When he had dismissed the national assembly, Frederick William decided to have a constitution with a parliament with two chambers, an aristocratic upper house and an elected lower house. The lower house was elected by all taxpayers, but in a system that was based on the amount of taxes paid so that the rich had more influence than the poor. The constitution also reserved for the king the power to appoint all ministers and reestablished the conservative district assemblies and provincial diets. And it guaranteed that the bureaucracy and the military remained firmly in the hands of the king. This was a more liberal system than had existed in Prussia before 1848, but was still a conservative system of government in which the monarch, the aristocracy, and the military kept most of the power. This constitution lasted until the end of the Prussian kingdom in 1918.