d, as a result, local Constitutions were
granted, and a national Parliament was summoned to meet at Frankfurt, to
draw up a national German Constitution on democratic lines.

The task before the Frankfurt Parliament was similar to that which has
confronted British statesmen several times during the last century, in
framing the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, and the
Union of South Africa--the task of welding a number of separate State
governments with the free consent of their populations into a homogeneous
and democratic central authority. But in the case of an old and still
largely feudal country like Germany the task was infinitely more difficult,
for it could not be successful without a levelling-up of the political
ideals of the backward States, such as Prussia, and the elimination of many
ancient associations and dynastic interests. The Frankfurt Constitution did
actually come into being, and it was nobly planned. It guaranteed to every
German citizen the rights of civil liberty, equality before the law, and
responsible parliamentary government, both central and local. But the mind
of the German nation was not yet equal to its new responsibilities. The
Frankfurt Parliament, like the first Russian Duma, was out of touch with
realities; it wasted precious time on the discussion of abstract questions
of principle, and failed to meet the practical needs of the moment.
While it sat and talked, the enthusiasm which had created it gradually
evaporated. Meanwhile the more reactionary States, and the princes whose
prerogatives were endangered, became more and more openly hostile. All
through 1849 the Parliament was losing members by defection, and by the end
of the year its influence had sunk to vanishing point.

The movement which collapsed thus ignominiously was not a popular agitation
in the English sense of the term: like other movements of its generation it
sprang, not from the people but from the well-to-do, and its strength lay
among the professional and educated classes. The Frankfurt Parliament was
a predominantly middle-class assembly: lawyers and professors, always an
important element in German national life, were strongly represented in
it and largely responsible for its failure. Its collapse was a bitter
disappointment, and drove many of its leaders into exile abroad, more
particularly to the United States, where some of them, such as Carl
Schurz, lived to play a noteworthy part under more d