German Radical Party will also continue to adhere to its standpoint “on principle”: it will receive some formal concessions here and there, but still it will do in practice what is really necessary. Scoffers believe that they can already foresee the Center Party and the Radical Party riding military-friendly horses in the next Reichstag in a race to see who is the better patriot. Admittedly, it won't come to such a happy situation; but the mere fact that such possibilities are emerging makes it clear to anyone looking over the past few years just how great the transformation has been.
Even greater is the change in our political life regarding views of social policy. The pure old Manchester school is as outdated as the idea of establishing a militia instead of a standing army. The Conservative Party was forced to give up on its old patriarchal-feudal ideals in favor of reform concepts, the National Liberal Party had to relinquish individual self-help, and finally, the German Radical Party has also converted itself and conformed to the “decrees.”* That the party initially wrapped itself in the cloak of opposition may have helped considerably in facilitating this transition. At the very moment when it became apparent that the Reich chancellor held back on one aspect of the new system, workers' protection, the German Radical Party began to warm to this very effort, and thus has gradually adopted the insight “of also having learned something” and buried the principle of a natural harmony of interests. Even last summer's Invalids Law [providing old age and disability insurance] had to be built up solely by the Herculean power of Prince Bismarck. In this context, the full force of particularism united with doctrinaire opposition and economic egoism. No minister other than Prince Bismarck would have been able to defeat this phalanx. With this victory, however, this campaign is also concluded and definitively won. [ . . . ]
Similarly, it is Bismarck's very own idea of monarchical social policy that underwent further evolution and, as it did, left behind the intentions of its originator and prepared the ground for his fall. No one is able to stop this idea any more. The future belongs to it. Henceforth, it no longer lives through its creator but by virtue of its own power.
The German Reich constitution – the balance of unity and independence in the confederation, of monarchy and parliament in the constitution – is secured for generations to come because of proper conception in its design and established practice in its implementation. Like-minded people and contributors to this journal have repeatedly demanded that the conclusion of Bismarck's work had to be the creation of a party to which he may one day bequeath the legacy of his political ideas, entrusting it with Germany's future. The Cartel finally seemed to come close to fulfilling this wish. With the electoral defeat of the Cartel [in the Reichstag elections of February 1890], that wish has again evaporated. We have always taken a different point of view – not just after this defeat, but before, too. The future of a country can never depend on one party or party combination alone. “Party” postulates the concept of “opposition party” and thus change in government. It sounds paradoxical but is absolutely true: The
* Delbrück refers here to the royal decrees [Kaiserliche Erlasse] issued on November 17, 1881, and in subsequent years, announcing comprehensive social legislation that Bismarck was able to realize only in part during the 1880s. On February 4, 1890, Kaiser Wilhelm II issued his own decree signaling more social insurance, greater workplace protection, and attention to the grievances of labor – ed.
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