archical system of Germany, and if they did not at once
force its dissolution, it was only because the time had not yet come,
and because Prussia hoped first to use it for the furthering of its
own ambitious purposes.

In the meantime, that poor Assembly itself fell into a greater and
greater confusion. Its deputations and commissaries had been treated
with the utmost contempt, both in Vienna and Berlin; one of its
members, in spite of his parliamentary inviolability, had been
executed in Vienna as a common rebel. Its decrees were nowhere heeded;
if they were noticed at all by the larger powers, it was merely by
protesting notes which disputed the authority of the Assembly to pass
laws and resolutions binding upon their Governments. The
Representative of the Assembly, the Central Executive power, was
involved in diplomatic squabbles with almost all the Cabinets of
Germany, and, in spite of all their efforts, neither Assembly nor
Central Government could bring Austria and Prussia to state their
ultimate views, plans and demands. The Assembly, at last, commenced to
see clearly, at least so far, that it had allowed all power to slip
out of its hands, that it was at the mercy of Austria and Prussia, and
that if it intended making a Federal Constitution for Germany at all,
it must set about the thing at once and in good earnest. And many of
the vacillating members also saw clearly that they had been
egregiously duped by the Governments. But what were they, in their
impotent position, able to do now? The only thing that could have
saved them would have been promptly and decidedly to pass over into
the popular camp; but the success, even of that step, was more than
doubtful; and then, where in this helpless crowd of undecided,
shortsighted, self-conceited beings, who, when the eternal noise of
contradictory rumors and diplomatic notes completely stunned them,
sought their only consolation and support in the everlastingly
repeated assurance that they were the best, the greatest, the wisest
men of the country, and that they alone could save Germany--where, we
say, among these poor creatures, whom a single year of Parliamentary
life had turned into complete idiots, where were the men for a prompt
and decisive resolution, much less for energetic and consistent
action?

At last the Austrian Government threw off the mask. In its
Constitution of the 4th of March, it proclaimed Austria an
indivisible monarchy, with common finances,