of railways made a loan
necessary, and at the beginning of 1847 Frederick William summoned for
the first time the States General.

The King of Prussia had thereby stirred up a power which he was unable
to control; he had hoped that he would be able to gather round him the
representatives of the nobles, the towns, and the peasants; that this
new assembly, collecting about him in respectful homage, would add
lustre to his throne; that they would vote the money which was required
and then separate. How much was he mistaken! The nation had watched for
years Parliamentary government in England and France; this was what they
wished to have, and now they were offered a modern imitation of
medieval estates. They felt themselves as grown men able and justified
in governing their own country; the King treated them as children. The
opening ceremony completed the bad impression which the previous acts of
the King had made. While the majority of the nation desired a formal and
written Constitution, the King in his opening speech with great emphasis
declared that he would never allow a sheet of paper to come between him
and God in heaven.

Bismarck was not present at the opening ceremony; it was, in fact, owing
to an accident that he was able to take his seat at all; he was there as
substitute for the member for the _Ritterschaft_ of Jerichow, who had
fallen ill. He entered on his Parliamentary duties as a young and almost
unknown man; he did not belong to any party, but his political
principles were strongly influenced by the friends he had found in
Pomerania. They were soon to be hardened by conflict and confirmed by
experience; during the first debates he sat silent, but his indignation
rose as he listened to the speeches of the Liberal majority. Nothing
pleased them; instead of actively co-operating with the Government in
the consideration of financial measures, they began to discuss and
criticise the proclamation by which they had been summoned. There was
indeed ample scope for criticism; the Estates were so arranged that the
representatives of the towns could always be outvoted by the landed
proprietors; they had not even the right of periodical meetings; the
King was not compelled to call them together again until he required
more money. They not only petitioned for increased powers, they demanded
them as a right; they maintained that an assembly summoned in this form
did not meet the intentions of previous laws; when they w