It was above all the question of the Rhineland. Through Trimborn, spokesman of the Centre, deputies of Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle, the inhabitants of the Rhine country presented their claims. Prussia, product of a political dynasty, is an aggregation of different races, for there is no Prussian nation. The people who live on the banks of the Rhine feel themselves handicapped in comparison with the other German races, since they are not in direct contact with the Reich, and are represented in it only through the medium of Prussia. It follows from this that the people of the Rhine cannot have free expression of their native tendencies nor develop their own culture. They suffer in every way by not having their own administration and by having to endure Prussian functionaries over them. The objections which came from the Prussian side to the formation of a Rhine state were not valid, insisted the partisans of the latter. The separation of the Rhineland from Prussia need not entail in itself a separation from the Reich. On the contrary, the Rhineland would be more solidly and intimately welded to the Reich if they belonged to it directly instead of being only part of Prussia. Nor would they admit the argument that the Rhineland should belong to Prussia to supplement economically the relatively poor Eastern provinces of Prussia. “The old cry of the poor East and the rich West is to-day dead,” the Rhinelanders insisted. War and revolution have done infinitely more damage to industrial Rhine than to the rural Eastern provinces. Finally, while it is possible that for a certain period, undoubtedly short, there might be disturbances in Germany caused by the creation of a new state, these would be less harmful than leaving on the Rhine a situation that would remain a permanent source of trouble. In conclusion, the representatives of the Rhineland demanded the creation of a Republic of the West, which should take in the provinces of the Rhine, a part of Westphalia and the territories of Oldenburg and Bremen. On the other hand, the representatives of Hanover demanded justice against the violent annexation to which it had been subjected in 1866. There was formed in the Assembly a “German-Hanoverian” group which demanded “a free Hanover within a new Germany.” It involved the fusion of Lower Saxony with Hanover and Brunswick. In the same way the small states of Central Germany wanted to fuse into a single state which would take in also part of the territory of Prussia and the region of Erfurt, and would form the state of Thuringia. To these claims the representatives of Prussia, particularly the Prussian Minister of Justice, Heinze, and the German Nationalist, Düringer, replied, that the separatists were rats who were deserting a sinking ship; and they presented a vigorous defence of Prussia.