It was obvious that, while such was their state of mind, the Frankfort Parliament would watch with jealous eyes the movement for Italian liberty. They could not, indeed, deny that the Italians had some claim to freedom; or that the authority exercised by Austria in Lombardy was, both in its origin and character, exactly of the kind most opposed to the ideas embodied in the Frankfort Parliament. But the extreme desire to claim Austria as a part of united Germany naturally led the Frankfort Parliament to look at least with tolerance on the special prejudices of the Viennese. While they were thus divided in their minds between principle and prejudice, the news of the attack on Trieste came like a God-send to those who were looking for an excuse to sacrifice their Liberal principles to the desire for German aggrandizement. The Parliament, therefore, resolved unanimously that any attack on the German haven of Trieste was a declaration of war against Germany. A resolution of this kind naturally prepared the way for more decided hostility to the Italian cause; and another decision at which they soon after arrived gave new force to the anti-Italian feeling. Even if some Viennese Democrats might desire, or at all events approve, the separation of Lombardy and Venetia from the Empire, there could be no doubt that this feeling was not shared by the members of the House of Hapsburg. When, therefore, on June 29, Archduke John was chosen Administrator of the German Empire, the Frankfort Parliament almost unavoidably identified itself with the domineering policy of the Austrian Germans. While, then, they claimed security for German freedom, the Parliament triumphed savagely over the fall of the liberties of Bohemia, refused even provincial independence to the Southern Tyrol, and demanded that Northern Italy should be retained in the Austrian Empire.