NORTH GERMAN LAW OPENS THE STATES TO ONE ANOTHER’S PEOPLE

BERLIN, 1867-11-01. — BERLIN, Friday.—A further and most practical consequence of the new North German union is declared in the law bearing this day’s date upon freedom of movement. King William, acting in the name of the Confederation and with the consent of its Federal Council and Reichstag, has sanctioned provisions by which a citizen of one member State may establish himself in another. The matter reaches beyond the traveller’s convenience. It concerns the workman seeking employment, the tradesman seeking customers, and the family proposing to exchange a poor prospect at home for a better one elsewhere within the federal territory.

The opening provision states the principle with considerable breadth. Every federal citizen is entitled, within the Confederation, “to reside or settle,” “to acquire landed property of every kind,” and “to carry on trades of every kind,” subject to the legal conditions applying to natives. These phrases, translated from the statute, carry the argument from the council chamber into the workshop and dwelling-house. A Saxon does not thereby become a Prussian subject, nor a Prussian a citizen of Hamburg; but his origin in another federal State is not, of itself, to disqualify him from making his livelihood there.

The measure gives practical expression to a promise already contained in the federal Constitution. Its third article establishes “a common citizenship” and requires the citizen of each member State to be treated in another “as a native” in the matters there enumerated. Residence, business, public employment, the acquisition of property, and the protection of the laws are among its concerns. The new enactment therefore proceeds from a constitutional obligation rather than an isolated indulgence granted by the police. What was announced as a foundation of the union is now receiving the machinery necessary for ordinary administration.

This is nevertheless no proclamation that a man may demand maintenance wherever he chooses to present himself. The freedom secured by the statute stands beside provisions concerning subsistence and public relief. An apprehension that a newcomer might become poor is not the same thing as an established inability to maintain himself; neither is permission to settle an unconditional claim upon a municipal treasury. Here lies a distinction of great consequence to the towns. Their officers must reconcile the federal citizen’s liberty with the existing duties of relief, without converting those duties into a general licence to exclude strangers.

The political change behind these provisions is scarcely less remarkable than their domestic application. Last year Prussia and Austria were at war; the old German Confederation was dissolved, and several governments disappeared beneath the settlement that followed. Hanover, Electoral Hesse, Nassau, and Frankfurt were annexed by Prussia. The present North German Confederation, whose Constitution came into operation on the first of July, now brings Prussia and the other participating States under common federal institutions. Count Bismarck, as Federal Chancellor, directs an undertaking which must demonstrate its value in peaceful affairs as well as its strength in diplomacy and arms.

The authority employed is federal, not merely Prussian. The Bundesrat represents the member governments, while the Reichstag rests upon elections conducted under a broad male franchise. Their concurrence is recorded in the law’s formal declaration, issued “in the name of the North German Confederation.” Those words deserve attention. The smaller States retain their governments and many of their separate institutions, yet questions formerly approached as dealings with an outsider are increasingly governed by a common rule. A local authority may still administer its law; it cannot assume that the citizenship of a neighbouring federal State makes an applicant a foreigner.

For commerce, the importance is plain even without any immediate reckoning in prices. The Customs Union has already accustomed much of Germany to the movement of goods across boundaries which once obstructed trade. The present measure concerns the movement of the persons who make, carry, and sell those goods. A manufacturer requiring additional hands, or a mechanic unable to find sufficient employment in his own district, has an interest in rules that make settlement less dependent upon local origin. Railways may carry the traveller swiftly; the legal right to remain and work determines whether the journey can become a new livelihood.

There are limits which merchants and workmen would do well to observe. Equal treatment is not exemption from the laws imposed upon the inhabitants themselves. A trade remains subject to the lawful conditions governing its exercise, and the acquisition of land does not free the purchaser from the obligations attaching to it. Nor does this statute settle every question of political membership or municipal privilege. Its great purpose is to remove the disadvantage arising merely from a federal citizen’s previous home. To describe it as the abolition of every local regulation would promise considerably more than its language warrants.

The geographical boundary is equally important. This is a North German enactment, not an opening of every German frontier under one civil authority. Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden stand outside the Confederation, while the Grand Duchy of Hesse belongs to it only for its territory north of the Main. Commercial arrangements and political sympathies do not erase these distinctions. The citizen considering removal must ask whether his proposed destination lies within the federal system. The measure makes an extensive common field of residence and labour, but it does not establish a universal European right of settlement.

The test now passes from legislators to administrators. Police offices, municipal bodies, employers, and those charged with poor relief must distinguish an enforceable objection under the law from a mere dislike of newcomers. For the individual, the consequence may be as modest as permission to take a room and accept a place in a workshop; for the Confederation, it is a test of whether common citizenship has substance. The union’s durability cannot be measured by this statute alone. Yet a government which promises Germans the advantages of union must reckon among those advantages the liberty to seek an honest livelihood beyond the boundary of their native State.