[p. 128]
|128| affairs such as road-building. This freer {more concrete} condition of civil life can increase the probability that the formal principles of freedom will not so soon find, among that class which stands above the lower class, in England indeed extremely numerous and most open to that formalism, the entry which the opponents of the Reform Bill show in threatening proximity.
Should the Bill, however, more through its principle than through its provisions, open the way into Parliament, thus into the centre of the governmental power, to the principles opposed to the hitherto existing system, so that they could appear there with greater significance than the radical reformers hitherto were able to gain, the struggle would threaten to become the more dangerous in that between the interests of the positive privileges and the demands of the more real freedom no middle, higher power would stand to restrain and mediate them, because the monarchical element here is without the power through which other states were able to owe to it the transition from the earlier legislation founded only on positive right into one based on the principles of real freedom, and indeed a transition kept pure of convulsion, violence and robbery. The other power would be the people, and an opposition which, built on a ground hitherto foreign to the existence of Parliament, felt itself in Parliament not a match for the opposing party, could be seduced into seeking its strength in the people and then bringing about, instead of a reform, a revolution.6)
6) Editors: cf. also Zwei Entwürfe zur Reformbill-Schrift, pp. 553 ff., and Notizen und Aphorismen No. 30 ff., pp. 567 f.
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