A curious difficulty, a relic of an older state of society, arose in the principality of Lippe, in consequence of the extinction of the elder ruling line and a dispute as to the succession (see LIPPE). Some political importance attached to the case, for it was not impossible that similar difficulties might occur elsewhere, and the open support given by the emperor to the prince of Schaumburg-Lippe, who had married his sister, caused apprehension of Prussian aggression. The Mecklenburg constitution. A much more serious question of principle arose from the peculiar circumstances of Mecklenburg. The grand-duchies, which, though divided between two lines of the ducal house, had a common constitution, were the only state in Germany in which the parliament still took the form of a meeting of the estates--the nobility and the cities--and had not been altered by a written constitution. Repeated attempts of the grand-dukes to bring about a reform were stopped by the opposition of the Ritterschaft. Büffing, one of the Mecklenburg representatives in the Reichstag, therefore proposed to add to the imperial constitution a clause that in every state of the confederation there should be a parliamentary assembly. This was supported by all the Liberal party and carried repeatedly; of course it was rejected by the Bundesrat, for it would have established the principle that the constitution of each state could be revised by the imperial authorities, which would have completely destroyed their independence. It is noticeable that in 1894 when this motion was introduced it was lost; a striking instance of the decay of Liberalism. Public affairs: political parties. The public political history of Germany naturally centres around the debates in the Reichstag, and also those in the Prussian parliament. In the Prussian parliament are discussed questions of education, local government, religion and direct taxation, and though of course it is only concerned with Prussian affairs, Prussia is so large a part of Germany that its decisions have a national importance. A very large number of the members of the Reichstag and of the Prussian parliament sit in both, and the parties in the two are nearly identical. In fact, the political parties in the Reichstag are generally directly descended from the older Prussian parties. Conservatives.