“‘When a sportsman becomes faint and weary,’ said the Prince a few months ago, in conversation with a party of friends, ‘and is about to go home, he will not alter his mind because he is told there is a covey of partridges near at hand. It would perhaps be different if he were told that there was some pig in the next glen. The chance of a boar hunt would revive his strength and courage.’ So goes the story (not quite accurately, by the way), according to an article in the _Kölnische Zeitung_, written apparently by a member of the Minister’s immediate _entourage_, and certainly emphasised by the sarcastic tone in which it frequently deals with the difficulties in the way of reform. The simile is so far to the point, that the wild boar referred to represented certain reforms in the Customs, and in the fiscal and railway system. But the correspondent omitted the real moral of the story. When he says, ‘As soon as Prince Bismarck is in a position to submit complete and well-founded schemes calculated to withstand criticism, there will be no longer in our opinion any difficulty in finding in the Reichstag a large and resolute party, in favour of such reforms of our commercial policy;’ and when he makes a similar assertion respecting the taxation laws, and the railway system, he transposes the actual relations of things and circumstances. There is no question of the Imperial Chancellor submitting measures which would have to run the gauntlet, first, of the Minister to whose department they properly belong, and then, of the Reichstag. The Prince has no intention of preparing such measures himself. He is anxious for these reforms, but he has no idea of embodying them himself in Parliamentary measures to be submitted to the Legislature. He expects his colleagues to undertake that work, and has informed them so. That he has failed to induce them to take any such initiative is, as the _Post_ of the 19th assures us--we believe on the best authority--one of the reasons that have led the Chancellor to send in his resignation.