ounded
him, were not slow in discovering this, and profited by the
circumstance in order to fetter the march of the ministry even in
those petty reforms that were from time to time intended.

The first care of the ministry was to give a sort of legal appearance
to the recent violent changes. The United Diet was convoked in spite
of all popular opposition, in order to vote as the legal and
constitutional organ of the people a new electoral law for the
election of an Assembly, which was to agree with the crown upon a new
constitution. The elections were to be indirect, the mass of voters
electing a number of electors, who then were to choose the
representative. In spite of all opposition this system of double
elections passed. The United Diet was then asked for a loan of
twenty-five millions of dollars, opposed by the popular party, but
equally agreed to.

These acts of the ministry gave a most rapid development to the
popular, or as it now called itself, the Democratic party. This party,
headed by the petty trading and shopkeeping class, and uniting under
its banner, in the beginning of the revolution, the large majority of
the working people, demanded direct and universal suffrage, the same
as established in France, a single legislative assembly, and full and
open recognition of the revolution of the 18th of March, as the base
of the new governmental system. The more moderate faction would be
satisfied with a thus "democratized" monarchy, the more advanced
demanded the ultimate establishment of the republic. Both factions
agreed in recognizing the German National Assembly at Frankfort as
the supreme authority of the country, while the Constitutionalists and
Reactionists affected a great horror of the sovereignty of this body,
which they professed to consider as utterly revolutionary.

The independent movement of the working classes had, by the
revolution, been broken up for a time. The immediate wants and
circumstances of the movement were such as not to allow any of the
specific demands of the Proletarian party to be put in the foreground.
In fact, as long as the ground was not cleared for the independent
action of the working men, as long as direct and universal suffrage
was not yet established, as long as the thirty-six larger and smaller
states continued to cut up Germany into numberless morsels, what
else could the Proletarian party do but watch the--for them
all-important--movement of Paris, and struggle in co