xistence, and is now done away with altogether.
Absolutism has been restored in Austria to all intents and purposes
ever since the 4th March, 1849.

In Prussia, the Chambers met in February for the ratification and
revision of the new Charter proclaimed by the King. They sat for about
six weeks, humble and meek enough in their behavior toward the
Government, yet not quite prepared to go the lengths the King and his
ministers wished them to go. Therefore, as soon as a suitable occasion
presented itself, they were dissolved.

Thus both Austria and Prussia had for the moment got rid of the
shackles of parliamentary control. The Governments now concentrated
all power in themselves, and could bring that power to bear wherever
is was wanted: Austria upon Hungary and Italy, Prussia upon Germany.
For Prussia, too, was preparing for a campaign by which "order" was to
be restored in the smaller States.

Counter-revolution being now paramount in the two great centres of
action in Germany,--in Vienna and Berlin,--there remained only the
lesser States in which the struggle was still undecided, although the
balance there, too, was leaning more and more against the
revolutionary interest. These smaller States, we have said, found a
common centre in the National Assembly at Frankfort. Now, this
so-called National Assembly, although its reactionist spirit had long
been evident, so much so that the very people of Frankfort had risen
in arms against it, yet its origin was of more or less revolutionary
nature; it occupied an abnormal, revolutionary position in January;
its competence had never been defined, and it had at last come to the
decision--which, however, was never recognized by the larges
States--that its resolutions had the force of law. Under these
circumstances, and when the Constitutionalist-Monarchial party saw
their positions turned by the recovering Absolutists, it is not to be
wondered that the Liberal, monarchical bourgeoisie of almost the whole
of Germany should place their last hopes upon the majority of this
Assembly, just as the petty shopkeepers in the rest, the nucleus of
the Democratic party, gathered in their growing distress around the
minority of that same body, which indeed formed the last compact
Parliamentary phalanx of Democracy. On the other hand, the larger
Governments, and particularly the Prussian Ministry, saw more and more
the incompatibility of such an irregular elective body with the
restored mon