The Government without a Budget

The atmosphere in which Otto von Bismarck took up office was truly that of a coup d’etat . He knew that he had no friend among politically influential people, except Roon and, if necessary, also the King. Bismarck was the defender of ‘state egoism’ as ‘the only sound foundation of a great state’. Bismarck might well object to the spiritual heritage of the German classical thinkers and poets and their followers, saying that by itself it was too indefinite and unpractical to form the basis of the state. On the 29th of September he attended for the first time in his new dignity a sitting of the budget commission of the House of Deputies. He announced in the name of the government the withdrawal of the budget for 1863, which had already been accepted by the Chamber, from further parliamentary discussion.