THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
upon the history of the world; but he wished at heart to leave everything substantially as it had been. He thought he could satisfy the people with an appearance of participation in the government without however in the least limiting the omnipotence of the crown. But these attempts ended like others made by other monarchs in other times. The merely ostensible and insufficient things he offered served only to strengthen and inflame the popular demand for something substantial and effective. Revolutions often begin with apparent but unreal reforms. He called “provincial diets,” assemblies of local representative bodies, with the expectation that they would modestly content themselves with the narrow functions he prescribed for them. But they petitioned vehemently for a great deal more. The experiment of appearing to give and of really withholding everything was bound to fail miserably. The petitions of the provincial diets for freedom of the press, for trial by jury, and a liberal constitution, became more and more pressing. The discontent gradually grew so general, the storm of petitions so violent, the repugnance of the people to the police-despotism so menacing, that the old parade of the absolute kingly power would no longer suffice, and some new step in the direction of liberal innovations seemed imperatively necessary.
At last Frederick William IV. decided to convoke the so-called “United Diet,” an assembly consisting of the members of all the provincial diets, to meet on April 11, 1847, in Berlin. But it was the old game over again. This assembly was to have the look of a parliament and yet not to be one. Its convocation was always to depend upon the pleasure of the king. Its powers were circumscribed within the narrowest limits. It was not to make laws nor to pass binding resolutions. It was to serve only as a sort of privy council to the king, to
[ 107 ]
