med to anything like success, that they actually
believed their paltry amendments, passed with two or three votes
majority, would change the face of Europe. They had, from the
beginning of their legislative career, been more imbued than any other
faction of the Assembly with that incurable malady _Parliamentary
cretinism_, a disorder which penetrates its unfortunate victims with
the solemn conviction that the whole world, its history and future,
are governed and determined by a majority of votes in that particular
representative body which has the honor to count them among its
members, and that all and everything going on outside the walls of
their house--wars, revolutions, railway-constructing, colonizing of
whole new continents, California gold discoveries, Central American
canals, Russian armies, and whatever else may have some little claim
to influence upon the destinies of mankind--is nothing compared with
the incommensurable events hinging upon the important question,
whatever it may be, just at that moment occupying the attention of
their honorable house. Thus it was the Democratic party of the
Assembly, by effectually smuggling a few of their nostrums into the
"Imperial Constitution," first became bound to support it, although in
every essential point it flatly contradicted their own oft-proclaimed
principles, and at last, when this mongrel work was abandoned, and
bequeathed to them by its main authors, accepted the inheritance, and
held out for this _Monarchical_ Constitution, even in opposition to
everybody who _then_ proclaimed their own _Republican_ principles.

But it must be confessed that in this the contradiction was merely
apparent. The indeterminate, self-contradictory, immature character of
the Imperial Constitution was the very image of the immature,
confused, conflicting political ideas of these Democratic gentlemen.
And if their own sayings and writings--as far as they could
write--were not sufficient proof of this, their actions would furnish
such proof; for among sensible people it is a matter of course to
judge of a man, not by his professions, but his actions; not by what
he pretends to be, but by what he does, and what he really is; and the
deeds of these heroes of German Democracy speak loud enough for
themselves, as we shall learn by and by. However, the Imperial
Constitution, with all its appendages and paraphernalia, was
definitely passed, and on the 28th of March, the King of Prussia was,