authority for the royal family of Austria, his
object was to humour the German parliament at Frankfort, and gradually
to wear it out, restoring things to their original condition. When the
royal houses of Austria and Prussia found that neither could obtain a
permanent supremacy, they concerted together for the purpose of breaking
up the parliament, and in the meantime, of practically preventing any
invasion of the independence or separate prerogative of the individual
states and their governments by the central representative power which
the revolution had set up. Accordingly, on the last day of September
a convention was signed at Vienna, by Austria and Prussia, for the
establishment of a provisional central power for Germany. This was
shortly after ratified by both courts. The first article was for the
purpose of giving the archduke vicar an opportunity of resigning his
authority to the provisional central power.

"1. The government of the Germanic confederation, in concert with the
vicar, agree on a provisional form or interim, during which time Austria
and Prussia assume the administration of the central power for the
German confederation, in the name of all the governments of the
confederation, until the 1st of May, 1850, unless this power cannot be
transferred to a definite power before that period.

"2. The object of the interim is to maintain the German confederation
as a union founded on the right of the states appertaining to the German
princes and of the free cities, to having preserved the independence
and the integrity of their states comprised in the confederation, and to
having maintained the internal and external security of Germany.

"3. So long as the interim lasts, the affair of the German constitution
is left to the free concertation of the individual states.

"It is the same with those affairs which by art. 6 of the federative
act, belong to the full assembly of the diet.

"4. If, at the expiration of the interim, the German constitutional
question should be not yet settled, the German government will come to
an understanding with respect to the prolongation of the present treaty.

"5. The affairs hitherto carried on by the provisional central power, in
so far as, according to the legislation of the confederation, they came
within the competency of the late assembly, are transmitted for the
entire duration of the interim to a dietary committee, to which Prussia
and Austria appoint each two mem