"New and unwonted is the benevolence of this high permission; if we are less choice in our words and expressions, if we seem immodest in the extent of our petitions, our King's fatherly consideration will graciously put a right construction on our acts. Two different national elements inhabit this happy Kingdom, this pearl in your Majesty's illustrious imperial crown. One of them, the original one, which has the nearest right to its land and King, has hitherto been hindered in its progress towards culture and equal rights by institutions, which, without being hostile or denationalizing, yet naturally involve a partial wiping out of original national feeling as the condition of obtaining recognition as citizens. "The free development of both nations, the German and Bohemian, which are united by fate, and both of which inhabit Bohemia, and a similar striving after the objects of a higher culture, will, by strengthening, reconciling, and uniting them in brotherhood, lay the foundation of the welfare of both nations. "Bohemia has not yet reached that high position which it ought to have attained, in order to meet forcibly the serious events which are developing themselves; and this failure arises from the superiority which has hitherto been granted to the German element in legal and administrative arrangements. It is not mere toleration, it is the equalizing of the two nationalities by legal guarantees which can and will bind both nations to the throne. "But the guarantees for this excellent and sacred result, so much to be desired by every patriot, whether German or Bohemian, do not consist in the cultivation of language only. It consists in the essential alterations of the institutions, which have hitherto existed, in the removal of the barriers which hinder intercourse between Prince and People, and at the same time in universal, benevolently guarded, popular instruction by school and writing."