Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/203

 in his opinion, legitimately be made only by a free resolution of the German princes. Neither would the acceptance of the German imperial crown be compatible with his feelings of friendly obligations to Austria. These and similar reasons for the non-acceptance of the imperial constitution and the Kaisership were uttered by the king, partly in public, partly in private.

It is quite possible that the most serious reason which frightened him lay in the probability that if he accepted the imperial crown, he might have to defend it by force of arms against Austria and Russia; and this apprehension appeared in an almost naïve way in an answer which the king gave to the eloquent words of a member of the Frankfurt parliament, Herr von Beckerath, urging him to accept: “If you could have addressed your appeal to Frederick the Great, he would have been your man; but I am not a great ruler.” Indeed, Frederick William IV. from the first day of his government to the pitiable end thereof sufficiently proved that he was not made to be the first Kaiser of the new German empire. His refusal to accept the imperial crown and the constitution of the empire turned the general enthusiasm of the people throughout the country into general dismay and indignation. On April 11 the national parliament declared that it would stand by the constitution it had made. By the 14th the legislative bodies of the governments of twenty-three German states had signified their acceptance of that constitution and of the election of the king of Prussia as Kaiser. But Frederick William IV. persisted in his declination, and the kings of Bavaria, Hanover and Saxony also continued to signify their unwillingness to assent.

On May 4 the national parliament appealed to the “governments, the legislative bodies, the communities in the several