No step could possibly have been taken more likely to defeat Metternich's own objects; for if there was one institution round which all the peoples of Hungary rallied, it was their County Governments. Kossuth felt the strength of his position, and tried to remove the causes of division. For the moment he seemed even disposed to abandon his extreme anti-Slavonic policy, and opposed a proposal for compelling the use of the Hungarian language in elementary schools. The opposition to the Administrator system in the counties seemed to Kossuth an opportunity for bringing forward the whole body of reforms which he had long desired. The movement for relieving the peasants of their burdens had naturally widened the circle of those who took interest in political affairs; and a famine which was quickening the political feeling of the Silesian peasants and of the artizans of Berlin had also spread to Hungary, and was making the ordinary grievances of the peasant doubly grievous to him. Along with the demands for the relief of the peasantry from their burdens, Kossuth and his friends now put forward proposals for Constitutional reforms. Deak, though no longer a member of the Assembly, gave his assistance in putting their plans into shape, and for the first time there was formed, in 1847, a complete programme of the Hungarian Liberals. Their demands were: Publicity of parliamentary debates; a parliamentary journal in which speeches were to be published in full; triennial elections and regular yearly meetings of the Diet; improvement of the government of the towns and enlargement of their right of election to the Diet; universal taxation of all classes; the abolition of forced labour of the peasant, and of other restrictions on his mode of life.