Give the working-man the right to work as long as he is healthy, assure him care when he is sick; assure him maintenance when he is old. If you do th… - Otto von Bismarck

I ask you what right had I to close the way to the throne against these people? The kings of Prussia have never been by preference kings of the rich. Frederick the Great said when Crown Prince: “Quand je serai roi, je serai un vrai roi des gueux.” He undertook to be the protector of the poor, and this principle has been followed by our later kings. At their throne suffering has always found a refuge and a hearing. ... Our kings have secured the emancipation of the serfs, they have created a thriving peasantry, and they may possibly be successful—the earnest endeavour exists, at any rate—in improving the condition of the working classes somewhat. To have refused access to the throne to the complaints of these operatives would not have been the right course to pursue, and it was, moreover, not my business to do it. The question would afterwards have been asked: “How rich must a deputation be in order to its reception by the King?”

I should like to see the State, which for the most part consists of Christians—although you reject the name Christian State—penetrated to some extent by the principles of the religion it professes; especially as concerns the help one gives to his neighbour, and sympathy with the lot of old and suffering people.

The interests of the state alone have guided me, and it has been a calumny when publicists, even well-meaning, have accused me of having ever advocated an aristocratic system. I have never regarded birth as a substitute for want of ability; whenever I have come forward on behalf of landed property, it has not been in the interests of proprietors of my own class, but because I see in the decline of agriculture one of the greatest dangers to our permanence as a state. The ideal that has always floated before me has been a monarchy which should be so far controlled by an independent national representation—according to my notion, representing classes or callings—that monarch or parliament would not be able to alter the existing statutory position before the law separately but only communi consensu; with publicity, and public criticism, by press and Diet, of all political proceedings.