one of these conflicts. While I was representing the President, then
on leave, I received an order from the government to compel the patron
of Kuelz, that was myself, to undertake certain burdens. I put the
order aside, meaning to give it to the president on his return, was
repeatedly worried about it, and fined a thaler, to be forwarded
through the post. I now drew up a statement, in which I figured as
having appeared, first of all as representative of the _Landrath_,
and secondly as patron of Kuelz. The party cited made the prescribed
representations to himself in his capacity as No. 1, and then
proceeded in his capacity of No. 2 to set forth the ground on which he
had to decline the application; after which the statement was approved
and subscribed by him in his double capacity. The government
understood a joke, and ordered the fine to be refunded. In other
cases, things resulted in less pleasant heckling. I had a critical
disposition, and was consequently liberal, in the sense in which the
word was then used among landed proprietors to imply discontent with
the bureaucracy, the majority of whom on their side were men more
liberal than myself, though in another sense.

I again slipped off the rails of my parliamentary liberal tendencies,
with regard to which I found little understanding or sympathy
in Pomerania, but which in Schoenhausen met with the acquiescence
of men in my own district, like Count Wartensleben of Karow,
Schierstaedt-Dahlen, and others (the same men of whom some were among
the party of Church patrons in the New Era subsequently condemned).
This was the result of the style, to me unsympathetic, in which the
opposition was conducted in the first United Diet, to which I was
summoned, only for the last six weeks of the session, as substitute
for Deputy von Brauchitsch, who was laid up with illness. The speeches
of the East Prussians, Saucken-Tarputschen and Alfred Auerswald, the
sentimentality of Beckerath, the Gallo-Rhenish liberalism of Heydt and
Mevissen, and the boisterous violence of Vincke's speeches, disgusted
me; and even at this date when I read the proceedings they give me the
impression of imported phrases made to pattern. I felt that the King
was on the right track, and could claim to be allowed time, and not be
hurried in his development.

I came into conflict with the Opposition the first time I made a
longer speech than usual, on May 17, 1847, when I combatted the legend
that the Pruss