Government.— In a certain limited sense Prussia was a country constitutionally governed. Its Constitution, the outcome of the short Revo lution of 1848, dates from 1850 and was pro mulgated by the then king, Frederick William IV, but was in some (not vital) respects since amended or modified with royal sanction. The Constitution is a written instrument and could only be changed by concurrent resolutions, twice passed by the Prussian Parliament,. the Diet, on these alterations being approved by the monarch himself. Executive power was vested in the king alone, the latter attaining his majority at 18. The Crown was hereditary and descended to the first-born male heirs in a straight line of succession through all the branches of the Hohenzollern dynasty. The king himself was irresponsible and exercised his powers through a cabinet, the members of which were not responsible for their actions to the Parliament, but to the king alone; he, too, both appointed and dismissed the ministers of the Crown. Members of the Cabinet had a seat in the Diet and participated in the de bates. None of the ministers exercises more power than his colleagues, although the one di recting the foreign policy was styed 'Minister President') and presides at their meetings. The power of legislation and of raising taxes and disbursing public moneys is vested in the Diet. This parliamentary body (Landtag or Diet) is composed of two houses, the Abgeordnetenhaus (Chambers of Deputies) and the Herrenhaus (House of Peers). The electoral system, how ever, on which the membership of this Prussian Parliament was based was unfair, illiberal, anti quated and was stigmatized by Bismarck him self at a public session as •the worst in the world.° Despite repeated promises held out by the ex-Kaiser, as king of Prussia, to bring tins election system more in accord with those in use in more enlightened countries, up to the end of the war no change had been made, due chiefly to the power of the 'Tinker° class of Prussia, who feared with reason to be deprived of their tradi tional predominant influence within the state if representative goyernment were adopted in earnest. As it still stands at this writing the lower, i.e., the popular, more active and power ful, house is made up of 443 members, elected for a term of five years by indirect vote. For that purpose the country is divided into elec toral districts, very uneven both as to size and population, in each of which usually one mem ber is chosen by the three-class system. Under this plan the voters (all male Prussians of 25 and over who are not otherwise disqualified by reason of crime, extreme poverty, etc.) are cut up into three classes according .to the amount of taxes paid by each. The moneyed class has so much the advantage under this preposterous system that generally one vote by a person of great wealth balances that of hundreds, even thousands, of humbler subjects. Together the three classes choose by open ballot an even number of electors, and these in turn make the final choice of a candidate, likewise by open ballot. Each chamber of the Diet again is the arbiter as to whether the choice was made prop erly, and may reject the candidate on evidence. Budgets and revenue bills must be passed by this lower house and cannot be amended by the higher. The Herrenhaus (House of Peers) again is made up of princes of the blood royal, of members of the higher nobility, of special titled members chosen by the estate-holders of Prussia, of representatives of universities and certain cities, and, lastly, of an indeterminate number of persons appointed by the king at pleasure. In 1915 the number of members of the Herrenhaus was 307, and about two-thirds of these represented, directly or indirectly, land holding (Dunker) interests. While the general judicial system is the same throughout Ger many, the judges themselves are appointed for life by 'the monarch; their position, although inferior in emoluments and standing to that in more Western countries, is on the whole fairly independent of outside influences. Judges must all have gone through a prescribed course of study and training to be fitted for office, and the standard is rigid and rather exacting. There are administrative courts (Verwaltungs gerichte*) of various grades, special courts, jury courts (ISchwurgerichteD), petty courts (gSchoffengendhtes), etc. The highest courts are the 15 next in grade the uLandesgerichte,” and lowest. It is the in Leipzig which decides, on appeal, cases handed up from the state courts, as an Imperial Su preme Court. As for local government in Prussia it is to-day largely the creation of Pro fessor Gneist, the so-called provincial district), which dates from 1872. It gives decidedly a larger measure of local autonomy and has worked out on the whole very satisfactorily. For the purpose of administration Prussia is divided into 12 prov inces, and these again into subdivisions, or aRegierungsbezirkep (government districts), 35 in all. Below these are the smallest units, the •Gemeinde (community) and (administrative district). The administrative officers at the head of these various units are all appointees of the Crown and supposed to work in its interest and to preserve public loyalty toward the rulers and institutions of the country.
The Racial Population.— The table on fol lowing page shows the area and population of Prussia in each of its provinces from 1871 to 1910.
Increase in population has, as seen from the table, been very rapid since 1871, but at a steadily diminishing rate. This growth has been most rapid in Berlin, Westphalia, Rhine land, Brandenburg and Saxony, and least so in the rural districts; in fact, in many purely agri cultural regions there has been a positive de line in population. During the Great War there has been an abnormal growth of popu lation in a number of industrial and mining towns along the western border, a growth which, in the case of a few cities such as Essen, Dusseldorf, Dortmund, etc., has amounted to 200, even 300 and 400 per cent, owing to new enormous munition plants and other ephemeral economic causes. The annual rate of suicide in Prussia is exceptionally high.
Ethnologically considered, Prussia is by no means a country inhabited by a homogeneous population. Historically the core of Prussia, that is, the province of Brandenburg, is largely Slavic in origin, the Teutonic settlers and con querors over the Slavic tribes (Wends, Sorbs) mingling with the latter; the eastern and north ern provinces of Prussia are also, in varying degree, a mixture of Slav and Teuton. The very name of Prussia (Preussen) is derived from a small pagan nationality in the northern regions of the present kingdom, the Preussen or Borussi, who became (with also their lan guage) entirely extinct. This large admixture of Slavic blood in the original provinces of what is to-day Prussia, viz., in the so-called Transelbia, the provinces of Brandenburg (Slavic: Brennabor), Pomerania, Posen, East and West Prussia and Silesia, has, of course, considerably altered the resultant population, both physically and in point of character, when comparing it with the more purely Teutonic stock in the west and south of Germany. So far as the latest official census figures of Prussia are concerned, those of 1910, they claim some 33,500,000 of the roundly 40,000,000 as Germans (the criterion being the language spoken at home) ; 3,500,000 as Poles, (in Posen. Silesia, East and West Prussia), 115,000 Lithu anians (in East Prussia), 142,000 Danes (in Schleswig), 75,000 Wends (in Brandenburg, Silesia), 30,000 Czechs (in Silesia) and 78,000 Walloons (near the Belgian border). In the rural districts of Posen and in portions of eastern Silesia and \Vest Prussia the Poles form the vast majority of inhabitants. The above figures are merely approximative and do not include such fragments of foreign (Slav) race as the Kassubians of Pomerania and West Prussia, for instance, nor the 400,000 Jews or the foreign-born residents in Prussia, some 350,000 strong.
History.— The history of Prussia properly ought to begin, of course, with the assump tion of the title of royal ruler over Prussia. The latter was a duchy (it is identical with the present province of East Prussia) to the far northeast of Brandenburg and had been wrested from its aboriginal owners, the heathen Borussi or Preussen, by the conquering and missionary zeal of the Teutonic Knights, a militant order of semi-monkish warriors, who, after their labors in Palestine were no longer needed, were entrusted by the Church of Rome with the task of christianizing that northern land. The Borussi appear to have been near relations of the Lithuanians, of whom a rem nant have survived in the province. The Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick the III, having become heir to the lands of the de funct order of the Teutonic Knights, on the strength of an understanding with the then emperor of Germany, on 18 Jan. 1701, with elaborate ceremonies crowned himself in Konigsberg, capital of the territory, °King in Prussia?) The emperor after much urging, acquiesced in this, but the proceeding created a peculiar status for the new king, who hence forth spoke of himself as Frederick I, as the in Prussia,) but remained nevertheless also Elector of Brandenburg and as such the subject lige of the emperor in Vienna. How ever, the whole method pursued by Frederick I was symbolical of what was to come. Fred erick I was a Hohenzollern, descendant of that Frederick, an insignificant burgrave of Nurem berg, who, in 1411, by the grace of the Emperor Sigismond was called to wasted and utterly desolate Brandenburg as its margrave. From the accession of this energetic ruler in small Brandenburg dates, with several severe set backs, the gradual rise to power of what be came subsequently known in an enlarged sense as Prussia. The father of the first Wing in Prussia,) the wise and pushing °Great Elector,' Frederick William (1640-88), laid the founda tion to thegreatness of his house by fortunate wars with Sweden and Poland, and his ac quisitions of new territory in western Germany, as also by lucky treaties of hereditary accession. He defeated the Swedes at the pitched battle of Fehrbellin, helped the emperor with his troops in the War of the Spanish Succession, and left his somewhat scattered domains fairly prosperous and in good order. During the whole of the preceding century his predecessors had not played an important part, either in the Reformation era or in the Thirty Years' War, although they had seized the Church prop erty within their lands and become adherents of the new religion themselves and had fallen heir to the dukes of Pomerania and thus prospectively enlarged their patrimony.