of these archbishops and rejected every offer of negotiation until their reinstallation in their dioceses. A crowd of hastily established journals, more especially in Bavaria, maintained their cause, and were opposed by numberless Protestant publications, which generally proved injurious to the cause they strove to uphold, being chiefly remarkable for base servility, frivolity, and infidelity. On the demise of Frederick William III., on the 7th of June, 1840, and the succession of his son, Frederick William IV., the church question was momentarily cast into the shade by that relating to the constitution. Constitutional Germany demanded from the new sovereign the convocation of the imperial diet promised by his father. The Catholic party, however, conscious that it would merely form the minority in the diet, did not participate in the demand.[9] The constitution was solely demanded by Protestant Eastern Prussia; but the king declared, during the ceremony of fealty at Koenigsberg, that "he would never do homage to the idea of a general popular representation and would pursue a course based upon historical progression, suitable to German nationality." The provincial Estates were shortly afterward instituted, and separate diets were opened in each of the provinces. This attracted little attention, and the dispute with the church once more became the sole subject of interest. It terminated in the complete triumph of the Catholic party. In consequence of an agreement with the pope, the brief of 1820 remained in force, Dunin was reinstated, Droste received personal satisfaction by a public royal letter and a representative in Cologne in von Geissel, hitherto bishop of Spires. The disputed election of the bishop of Treves was also decided in favor of Arnoldi, the ultramontane candidate. Late in the autumn of 1842, the king of Prussia for the first time convoked the deputies selected from the provincial diets to Berlin. He had, but a short time before, laid the foundation-stone to the completion of the Cologne cathedral, and on that occasion, moreover, spoken words of deep import to the people, admonitory of unity to the whole of Germany. [Footnote 1: £26,263,375 16s. 8d.] [Footnote 2: The Maritime Commercial Company, meanwhile, entered into a contract.] [Footnote 3: "We have long since lost all our maritime power. The only guns now fired by us at sea are as signals of distress. Who now remembers that it was the German Hansa that first made use of cannons at sea, that it was from Germans that the English learned to build men-of-war?"--_John's Nationality_.]