re gradually took form a compactly
organized political party, variously known as the National German
party, the German Liberals, or the Constitutionalists, whose
watchwords were the preservation of the constitution and the
Germanization of the Empire. For a time this party maintained the
upper hand completely, but its ascendancy was menaced not only by the
disaffected forces of federalism but by the continued tenseness of the
clerical question and, after 1869, by intestine conflict. As was
perhaps inevitable, the party split into two branches, the one radical
and the other moderate. During the earlier months of 1870 the
Radicals, under Hasner, were in control; but in their handling of the
vexatious Polish and Bohemian questions they failed completely and,
April 4, they gave place to the Moderates under the premiership of the
Polish Count Potocki. The new ministry sought to govern in a
conciliatory spirit and with the support of all groups, but its
success was meager. February 7, 1871, a cabinet which was essentially
federalist was constituted under Count Hohenwart. Its decentralizing
policies, however, were of such a character that the racial question
gave promise of being settled by the utter disintegration of the
Empire, and after eight months it was dismissed.

*528. Rule of the German Liberals, 1871-1879.*--With a cabinet presided
over by Prince Adolf Auersperg the German Liberals then returned to
power. Their tenure was prolonged to 1879 and might have been
continued beyond that date but for the recurrence of factional strife
within their ranks. The period was one in which some of the
obstructionist groups, notably the Czechs, fell into division among
themselves, so that the opposition which the Liberals were called upon
to encounter was distinctly less effective than otherwise it might
have been. At no time since 1867 had the Czechs consented to be
represented in the Reichsrath, a body, indeed, which they had
persisted in refusing to recognize as a legitimately constituted
parliament of the Empire. During the early seventies a party of Young
Czechs sprang up which advocated an abandonment of passive (p. 477)
resistance and the substitution of parliamentary activity in behalf of
the interests of the race. The Old Czechs were unprepared for such a
shift of policy, and in 1873 they played directly into the hands of
the Liberal government by refusing to participate in the consideration
of the electoral reform