of women. In fact, he tried during the last decade of his life to dampen class struggle and political factionalism, each of which he thought to be an undesirable aberration in Czech historical development and an obstacle to maintaining a unified national political movement led by the National Party. In his opinion, Czechs should dampen any political or class conflicts among themselves in the interests of struggling, on the one hand, against German efforts to maintain political privileges and, on the other, against imperial attempts to increase centralization and arbitrary authoritarian rule.14
Outmoded as most of Palacký’s policies may appear in a twentieth century context, they did much more than merely reflect or cater to bourgeois interests. Highly unrepresentative self-governmental institutions that became bastions of wealth and education nonetheless helped, for two generations, to maintain Czech political autonomy in practice as well as in theory and to train Czechs in the exercise of political responsibility. Moreover, the strongly patriotic and liberal basis of Czech politics that most Czechs took for granted by 1900 owed much to Palacký’s initial and continuing support. During the sixties, for example, he had waged a long and successful struggle to prevent conservative Czech Catholics and their aristocratic and clerical supporters from gaining control or decisively influencing policies of the National Party.15
By the turn of the century, the three mass Czech political parties—the Social Democrats, Agrarians, and National Socialists, the first founded in 1878 and the others in 1898—and the several progressive parties of the intelligentsia sought to extend civil liberties and broaden the electoral franchise in all self-governmental and representative institutions. By markedly increasing popular participation in politics, by emphasizing economic interests and advocating greater social reform, the mass parties especially challenged the antiquated and authoritarian Habsburg system much more severely than did the elite National and Young Czech parties. By the turn of the century, all mass and progressive parties as well as a majority of the Young Czechs advocated almost every reform that Palacký had at one time either opposed or sought to postpone. Each party nonetheless continued to honor Palacký as a great statesman, awakener, and historian, while quite properly blaming contemporary Old Czech and Young Czech party leaders for upholding many of the unrepresentative institutions and outmoded policies he had helped establish. This outlook thereafter generally characterized all but the most conservative and Catholic of Czech parties. If this had not been the case, or if Palacký’s practical politics were considered the most important part of his political legacy,
