[p. 107]
|107| and to complain, in a public declaration to Parliament, that by the Bill those great interests are to be cut off from this way, not exposed to chance, of being represented in Parliament by bribery. Moral motives give way to so important a point of view, but it is the defect of a constitution that it leaves to chance what is necessary and compels it to be obtained by way of corruption, which morality condemns. The interests, as they are organically distinguished into the estates – in the example of Sweden cited, into the estates of the nobility, the clergy, the burghers of the towns and the peasants -, no longer, it is true, fully correspond to the present condition of most states, now that, as in England, the other interests mentioned have become powerful; this defect, however, would be easily removed if the earlier basis of the inner public law were again understood, namely that the real foundations of the life of the state, as they are actually distinguished and as their distinct content must be essentially taken into account in government and administration, should also be consciously and expressly brought out and recognised, and that, where they are to be spoken of and decided upon, they themselves should be allowed to speak, without this being left to chance. Napoleon, in a constitution which he gave to the Kingdom of Italy, divided the entitlement to representation according to the classes of Possidenti, Dotti, Merchanti in the sense of that point of view.
In the earlier parliamentary debates on proposed, very partial reforms, a chief argument against them, which is also put forward at present, was always that in the hitherto existing composition of Parliament all great interests are represented, that it is things, not individuals as such, that are to have the opportunity to speak and to make themselves felt. Into this moment there seems to enter that
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