Is it only the youthfulness of our institutions that brought about this outcome? Will the natural continuation of their development bring us parliamentary government? I consider it possible if certain prerequisites are in place. Fortunately, these prerequisites are such that the people are in a position to create them for themselves. They can be summarized with the following words: political education of the voters. If, one day, elections deliver consolidated parties whose leaders are undoubtedly capable of governing, then the crown will not hesitate very long in making use of such an advantage to strengthen its government. An education like this, though, does not merely consist of newspaper reading and associational life; it requires practical work in the service of the public good, and, as the best result of this work, a spirit of dedication to the general public and the possibility of firm discipline. In Prussia, we now possess, in the form of universal compulsory military service and universal compulsory school attendance, the most outstanding foundations for such a disposition towards practical politics and education in it. In all this, though, one can only wish that the state would not put school at the service of hierarchical interests as exclusively as it has done since 1840, but would instead know how to utilize it more fruitfully for the highest purposes of civil society. In that case, however, everything will depend on the organization of the internal Land [federal state] administration, and here, as already mentioned, we may expect that considerable steps will be made towards improvement in short order and that an agreement on a beneficial district and municipal ordinance will not be too far off! Only then will the path to reaching parliamentary rule be clear.
This path will eventually prove long and difficult enough, more difficult than for England in the eighteenth century. If the political education of voters is the crucial prerequisite for parliamentary rule, then the task will become increasingly difficult as the franchise is extended to less educated classes. These days, the democratic current pervading the world is sweeping through Germany as well. All offices are open to all classes; nine-tenths of all property is movable and separable; by means of the electoral laws of 1850 and 1867, our people’s representations have been set up on a purely democratic basis.* On the other hand, the social condition of the country takes on ever greater and more complicated dimensions as a result of immense advances in industry, the applied sciences, means of communication, and the military system; every day, the task of state administration becomes more expansive and more complicated, requiring each civil servant to bring ever more comprehensive techniques and an increasingly specialized educational background to his work.
* This was not true of the German federal states and especially not of Prussia with its three-class franchise.
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