the Senate, was most impressive, and it touched the hearts of all his hearers. He reminded the Assembly that their thousand years' history testified to the fact that the Hamburgers were ever an active, practical, patriotic people, who took life earnestly, caring not only for business and family, but for the common weal. Every good Hamburger has always been ready to sacrifice his feelings and his personal interests for the good of the Fatherland. Let all of them, he urged, even those who could not do it heartily, vote for the measure, in the sure and certain conviction that the "Father City" would flourish and prosper, and increase through the skill, the energy, and, above all, the public spirit of its citizens. Hamburg would still remain the emporium, for the wide world, of the German Fatherland, to which she would be more closely united than ever. This speech was followed by much and earnest discussion, after which the proposal of the Senate was at last agreed to as an inevitable measure, and Hamburg was included in the Zoll Verein by one hundred and six votes against forty-six. The details for carrying into effect this conclusion have occupied seven years, and the event was finally celebrated with great pomp, the Emperor William II. coming in person to enhance the solemnity of the sacrifice brought by the burghers of the erst free city for the common weal of the German Fatherland. As we have said, the step was inevitable sooner or later, and the Hamburgers knew it. The German Empire, so long a fiction, had arisen stronger than ever. It was natural, very necessary, that an anomaly should be abolished which placed the great gateway of foreign commerce outside the customs regulations of the rest of the empire. It was natural for the imperial authorities to desire that their two great commercial ports should be at one with the empire in all respects; that as far as their trade is concerned they should not be in the position of foreign countries, jealously watched by imperial officers lest they might seek to injure the financial interests of the country of which they form a part. It is too early to know what effect this step will have upon the trade of the two cities, whether it will check or increase their prosperity. The gain to Germany is certain. The gain to the two cities, but in especial to Hamburg, is something less than problematical. Meantime the last and only privilege the three once powerful Hanseatic cities retain is that of being entitled, like the greatest States in the empire, to send their own representatives to the Bundesrath and to the Reichstag. EPILOGUE.