_March 1st._--Count Bismarck wishes me to get the following inserted in the South German newspapers:--“The speech of von Freydorf, the Grand Ducal Minister, in the Baden Diet on the Jurisdiction Treaty with the North German Confederation, has been inspired by an absolutely correct view of the situation. Particular attention should be paid to that portion in which the Foreign Minister of the Grand Duchy declared the policy of Baden to be in perfect accord with that of the Chancellor of the North German Confederation, and also to the manner in which he defined the position of the South German States towards the Treaty of Prague. Through the dissolution of the old Germanic Confederacy, those States have, as a matter of fact, become sovereign States. That treaty _gives them liberty_ (to me: Underline those words!) to form a new union amongst themselves, a South German Confederation, by means of which they may take measures for bringing about a national union with the united North. That treaty involves no prescription, engagement or compulsion whatever to adopt such a course. Any insinuation of that kind with respect to States whose sovereignty has been emphatically recognised would be something absolutely unheard of. In the Swiss war of the Sonderbund, and also in the late American civil war, States were obliged against their own will to remain within a union which they had previously joined, but no one ever saw a sovereign State or Prince required to enter into confederation against their own judgment. The South German States, including half of Hesse, have unquestionably the right--acting either in concert or singly--to endeavour, in co-operation with the North, to advance the cause of national unity. The question is whether the present is a good time to choose. The Chancellor of the North German Confederation answers this question in the negative. But it is only possible by the most wilful garbling of his expressions to maintain that his final aim is not the union of Germany. Partition of German national territory! Calumny! Not a single word of the Chancellor’s justifies that conclusion. As Herr Lasker has not spoken at the instance of the Government of Baden, although his speech would almost convey the impression that he was a Minister of that State, it is difficult to understand where he got that idea. Perhaps it was merely the conceit of the honourable member that led him to make such a statement.”