2 
the socialism of to-day. 
of the Minister of the Interior, no one rose to vote in favour 
of the proposed clause. The shorthand report shows that this 
result was received by the assembly with laughter. Since then 
the two attempts against the life of the Emperor, repeated one 
after the other by Hœdel and Nobiling, forced the hand of 
the Imperial Parliament, and an exceptional law of draconic 
severity was put into operation against Socialism. During the 
course of the debate. Count Eulenburg, Minister of the Interior 
and Prussian Delegate to the Federal Council, in order to 
defend the object of the law, explained very clearly the ideas 
actually held by the Socialist party in Germany. As he was 
not contradicted by those members of the Diet who represented 
that particular shade of opinion, we may assume that he 
advanced nothing which was not correct on all points. 
Before 1875, there existed in Germany two powerful 
Socialist associations. The first was called the General 
Association of German Working Men ” {der allgemeine detitsche 
Arbeiterverein). Founded by Lassalle in 1863, it afterwards 
had for president the deputy Schweizer, and then the deputy 
Hasenclever. Its principal centre of activity was North Ger 
many. The second was the » Social-democratic Working 
Men’s Party ” {die Social-democratische Arbeiterpartei), led by 
two well-known deputies of the Reichstag, Herr Bebel and Herr 
Liebknecht. Its adherents were chiefly in Saxony and Southern 
Germany. The first took into account the ties of nationality, 
and claimed the intervention of the State in order to bring 
about a gradual transformation of society ; the second, on the 
contrary, expected the triumph of its cause only from a 
revolutionary movement. 
These two associations existed for a long time in open 
hostility towards each other ; less, however, from the difference 
of the aims they had in view than in consequence of personal 
rivalry. Nevertheless, in May, 1875, at the Congress of Gotha, 
they amalgamated under the title of the “ Socialist Working 
Men’s Party of Germany ” {Socialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutsch 
lands). The deputy Hasenclever was nominated president ; 
but the union did not last long, or was never complete, for as 
early as the month of August following a separate meeting of