ABSTRACT
The commercial classes, whose activities had recently been somewhat hampered by the second Zollverein crisis and by the Cotton Famine, strongly favoured the maintenance of peace. Although the financial and economic disadvantages of commercial isolation would be more serious for the Middle and small States, Prussia has just as great an interest in the preservation of the Zollverein. In the autumn of 1866 the South German States agreed that the Zollverein treaty of 1865 should remain in force while negotiations for the reform of customs affairs proceeded. Bismarck desired the establishment of a new Zollverein in which the General Congress and its liberum veto should be replaced by a customs council and a customs parliament in which decisions should be made by majority vote. The South German States recognised that from the economic point of view it would be in their interests to preserve the Zollverein.
