarded a Bavarian as a foreigner, a Bavarian a citizen of Wiirtemberg, etc. As a matter of fact, when in the year 1805 the last German emperor abdicated, the thousand year old state was, as Voltaire had expressed it, neither Holy nor Roman nor an empire. It had given up its intimate connection with the Catholic Church, the Italian parts of it had separated from it, and the sovereign empire had changed into a confederation of numerous sovereign states. It was not difficult for the genius of Napoleon La the head of a regenerated and united national France, to destroy this skeleton.
With one sweep the revolutionary ccrntemptor of tradition decreased the number of the Ger man states from ca. 300 to some 30, thus un knowingly rendering a valuable service to the future unification of Germany. After the complete defeat of the strongest German state, (1806-07), Prussia, and its reduction to about half of its territory, almost all Germany was at the mercy of the French victor who treated it contemptuously as his vassal. But during this time of extreme humiliation the fundamental strength of the Prussian state and the splendid spirit, of its citizens became manifest. In a surprisingly short time, a thorough regenera tion took place under the leadership of Stein. Hardenberg, Scharnhorst and many other prominent men. The purpose of these reforms was to increase in the citizens a feeling of responsibility in the affairs of the government by direct participation in them. The reforms began with the revival of self-trovernment in the cities, as it is still essentially in existence at the present time. It was Stein's intention gradually to extend this participation of the citizens in state government and finally to unite the different states in a federation with one head and a national representative legisla ture. However his dreams were not realized. The southern states of Germany adopted con stitutions between 1818 and 1820, the central and some smaller northern states followed in the 30's, but Prussia and Austria, the two lead ing German states, had to be forced to introduce constitutional government through the revolu tion of 1848. At the same time the hope for a real national German state was for the time lost when, at the Congress of Vienna (1815), an unsatisfactory, loose confederation of the German states was formed under the name °Der Deutsche Bund.° But the longing for a pow erful national German state was strong among the German people, and several attempts were made to bring it about. The most notable of these was the German Parliament at Frank fort-on-Main chosen by universal suffrage for the purpose of drawing up a constitution and electing a German emperor. This attempt, like all the others, was unsuccessful. An empire with two jealous rivals, Austria and Prussia, fighting for the leadership, was impossible. Bismarck's political genius clearly recognized this. Only °with blood and iron and not by orations° could the new empire be established. The rivalry between Austria and Prussia led to the so-called German War in the year 1866. As a result of it Austria had to give up her con nection with the rest of the German states, a federation of the northern German states under the leadership of Prussia was formed and the three southern German states entered into an alliance with the North-German Federation (the Norddeutsche Bundy.