Then, 2nd, Lassalle was a national, not an international socialist. He held that every country should solve its own social question for itself, and that the working-class movement was not, and should not be made, cosmopolitan. He was even--as Prince Bismarck said in Parliament, when taxed with having personal relations with him--patriotic. At least he was an intense believer in Prussia; less, however, because he was a Prussian than because Prussia was a strong State, and because he thought that strong States alone could do the world's work in Germany or elsewhere. By nationality in itself he set but little store; a nationality had a right to separate existence if it could assert it, but if it were weak and struggling, its only duty was to submit with thankfulness to annexation by a stronger power. He wished his followers, therefore, to keep aloof from the doings of other nations, and to concentrate their whole exertions upon victory at the elections in their own country and the gradual development of productive associations on national loans. This restriction of the range of the movement had from the first dissatisfied some of its adherents, especially a certain active section who hated Prussia as much as Lassalle believed in her, and after the influence of the International began to make itself felt upon the agitation in Germany, this difference of opinion gathered gradually to a head. In 1868 a motion was brought before the general meeting of the League in favour of establishing relations with the International and accepting its programme. The chief promoters of this motion were the two present leaders of the Social Democratic party in the Reichstag, Liebknecht and Bebel, and it was strongly opposed by the president of the League, Dr. von Schweitzer, an advocate in Frankfort, and a strong champion of Prussia, who was elected to the presidency in 1866, just at the time the extension of the suffrage gave a fresh impetus to the movement, and whose energy and gifts of management contributed greatly to the development of the organization. The motion was carried by a substantial majority, but before next year Von Schweitzer had succeeded in turning the tables on his opponents, and at the general meeting in 1869, Liebknecht and Bebel were expelled from the League, as traitors to the labourers' cause. After their expulsion they called together in the same year a congress of working men at Eisenach, which was attended mainly by delegates from Austria and South Germany, and founded an independent organization on the principles of the International, and under the name of the Social Democratic Labour Party of Germany. The two organizations existed side by side till 1874, when a union was effected between them at a general meeting at Gotha, and they became henceforth the Socialist Labour Party. This was the burial of the national socialism of Lassalle, for though in deference to his followers, the new programme promised in the meantime to work within