I should like to see the gentlemen who consider this possibility answer an invalid from Königgrätz when he asks for the result of this mighty effort. You would say to him: 'Yes, indeed, for the German unity nothing is achieved, the occasion for that will probably come, that we can have easily, we can come to an understanding any day, but we have saved the Budget-right of the Chamber of Deputies, we have saved the right of the Prussian Parliament every year to put the existence of the Prussian army in question,'… and therewith the invalid must console himself for the loss of his limbs and the widow as she buries her husband."
It is interesting to compare this speech with the similar speech he made after Olmütz: how great is the similarity in thought and expression, how changed is the position of the speaker! He had no sympathy with these doubts and hesitations; why so much distrust of one another? His Constitution might not be the best, it might not be perfect, but at least let it be completed. "Gentlemen," he said, "let us work quickly, let us put Germany in the saddle; it will soon learn to ride." He was annoyed and irritated by the opposition he met.
"If one has struggled hard for five years to achieve that which now lies before us, if one has spent one's time, the best years of one's life, and sacrificed one's health for it, if one remembers the trouble it has cost to decide quite a small paragraph, even a question of punctuation, with two and twenty Governments, if at last we have agreed on that as it here lies before us, then gentlemen who have experienced little of all these struggles, and know nothing of the official proceedings which have gone be-
