The States are represented by members of their Cabinets. So it was under the old régime. There is, however, an essential difference, for the Cabinets now depend on the confidence in them of the Diets elected by universal suffrage. It is public opinion that governs in the States now and no longer the will of an autocratic government, independent of this opinion. The government of a state is responsible before the Diet for the manner in which its representatives exercise their mandates in the Reichsrat, whether the members of the Cabinet are themselves present there or whether they are represented by civil servants. The former provisions relating to instructions given by Cabinets of States to their plenipotentiaries in the Reichsrat, as well as measures to insure that the representatives of each state shall join in a common vote, have become useless and have not been incorporated into the Constitution. The provision according to which the states are all represented by their Cabinets has been changed, however, in one respect. Article 63 specifies that only half of the Prussian votes will be at the disposal of the Prussian Cabinet, the other half being at the disposal of the Prussian provincial administrations. Thus the National Assembly, which has not had the force to effect directly a dismemberment of the Prussian state, and which has deferred for over two years every effort to be made toward this end, has nevertheless attempted to anticipate this reform. It seems in effect that if the Prussian provinces receive progressively more and more autonomy, if the powers granted to them become comparable to the more and more diminishing powers of the states, the assimilation of these provinces to states other than Prussia will be facilitated and hastened by the fact that these provinces, like states, are directly represented in the Reichsrat. Each of them will be able to defend its own particular interest, different, perhaps, from those of other provinces. Each province, above all, will be able to defend its rights and make its interests prevail when in conflict with those of the Prussian State, whose dominant centralization will thus be broken. This solution is not entirely satisfactory, for the regrouping which must be proceeded to in the Reich must be inspired above all by social and economic considerations. And it must have as its aim the creation of an autonomous body capable of self-development and productivity. Above all in this work, the historic frontiers of the States must be disregarded since these frontiers have been drawn to satisfy dynastic interests or to conclude victorious wars. What is true of the interior of the Reich is also true of Prussia. The Prussian provinces are not natural organisms in whose interests there should be created and developed a political life.