A Prussian cabinet order of 8 September 1852 regulated the position of the minister-president toward the other ministers. In March 1890 Kaiser Wilhelm II demanded that Otto von Bismarck draft an order to repeal it. Bismarck refused. In his letter of resignation of 18 March 1890 he argued that unified policy was impossible wenn jeder einzelne Minister allerhöchste Anordnungen extrahieren kann, if each individual minister can extract orders from the monarch. He wrote that he was außerstande, Euerer Majestät Befehl auszuführen, unable to carry out Your Majesty’s command. The dispute over the order was the formal occasion of his dismissal. The two men were also divided over social policy and the Social Democrats.