[Footnote 80: Busch, _Our Chancellor_, vol. i. p. 122, quotes speeches of his hero to prove that Bismarck himself disliked this Civil Marriage Law. "From the political point of view I have convinced myself that the State . . . is constrained by the dictates of self-defence to enact this law in order to avert from a portion of His Majesty's subjects the evils with which they are menaced by the Bishops' rebellion against the laws and the State" (Speech of Jan. 17, 1873). In 1849 he had opposed civil marriage.] Bismarck's resolve to give up the system of Free Trade, or rather of light customs dues, adopted by Prussia and the German Zollverein in 1865, is so momentous a fact in the economic history of the modern world, that we must here give a few facts which will enable the reader to understand the conditions attending German commerce up to the years 1878-79, when the great change came. The old order of things in Prussia, as in all German States, was strongly protective--in fact, to such an extent as often to prevent the passing of the necessaries of life from one little State to its Lilliputian neighbours. The rise of the national idea in Germany during the wars against the great Napoleon led to a more enlightened system, especially for Prussia. The Prussian law of 1818 asserted the principle of imposing customs dues for revenue purposes, but taxed foreign products to a moderate extent. On this basis she induced neighbouring small German States to join her in a Customs Union (Zollverein), which gradually extended, until by 1836 it included all the States of the present Empire except the two Mecklenburgs, the Elbe Duchies, and the three Free Cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck. That is to say, the attractive force of the highly developed Prussian State practically unified Germany for purposes of trade and commerce, and that, too, thirty-eight years before political union was achieved.