Towards the end of 1879 it spread with sudden fury over the whole of Germany. This outburst, at a moment when no new financial scandals or other illustrations of Semitic demoralization and domination were before the public, has never been fully explained. It is impossible to doubt, however, that the secret springs of the new agitation were more or less directly supplied by Prince Bismarck himself. Since 1877 the relations between the chancellor and the National Liberals had gradually become strained. The deficit in the budget had compelled the government to think of new taxes, and in order to carry them through the Reichstag the support of the National Liberals had been solicited. Until then the National Liberals had faithfully supported the chancellor in nursing the consolidation of the new empire, but the great dream of its leaders, especially of Lasker and Bamberger, who had learnt their politics in England, was to obtain a constitutional and economic _régime_ similar to that of the British Isles. The organization of German unity was now completed, and they regarded the new overtures of Prince Bismarck as an opportunity for pressing their constitutional demands. These were refused, the Reichstag was dissolved and Prince Bismarck boldly came forward with a new fiscal policy, a combination of protection and state socialism. Lasker and Bamberger thereupon led a powerful secession of National Liberals into opposition, and the chancellor was compelled to seek a new majority among the ultra-Conservatives and the Roman Catholic Centre. This was the beginning of the famous "journey to Canossa." Bismarck did not hide his mortification. He began to recognize in anti-Semitism a means of "dishing" the Judaized liberals, and to his creatures who assisted him in his press campaigns he dropped significant hints in this sense (Busch, _Bismarck_, ii. 453-454, iii. 16). He even spoke of a new _Kulturkampf_ against the Jews (_ibid_. ii. p. 484). How these hints were acted upon has not been revealed, but it is sufficiently instructive to notice that the final breach with the National Liberals took place in July 1879, and that it was immediately followed by a violent revival of the anti-Semitic agitation. Marr's pamphlet was reprinted, and within a few months ran through nine further editions. The historian Treitschke gave the sanction of his great name to the movement. The Conservative and Ultramontane press rang with the sins of the Jews. In October an anti-Semitic league was founded in Berlin and Dresden (for statutes of the league see _Nineteenth Century_, February 1881, p. 344).