But all these pleas and cajoleries had little or no positive result. Indeed, taken in conjunction with other phrases of the Imperial activity, they seem rather to have excited opposition in the breasts of the members of the Reichstag, who possibly considered themselves just as well qualified as the monarch to estimate the degree and appreciate the needs of Germany's maritime interests, and at any rate half-suspected that his efforts directly to influence their deliberations involved an encroachment on their constitutional privileges. The first naval estimates submitted in the new reign, which provided for the laying down of the unusually large number of four battleships, were got through the Reichstag without much difficulty, but when Admiral von Hollmann became Minister of Marine in the following year, he found that quite a different temper had taken possession of the Parliament. It was not only that the Emperor's general governmental acts had begun to stir up opposition; his oratorical flights in praise of sea-power and world-empire had also generated strong suspicions that he was urging Germany along a path which would lead her to ruin at home and disaster abroad. Hollmann's by no means exorbitant demands were branded both in the Reichstag and the press as "unconscionable," his programme as "boundless," and on every side were heard contemptuous and impatient references to "the awful fleet." For a decade the naval estimates were ruthlessly and recklessly cut down to, on an average, not far short of half their original figure, and finally, in 1897, the ministerial career of Hollmann was terminated by the unceremonious rejection of three out of the four cruisers which, in a special Memorandum, he had sought to prove were indispensable for the protection of the Empire's stake on the seas. And all this time the Emperor had never ceased to agitate, by word and deed, for the ideas which he had so much at heart and to which the Reichstag nevertheless showed itself so completely indifferent, if not actually hostile.