This ministerial figure represents the Emperor in the Reichstag and assumes the responsibility for the acts of the Government. This nominal responsibility is entirely unlike that of a minister in a parliamentary country; for it does not bind him at all in relation to Parliament, but only in relation to his master, and also, in a certain measure (whatever some may allege), to public opinion. The Chancellor, however, holds a plurality of dignities and functions. He is Jack-of-all-trades to the monarchy: President of the Prussian Ministry, President of the Bundesrat, and Imperial Minister for Foreign Affairs. These complex duties might well prove too exacting for a genuine statesman; how much more so for a mere politician! Owing to the difference of spirit between the Prussian Chamber of Deputies and the Reichstag, he has to appear before the former in the stern guise of a rigid Conservative, while in the latter his face wears a more attractive mask, being set off with a tinge of Liberalism. The Chancellor is thus compelled, by the very nature of his functions, to be an opportunist in internal politics. The Bundesrat, composed of representatives sent to it by the individual States, is a pliable tool in the hands of the Emperor and the other German rulers, who themselves obey the Imperial will. It shares the legislative power with the head of the Empire and with the Reichstag. Bismarck held that the best way of uprooting the particularism of the small States and clearing the ground for final unification was to invite all citizens of twenty-five years and upwards to elect representatives for the central Parliament. The Reichstag, chosen by universal suffrage, is the popular assembly, the real mouthpiece of public opinion. Its powers are limited to voting upon the budget and upon laws for the Empire, which must be taken as meaning laws of national interest.[6] This democratic Parliament, however, controls, so far as it can, the administration of public affairs. Its best weapon of defence against the arbitrary power of the Crown is the opposition it can raise to any Government proposals for expenditure or taxation. It has often used this weapon; but if it presses its opposition too far, it runs the risk of being dissolved by a mere decree of the Emperor’s, to make room for an assembly that will prove more open to compromise. By the side of the Empire are the federal States and the three free cities, which possess local executives and Diets. In order to furnish these States with the means of a separate existence, Bismarck, while instituting a special budget for the Empire, left to them the revenue obtained from direct taxes. The Imperial budget draws its nutriment from the customs, the excise, and the postal service. The amount derived from these sources being insufficient, it also receives the “matricular contributions” (_Matrikularbeiträge_), paid by each State on a scale that keeps the balance of the budget properly adjusted. II.