ince, as we have seen,
they were not united among themselves, the clergy and Feudal party being
opposed to the Liberals. Their watchword was the constitution of 1861,
which had been drawn up by their leaders; they demanded that it should be
restored, and with it parliamentary government. They called themselves,
therefore, the Constitutional party. But the introduction of parliamentary
government really added greatly to the difficulty of the task before them.
In the old days German ascendancy had been secured by the common army, the
civil service and the court. As soon, however, as power was transferred to
a parliament, the Germans must inevitably be in a minority, unless the
method of election was deliberately arranged so as to give them a majority.
Parliamentary discussion, moreover, was sure to bring out those racial
differences which it was desirable should be forgotten, and the elections
carried into every part of the empire a political agitation which was very
harmful when each party represented a different race.

[Sidenote: Crisis of 1867.]

The very first events showed one of those extraordinary changes of policy
so characteristic of modern Austrian history. The decision of the
government on the constitutional question was really determined by
immediate practical necessity. The Hungarians required that the settlement
should be ratified by a parliament, therefore a parliament must be procured
which would do this. It must be a parliament in which the Germans had a
majority, for the system of dualism was directly opposed to the ambitions
of the Slavs and the Federalists. Belcredi, who had come into power in 1865
as a Federalist, and had suspended the constitution of 1861 on the 2nd of
January 1867, ordered new elections for the diets, which were then to elect
deputies to an extraordinary Reichsrath which should consider the
_Ausgleich_, or compact with Hungary. The wording of the decree implied
that the February constitution did not exist as of law; the Germans and
Liberals, strenuously objecting to a "feudal-federal" constitution which
would give the Slavs a preponderance in the empire, maintained that the
February constitution was still in force, and that changes could only be
introduced by a regular Reichsrath summoned in accordance with it,
protested against the decree, and, in some cases, threatened not to take
part in the elections. As the Federalists [v.03 p.0028] were all opposed to
the Ausgleich, it was cle