In this Assembly the Extreme Left was still the predominant party; in an address to the Crown they asked that the state of siege at Berlin should be raised, and that an amnesty to those who had fought on the 18th of March should be proclaimed.

Bismarck did not yet think that the time for forgiveness had come; the struggle was indeed not yet over.
He opposed the first demand because, as he said, there was more danger to liberty of debate from the armed mob than there was from the Prussian soldiers.

In one of the most careful of his speeches he opposed the amnesty.

"Amnesty," he said, "was a right of the Crown, not of the Assembly"; moreover the repeated amnesties were undermining in the people the feeling of law; the opinion was being spread about that the law of the State rested on the barricades, that everyone who disliked a law or considered it unjust had the right to consider it as non-existent.

Who that has read the history of Europe during this year can doubt the justice of the remark?
Then he continues: "My third reason for voting against the amnesty is humanity.