THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
Austrian interest in particular, more at heart than the national constitution and German unity.
Now the following situation of things presented itself; the German national parliament had created an executive authority in the form of the “Provisional Central Power,” with the Archduke Johann as regent, in order to enforce respect to its orders and its laws. The most important of the utterances of its will consisted in the national constitution and the election of the king of Prussia as German emperor. The king of Prussia, that is, the emperor-elect, refusing to recognize the national constitution as rightfully existing, and declined to accept his election. The national parliament thereupon summoned not only all German governments, but also all legislative bodies and the communes of the German states, etc., in fact, the whole people, to enforce the national constitution. The people of the Palatinate did exactly what the national parliament had ordered the German people to do. The Pfaelzers had risen for the national constitution, against the king of Bavaria, who refused to recognize that constitution. The imperial commissioner, sent by the regent of the empire into the Palatinate, found himself obliged, by the logic of circumstances as well as by his loyalty to the national parliament, to confirm the “Committee for the Defense of the Country” in the Palatinate, and to recognize it as lawfully empowered to resist all forcible attacks upon the national constitution. And what then did the imperial regent who had been appointed for the purpose of enforcing the will of the national parliament, and especially to secure the recognition and introduction of the national constitution, do? He recalled the imperial commissioner at once, and then went to work to suppress by force of arms the popular movement which had been set on foot in compliance with the summons of the na-
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