Page:Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire (1899).djvu/214

170 name, would have been to adopt the very theory of the Constitution for which the House was contending, the English theory that the sovereign has neither the right of deciding nor responsibility; it would have been to undermine the monarchical side of the Constitution which Bismarck was expressly defending. The King himself never attempted to avoid the responsibility; in a public speech he had already said that the army organisation was his own work: "It is my own and I am proud of it; I will hold firmly to it and carry it through with all my energy." In his answer to the address from the House, both on this and on later occasions, he expressly withdrew the assumption that he was not well informed or that he did not approve of his Ministers' action.

The address was carried by a majority of 255 to 68; the King refused to receive it in person. The House then proceeded to throw out a Bill for military reorganisation which was laid before them; they adopted a resolution that they reserved for later discussion the question, for what part of the money illegally spent in 1862 they would hold the Ministry personally responsible. They then proceeded to the Budget of 1863, and again rejected the army estimates; they refused the money asked for raising the salaries of the ambassadors (Bismarck himself, while at St. Petersburg, had suffered much owing to the insufficiency of his salary, and he wished to spare his successors a similar inconvenience); and they brought in Bills for the responsibility of Ministers. The public attention, however,