rate constituencies and registers were established for the electors of
each race, who could only vote on their own register for a candidate of
their own race. Thus Germans were obliged to vote for Germans and Czechs
for Czechs; and, though there might be victories of Clerical over Liberal
Germans or of Czech Radicals over Young Czechs, there could be no victories
of Czechs over Germans, Poles over Ruthenes, or Slovenes over Italians. The
constituencies were divided according to race as follows:--

Germans of all parties. . . . . 233 previously 205
Czechs of all parties . . . . . 108 " 81
Poles . . . . . . . . . 80 " 71
Southern Slavs (Slovenes, Croats,
Serbs) . . . . . . . . 37 " 27
Ruthenes . . . . . . . . 34 " 11
Italians . . . . . . . . 19 " 18
Rumanians . . . . . . . . 5 " 5

These allotments were slightly modified at the polls by the victory of some
Social Democratic candidates not susceptible of strict racial
classification. The chief feature of the allotment was, however, the formal
overthrow of the fiction that Austria is preponderatingly a German country
and not a country preponderatingly Slav with a German dynasty and a German
facade. The German constituencies, though allotted in a proportion unduly
favourable, left the Germans, with 233 seats, in a permanent minority as
compared with the 259 Slav seats. Even with the addition of the "Latin"
(Rumanian and Italian) seats the "German-Latin block" amounted only to 257.
This "block" no longer exists in practice, as the Italians now tend to
co-operate rather with the Slavs than with the Germans. The greatest
gainers by the redistribution were the Ruthenes, whose representation was
trebled, though it is still far from being proportioned to their numbers.
This and other anomalies will doubtless be corrected in future revisions of
the allotment, although the German parties, foreseeing that any revision
must work out to their disadvantage, stipulated that a two-thirds majority
should be necessary for any alteration of the law.

[Sidenote: General election 1907.]

After unsuccessful attempts by the Upper House to introduce plural voting,
the bill became law in January 1907, the peers insisting only upon the
establishment of a fixed _maximum_ number or _numerus clausus_, of
non-hereditary peers,