The constitutional form of the German Empire of two hundred years ago was that of to-day. A band of sovereign states; an emperor at their head, Roman in name but German in reality; a Reichstag, or diet of the empire; imperial courts of justice, Reichskammergericht and Reichshofrat, or Aulic Council; an army of general contribution. Really, nothing could be more different than the Germany of Charles VI from that of Bismarck's creation. The watchword of the latter is efficiency, the mark of the institutions of the old empire was their inefficiency. Rather it was the Germany of which Bismarck got rid, the Germany whose chief state still was Austria. That was changed in form, but little in essentials. To have a cipher emperor, or none, made little difference, and if nine-tenths of the 330 sovereign members of the old empire had been suppressed, its destinies were always in the hands of the few greater states. Now there is a real emperor, a real Reichstag, ordered administration of justice, a military system the most perfect in the world. In the eighteenth century the emperor, as such, was a figurehead, the diet a mockery, the law-courts utterly incompetent, the army, when it could be assembled, a shame and a disgrace. Soldiers there were in plenty, and of the best, but their masters preferred to earn money by hiring them out to foreign powers. There was no Zollverein to remove the shackles from internal trade and unify commercial interest. The imperial dignity was elective, not hereditary; foreign kings might aspire to it. But the main difference was the absence from the minds of all, saving a few philosophers, of any sense of German nationality or unity.