The federal diet had for some time been occupied with measures for the internal tranquillity of Germany. The Hambach festival both brought them to a conclusion and increased their severity. Under the date of the 28th of June, 1832, the resolutions of the federal assembly, by which first of all the provincial Estates, then the popular clubs, and finally the press, were to be deprived of every means of opposing in any the slightest degree the joint will of the princes, were published. The governments were bound not to tolerate within their jurisdiction aught contrary to the resolutions passed by the federal assembly, and to call the whole power of the confederation to their aid if unable to enforce obedience; nay, in cases of urgency, the confederation reserved to itself the right of armed intervention, undemanded by the governments. Taxes, to meet the expenses of the confederation, were to be voted submissively by the provincial Estates. Finally, all popular associations and assemblies were also prohibited, and all newspapers, still remaining, of a liberal tendency, were suppressed. The youthful revolutionists, principally students, assembled secretly at Frankfort on the Maine, during the night of the 3d of April, 1833, attacked the town-watch for the purpose of liberating some political prisoners, and possibly intended to have carried the federal assembly by a _coup-de-main_ had they not been dispersed. These excesses had merely the effect of increasing the severity of the scrutiny and of crowding the prisons with suspected persons. [Footnote 1: Also the unfortunate Dr. Plath, to whom science is indebted for an excellent historical work upon China. He became implicated in this affair and remained in confinement until 1836, when he was sentenced to fifteen years' further imprisonment.] [Footnote 2: All national distinctions must cease and be fused in universal liberty and equality; this was the sole aim of the noble French people, and for this cause should we meet them with a fraternal embrace, etc. Paul Pfizer well observed in a pamphlet on German liberalism, published at that period, "What epithet would the majority of the French people bestow upon a liberty which a part of their nation would purchase by placing themselves beneath the protection of a foreign and superior power, called to their aid against their fellow-citizens? If the cause of German liberalism is to remain pure and unspotted, we must not, like Coriolanus, arm the foreign foe against our country. The egotistical tendency of the age is, unhappily, too much inclined (by a coalition with France) to prefer personal liberty and independence to the liberty and independence (thereby infallibly forfeited) of the whole community. The supposed fellowship with France would be subjection to her. France will support the German liberals as Richelien did the German Protestants."] CCLXX. The Struggles of the Provincial Diets