THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
assist him in forming his decisions, its wishes to be presented to him only by way of petition. In the speech with which the king opened the United Diet, he declared with emphasis that this was now the utmost concession to which he would ever consent; he would never, never permit a piece of paper, meaning a written constitution, to be put between the prince and his people; the people themselves, he claimed, did not desire a participation of their representatives in the government; the absolute power of the king must not be broken; “the crown must reign and govern according to the laws of God and of the country and according to the king's own resolutions”; he could not, and must not, “govern according to the will of majorities”; and he, the king, “would never have called this assembly had he ever suspected in the slightest degree that its members would try to play the part of so-called representatives of the people.” This was now, he said, the fulfillment, and “more than the fulfillment,” of the promises made in the time of distress in 1813, before the expulsion of the French.
General disappointment and increasing discontent followed this pronouncement. But the concession made by the king in fact signified more than he had anticipated. A king who wishes to govern with absolute power must not permit a public discussion of the policy and of the acts of the government by men who stand nearer to the people than he does. The United Diet could indeed not resolve, but only debate and petition. But that it could debate, and that its debates passed through faithful newspaper reports into the intelligence of the country—that was an innovation of incalculable consequence.
The bearing of the United Diet, on the benches of which sat many men of uncommon capacity and liberal principles, was throughout dignified, discreet and moderate. But the
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