more successful. It brought back the Emperor's answer in the shape of a letter addressed by him to Baron Pillersdorf, then head of the Austrian government.[1] It was stated in this important document that the Emperor would shortly convoke a Bohemian Diet in which not only the nobility and clergy but also the towns and country districts would be adequately represented. The Emperor would grant this assembly full legislative power. He further promised that the Bohemian language should in future enjoy complete equality with the German one, and that the demands of the Bohemians with regard to freedom of the press and personal liberty would be granted. The claim of the landowners to demand forced labour ("robota") from the peasants on their estates was abolished and the landowners were to receive an indemnity. The right of lower jurisdiction possessed by the owners of certain large estates (velkostátky) that could then only be held by nobles was abolished. With regard to the reunion of Moravia and Silesia to Bohemia, the matter was to be left to the decision of a general assembly of representatives of all parts of the Habsburg dominions. This Imperial decree was enthusiastically received at Prague, and the elections to the new Diet, which would practically have had the character of a constituent assembly, took place shortly afterwards. This Bohemian parliament, however, never met.
The events in Bohemia are at this moment so closely connected with those in Germany that it is necessary to refer briefly to the condition of Germany at the beginning of the year 1848. The only link between the numerous German states had hitherto consisted in a meeting of representatives of all the states which formed part of the confederacy. This assembly which met at Frankfurt under the presidency of Austria had long become intensely unpopular. All Germans complained that no work, except the occasional passing of reactionary measures, was done by the worthy diplomatists, who met at Frankfurt. In consequence of the revolutionary movement of the year 1848, the German Governments found themselves obliged to give their reluctant consent to the meeting of a national parliament at Frankfurt, at which all countries forming part of the Germanic confederacy—
- ↑ This document, dated April 8, 1848, which is of great importance for the constitutional development of Bohemia, is printed by Kalousek, p. 640–642.
