However, things were different now. With the course of history changed, the Archbishop of Cologne not only had not been bought off by Prussia, but had instead become Austria's puppet.
Add to that the turmoil across the entire German Confederation in 1848, as well as the civil war of the Frankfurt National Assembly, and the Rhineland had now completely become a state within a state inside Prussia.
Under the influence of nationalism, this contradiction instead masked economic development and the class conflicts within the region, and this contradiction would grow increasingly difficult to clean up as economic development became more uneven and interregional class conflicts escalated.
With the advent of the industrial age, the factory owners and mine bosses in the west had already begun to look down on the farmers in the east, as well as those so-called Junker Landowners.
In the eyes of the people of the Rhineland, the Prussians were just a bunch of country bumpkins. Coupled with the existence of the Zollverein, the Rhineland's dependence on its domestic market and grain was quite low.
The people of the Rhineland liked to call themselves Germans rather than Prussians, and even called the Prussians Poles. The Prussian government had no way to deal with this.
If things were allowed to continue developing like this, then eastern and western Prussia would split into two countries sooner or later.
William IV understood these two hidden dangers very well; only, trying to solve them was by no means easy. After all, Prussia's parliament had been set up by William IV himself. To dissolve it now would be a complete slap to his own face.
Although the Austrian Empire had also taken action to suppress parliamentary politics within Germany, Prussia's situation was extremely special. Even if the National Assembly was dissolved, there