It was this Committee, therefore, which undertook the decision of the relations to be established between Bohemia and the new free Germany. The new body proved bolder than the Preparatory Parliament; for it took a step which, though it may have been intended in a conciliatory spirit, yet involved the distinct assertion of the claim to treat Bohemia as part of Germany. They invited the Bohemian historian Palacky to join with them in their deliberations, and thus to sanction the proposal that Bohemia should send representatives to the German Parliament. Palacky answered by a courteous but firm refusal of the proposal, based partly on the grounds of previous history, partly on the needs of Bohemia, and partly on the necessity of an independent Austrian Empire to the safety and freedom of Europe. He pointed out that the supposed union between Bohemia and Germany had been merely an alliance of princes, never of peoples, and that even the Bohemian Estates had never recognized it. He urged that Bohemia had the same right to independence which was claimed by Germany; but that both would suffer if extraneous elements were introduced into Germany. He urged that an independent Austria was necessary as a barrier against Russia, but that Germany could be united only by a Republican Government; and, therefore, Austria, which must necessarily remain an Empire, could not consent to a close union with Germany without breaking to pieces. In spite, however, of this rebuff, the German leaders at Frankfort were so eager to secure their purpose in this matter that they sent down messengers to Prague to confer with the Bohemian National Committee. A long discussion ensued, turning partly on the independence of the Austrian State, partly on the nationality of Bohemia. The Bohemians urged that the Germans were endeavouring to force upon them traditions which they had rejected for themselves; that the Frankfort Parliament had repudiated the old Bund on account of its unrepresentative character; and yet they demanded that Bohemia should recognise a union which rested on the arrangements which had been destroyed, a union about which the Bohemians had never been consulted as a nation. The Germans, on their side, attempted to advance certain arguments of expediency in favour of a closer union between Bohemia and Germany. But a certain Dr. Schilling, who does not seem to have been one of the original messengers from Frankfort, declared, with brutal frankness, the real grounds of the German proposal. If Austria did not become German, he said, the Germans of Austria would not remain Austrian. The five million Germans in Austria would not stay to be oppressed by the twelve million Slavs. The freedom and culture of Bohemia was, he declared, entirely German. The idea of freedom could not be found among the Slavs; and it was therefore necessary, in the general interests of freedom, that Bohemia should be absorbed in Germany.