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CHAP.
II.

1848.

of Austria, who accepted it with the title of Administrator of the Empire (Reichsverweser). The Administrator possessed no real power, and was a mere puppet: in fact, in some States, such as Limburg and ministrator the Duchies, he was completely ignored.

6

pointed Ad

of the

empire.

in Parlia

The new Parliament maintained the resolution Discussions of the Vor Parlament' that it alone was to decide ment. on the Constitution. The discussions on the fundamental rights of Germans then commenced, and it soon became evident that little practical good was to be expected from this new assembly. Many of the members were professors, and being delighted at having an opportunity to employ their eloquence on abstract questions, they wasted many a valuable hour in hair-splitting, and word-catching. Over the first two words 'every German,' in the fundamental law,there were discussions which lasted several hours.

Baden.

In the meanwhile some active fighting had taken Revolts in place in the country, principally in Baden and its neighbourhood. The revolution which was fanned by Struri and others, and which made for the moment some head in the country, was soon crushed by the soldiery. The efforts of the revolutionary party were too isolated, their plans too hastily conceived and too weakly carried out, the sympathy they received too half-hearted, ever to have allowed their chance of success to be very great; while they afforded an excuse for the reactionary measures which the Governments, when recovered from their terror, afterwards adopted. We shall see that the

CHAP.
II.

1848.

Demands
of the
Roman
Catholic
Clergy.

Resolutions of Parliament.

Governments rushed wildly from one extreme to the other, at first yielding in a most reckless and haphazard manner everything the mob demanded, and then retracting their promises, and taking back all, and even more than they had given.

The Church itself determined not to be left alone in the general cry for new rights and privileges. The German Roman Catholic bishops held a meeting at Wurzburg in October, under the presidency of Cardinal Schwarzenberg, in order to obtain full freedom for their Church; freedom of possession and disposition of the Church property; conduct of the education of the priests, and of the people; and free intercourse with Rome. In the concordats which Austria and Wurtemberg concluded with the Papal See, most of these demands were granted; and in Prussia the clergy were placed on a better footing than before. Menzel remarks that the revival of religion was one of the most important results of the German Revolution, and is surprised that the Catholics played no part notwithstanding the favourable opportunity offered to them in the revolutionary time. Many Catholic societies were formed at this period. Similar meetings to that of the Catholic bishops were held by the Evangelicals at Wittenberg, and by the Lutherans at Leipzig.

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The discussions on the fundamental rights of the German people' were finished on December 21. The most important of these rights, as settled by the Parliament, were :-Equality of all Germans before

the law; protection of personal liberty; universal military service; right of meeting; trial by jury; equality of all religions; freedom of the press; abolition of feudal burdens, of fidei commissa, and of capital punishment. The larger kingdoms and States in Germany declined to accept the conclusion to which the Parliament had arrived, till the Constitution had been settled on a firm basis. And how inopportune was the publication of these Rights? The two chief capitals in Germany in open revolt; the western States harassed and traversed by revolutionary bands; the Emperor of Austria a fugitive from his capital; part of the dislocated Assembly of Prussia at Brandenburg, the other part at Berlin, each declaring the other illegal and traitorous; the protestations, orders, and prayers of the Frankfort Parliament totally disregarded. In all this confusion the Assembly which was to preserve order and peace in Germany, could find no better means of fulfilling their mission than by giving forth to the world a long list of abstract rights which Germans should possess.

II.

1848.

new Constitution. 1849.

The debates respecting the Constitution having Plans for a commenced in October, lasted all through the notion winter. The form of the new Constitution puzzled the Parliament at Frankfort. The idea of a Federative State was difficult of realisation. Not only were the relations of the several States to each other difficult to define accurately, and not only was the opposition which the Middle States would offer to

CHAP

II.

1849.

the plan hard to surmount, but the position of the two great Powers, Austria and Prussia, taxed the ingenuity and brains of the framers and promoters of the new scheme. An article which appeared in the 'North British Review' in 1869, puts the difficulty very clearly:— If the German provinces of Austria were to enter the Bundes Staat, it was first necessary that they should be dissevered from their political connection with the rest of the Austrian Empire, and the establishment for the future of a merely personal union between the German and non-German dominions of the house of Hapsburg-Lothringen. If this condition could not be fulfilled, and the work of constituting a centralised confederacy had to be proceeded with, then Austria must be excluded from the new State. If not, then a return to an international confederacy of the old kind was the only alternative left.'

The Constitution as settled by the Frankfort Parliament was as follows:

The government was to be exercised by a chief of the empire, and a Reichstag, with an upper and lower house. Half of the members of the upper house were to be named by the Government, and the other by the representatives of the several States. The lower house was to be elected by direct votes, one deputy to every 70,000 souls. The central power was to be the international representative of Germany: the several States were not to receive or send envoys or consuls. The army,

CHAP.

II.

1849.

Emperor.

navy, railways, post, coinage, &c., were all to be under the immediate superintendence of the central power. The central power was to have a suspensive veto; but when a resolution had passed the Reichstag three times, it was to become law without the sanction of the central power. But who was to be Question of head of the empire? There was the difficulty. The struggle lay between Austria and Prussia. Those who remembered the great deeds of the latter in 1813 in behalf of Germany, her great military power, her entire Germanity (if a word may be coined), men like Gagern and Bunsen, were strongly in favour of the elimination of Austria and the establishment of Prussia in the place to which she was entitled. This party received the name of Small Small GerGermans,-in contradistinction to the Austrian and Great party, who termed themselves Great Germans. The party. former party forced through the Parliament the resolutions that the head of the empire must be a reigning Prince, that he should take the title of Emperor of the Germans; and on March 28 by 290 to 248 votes Frederick William IV. was elected Emperor, and the Imperial Crown declared hereditary in the House of Hohenzollern.

Austria tried to counteract the effect of these resolutions by proposing that a directory of seven sovereigns under Austrian presidency should be the head of the central Government—that the Imperial crown, in fact, should be put in commission. But in order to obtain this majority Gagern and his party

man party,

German

Election of
Prussia as
Emperor.

King of

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