When everything had thus been settled by the foreigners, a Committee, to which the Diet of Ratisbon had referred the work of re-organisation, began its sessions, assisted by a French and a Russian representative. The Scheme which had been agreed upon between France and Russia was produced entire; and in spite of the anger and the threats of Austria it passed the Committee with no greater delay than was inseparable from everything connected with German affairs. The Committee presented the Scheme to the Diet: the Diet only agitated itself as to the means of passing the Scheme without violating those formalities which were the breath of its life. The proposed destruction of all the Ecclesiastical States, and of forty-five out of the fifty Free Cities, would extinguish a third part of the members of the Diet itself. If these unfortunate bodies were permitted to vote upon the measure, their votes might result in its rejection: if unsummoned, their absence would impair the validity of the resolution. By a masterpiece of conscientious pedantry it was agreed that the doomed prelates and cities should be duly called to vote in their turn, and that upon the mention each name the answer "absent" should be returned by an officer. Thus, faithful to its formalities, the Empire voted the destruction of its ancient Constitution; and the sovereignties of the Ecclesiastics and Free Cities, which had lasted for so many centuries, vanished from Europe (March, 1803). [94] [Effect on Germany.] The loss was small indeed. The internal condition of the priest-ruled districts was generally wretched; heavy ignorance, beggary, and intolerance reduced life to a gross and dismal inertia. Except in their patronage of music, the ecclesiastical princes had perhaps rendered no single service to Germany. The Free Cities, as a rule, were sunk in debt; the management of their affairs had become the perquisite of a few lawyers and privileged families. For Germany, as a nation, the destruction of these petty sovereignties was not only an advantage but an absolute necessity. The order by which they were superseded was not devised in the interest of Germany itself; yet even in the arrangements imposed by the foreigner Germany gained centres from which the institutions of modern political life entered into regions where no public authority had yet been known beyond the court of the bishop or the feudal officers of the manor. [95] Through the suppression of the Ecclesiastical States a Protestant majority was produced in the Diet. The change bore witness to the decline of Austrian and of Catholic energy during the past century; it scarcely indicated the future supremacy of the Protestant rival of Austria; for the real interests of Germany were but faintly imaged in the Diet, and the leadership of the race was still open to the Power which should most sincerely identify itself with the German nation. The first result of the changed character of