The whole policy of partitioning Prussia very soon broke down before a Prussian, national unity that was the growth of centuries. This national sentiment expressed itself in violent opposition not only from the Prussian ruling class, to whom Prussian unity was a necessary condition for a monarchical and militarist reaction, but also to the Prussian proletariat, who considered it a necessary condition for the success of the Revolution. Nor, oddly enough, was it favoured even by the Southern and Catholic interest who in the past had been most jealous of Prussia. For they argued that if Prussia were reduced to provincial departments, their own State rights would not remain unrestricted. And State right had become all the more precious to the clerical parties since revolution had threatened them both from above and below, from a Socialist Central Government above and from Communist Council Governments below. Partition had therefore to be abandoned and the difficulty of Prussian preponderance was solved by an arbitrary reduction of Prussian representation, as in the Constitution of 1871. In the old Bundesrat Prussia was represented by 17 votes out of 61 (counting Alsace-Lorraine). Art. 61 of the present Constitution restricts Prussia to two-fifths of the total votes, having raised the proportion from one-third in the previous drafts. That is, Prussia used to have rather more than a quarter, and now has rather more than a third of the votes in the Federal body. This might look like a reaction into Prussianism; but only until the functions of this Federal Body are examined. Sovereignty, under the old Constitution, resided in the dynasties, and the old Bundesrat was a council of diplomatic delegates, comparable to the Supreme Council at Paris. These delegates, as representatives of the Crown, intervened, not only in legislative but even in administrative matters, such as appointments. Moreover, in this Council, the Prussian representatives had a privileged position, as they received their instructions from the Prussian Government in which the Imperial Chancellor was Premier. In the first drafts of the Constitution we find the sovereignty divided between representatives of the State and representatives of the people. Thus the Staatenhaus and Volkshaus combine to make the sovereign Reichstag. But in the present Constitution, all sovereignty expressly resides in the popular Chamber, the Reichstag. The Reichsrat becomes no more than a sort of Imperial Conference with defined and carefully delimited constitutional powers; and, in the Reichsrat, Prussia has no privileged position whatever.