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The German Empire.

The establishment of the German Empire dates from the 18th of January, 1871, and is consequently the youngest of the great powers on earth.

The German empire is a confederation of twenty-five States. It comprises four kingdoms (Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Wurtemberg), six grand-duchies, five duchies, seven principalities and three republics.

The latter, which are usually called the free cities, are Lubeck, Bremen and Hamburg. Besides these, Alsace and Lorraine, the newly-acquired territories, are dependencies of the German empire, and are administered by a governor. It was formerly believed that republics only were able to form a compact federal government, but the successful organization of the German empire refutes this argument.

The German empire is inhabited by forty millions of people. With the exception of about 1,500,000 of Poles in Eastern Prussia, 100,000 Danes in Northern Schleswig, and about 200,000 French in Alsace and Lorraine, the population consists entirely of Germans. By far the largest State is Prussia, which has a population of 24,000,000; next comes Bavaria, with 4,800,000, Saxony with 2,400,000 and Wurtemberg with 1,500,000. The aggregate population of the other twenty States is about 5,500,000. The population of Alsace and Lorraine, according to the French census of 1866, is nearly 1,500,000.

The German empire has 211,313 square miles, its area is consequently considerably smaller than that of European Russia, which has 1,002,285 square miles, and it is also smaller than the Austrian empire, which embraces 247,780 square miles, and it is only a little larger than France (208,258 square miles), but considerably larger than Great Britain and Ireland (121,785 square miles), and Italy with Rome (11,770 square miles).

With regard to population, European Russia, with nearly 70,000,000 of people, exceeds the German empire, but the latter outranks all the other European States with regard to the number of inhabitants.