the session
Rieger read a formal reservation of right. The Liberals had also lost many
seats, so that the House now had a completely different aspect; the
constitutionalists were reduced to 91 Liberals and 54 Radicals; but the
Right, under Hohenwart, had increased to 57, and there were 57 Poles and 54
Czechs. A combination of these three parties might govern against the
constitutionalists. Taaffe, who now became first minister, tried first of
all to govern by the help of the moderates of all parties, and he included
representatives of nearly every party in his cabinet. But the Liberals
again voted against the government on an important military bill, an
offence almost as unpardonable in Austria as in Germany, and a great
meeting of the party decided that they would not support the government.
Taaffe, therefore, was obliged to turn for support to the Right. The German
members of the government resigned, their place was taken by Clericals,
Poles and Czechs, Smolka was elected president of the Lower House of the
Reichsrath, and the German Liberals found themselves in a minority opposed
by the "iron ring" of these three parties, and helpless in the parliament
of their own creation. For fourteen years Taaffe succeeded in maintaining
the position he had thus secured. He was not himself a party man; he had
sat in a Liberal government; he had never assented to the principles of the
Federalists, nor was he an adherent of the Clerical party. He continued to
rule according to the constitution; his watchword was "unpolitical
politics," and he brought in little contentious legislation. The great
source of his strength was that he stood between the Right and a Liberal
government. There was a large minority of constitutionalists; they might
easily become a majority, and the Right were therefore obliged to support
Taaffe in order to avert this. They continued to support him, even if they
did not get from him all that they could have wished, and the Czechs
acquiesced in a foreign policy with which they had little sympathy.
Something, however, had to be done for them, and from time to time
concessions had to be made to the Clericals and the Federalists.

[Sidenote: The Clericals.]

The real desire of the Clericals was an alteration of the school law, by
which the control of the schools should be restored to the Church and the
period of compulsory education reduced. In this, however, the government
did not meet them, and in 1882 the Cler