[p. 86]
|86| political freedom, of the downfall of its constitution and of the state itself. Over against the pride of English freedom we Germans may well adduce that, even if the former constitution of the German Empire was likewise a shapeless aggregate of particular rights, it was only the external bond of the German lands, and that the life of the state in these lands, in respect of the filling of offices and the electoral rights relating to the territories existing within them, did not have in it such an anomaly as the one mentioned, still less that selfishness penetrating all classes of the people. Even if, now, alongside the democratic element the aristocratic in England is so highly considerable a power, and purely aristocratic governments such as Venice, Genoa, Berne etc. have been reproached with finding their security and stability in sinking the people ruled by them into common sensuality and in its corruption of morals, and if it is further counted as part of freedom itself to give one’s vote entirely at pleasure, whatever motive [also] determines the will, it is nevertheless to be acknowledged as a good sign of the reawakening of the moral sense in the English people that one of the feelings which have brought about the need of a reform is the repugnance against that corruption. It will likewise be acknowledged as the right way that the attempt at improvement is no longer to be based merely on the moral means of representations, exhortations, the association of single individuals in order to owe nothing to the system of corruption and to work against it, but on the alteration of institutions; the usual prejudice of inertia, which still holds fast to the old belief in the goodness of an institution even when the condition dependent on it
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