“According to the _Post_, the true moral of the above story is to be found in the words which the Prince added on that occasion: ‘He could only remain in office if his colleagues took up the reforms in question of their own motion, and independently.’ Otherwise, he wished to retire, as he did not feel strong enough to bear the strain of Ministerial crises, together with a breach with his old colleagues, and the necessity of accustoming himself to new men. It was unfair to ask him to do all the work, and submit it to the criticism of a departmental chief bent on another course. (The ‘other course’ referred to was doubtless that of the Manchester School.) He had laid his own course in the railway question, and had ostensibly received the approval of all his colleagues. When it came, however, to the carrying out of his proposals he met with the customary passive resistance, and the usual refusal--just like the Progressive party, whose invariable reply was, ‘No, not in that way, but in another way’--that is to say, in some way that would never work. On that occasion the Chancellor said: ‘What I have to do is to ascertain whether my present colleagues will, of their own initiative and free conviction, carry out those reforms which I regard as indispensable, in such a manner that they will take the responsibility for me, and not I for them. If they would only do so I would willingly continue my credit and my name to the firm, in order to carry through these reforms.’ “The writer in the _Kölnische Zeitung_ has expressed himself so confident with regard to the reforms desired by the Prince, that one may perhaps inquire why the same success which he promises if the Chancellor submits them to the criticism of Ministers and of the parties in the Reichstag should not attend them if the colleagues, whose business it is, were to draft these measures and recommend them to the acceptance of the Legislature. The particular colleague who, as already observed, had no small share in preparing the article in question, is as self-confident as he is many-sided. He seems to possess power and influence. Two years ago he said in the Reichstag: ‘The word _impossible_ is printed in very small characters in my dictionary.’ He has connections with the Castle at Coblenz, and is at the same time highly appreciated in certain exalted circles in Berlin, where people are most liberal and enlightened, as a corner-stone of Constitutionalism and a pillar of Protestantism. Why does a man of so much importance and ability decline to take the initiative of the reforms which the Chancellor has at heart? Is it, perhaps, that he fears to jeopardise one side of his many-sidedness, or to renounce thereby his past, his principles, and his connections as a member of the Manchester School?