Palacky bitterly thanked Schilling for the frankness of his speech; and expressed his regret at hearing that the Germans would not stay where they could not rule, and where they were obliged to be on an equality with others; while another of the Bohemians exclaimed that the Bohemians had shown their love of liberty by their resistance to the attempts to Germanize them. But Schilling seemed entirely unable to appreciate the feelings of his opponents; and, with a naïve contempt for logic, he declared that, _because_ Nationality was just now the leading idea of the Peoples, _therefore_ all the Slavs who belonged to the German Bund must be absorbed in Germany! Kuranda, the former champion of Viennese liberty, tried to soften the effect of Schilling's insults. He abandoned any claim based on the old German Bund, and declared that the Assembly at Frankfort was not so much a German Parliament as a Congress of Peoples, a beginning of the union of humanity. But this ingenious change of front could not destroy the effect of Schilling's words; and perhaps the Bohemians could not understand why a Congress of the Peoples should find its centre at Frankfort any more than at Prague. But though the Bohemians had failed to convince the German Committee that Bohemia had as much right as Germany to a separate existence, they still hoped that the Austrian Government would protect them from an attack which seemed directed both against their national rights and against the integrity of the Austrian Empire. So they despatched to the Minister of the Interior a protest against the proposal to hold elections for the Frankfort Parliament in Bohemia. Such elections, they declared, would lead to a breach of the peace of the country, to Communistic and Republican agitations, and to attempts to break up the Austrian Empire. The Bohemian Assembly, they urged, would disavow the legal right of such representatives when they were elected; and thus any really satisfactory alliance between Austria and Germany would be hindered by this attempt. The Ministers in Vienna were, no doubt, troubled in their mind about this question of the relations between Germans and Bohemians. On the one hand, they desired to conciliate a people whose national interests led them to seek protection in a union with the rest of the Austrian Empire. But, on the other hand, they felt it difficult to disregard the intense German feeling which was growing in Vienna, and which was shared by important towns in Bohemia. Therefore, after, no doubt, considerable deliberation, the Ministry resolved to announce to the Bohemians that they might either vote for the representatives in the Frankfort Parliament or abstain from voting, as seemed best to them. This seems, of all conclusions, the most unreasonable which could have been arrived at. The union with Germany might or might not be defensible; but it was obviously a step which must be taken by the whole nation or by none. Of all possible