Note 72 — Chapter III · THE COURT AND THE CABINET.

“It is high time,” wrote the Prince Consort to the Prince Regent of Prussia. “It seems to me one of his chief difficulties consists in the fundamental difference between his and the people’s way of looking at things. He proposes to make concessions as acts of grace; they, on the other hand, ask to have a legal status, and institutions not dependent on the good-or ill-will of the Sovereign. They had most of them Documentary Rights, as they were called, in the Middle Ages, and as the Revolution of 1848 had overthrown everything, the Emperor was wrong, when it had been put down, not to return to a state of things based on law and right, instead of, as it were, legitimising the Revolution by proclaiming himself as its heir.”—Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CIV. Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 264, contains a curious letter of Prince Bismarck’s on this interview, showing how utterly misinformed he was as to its purport.