[p. 466]
|466| into circumstances in which everything had to be imperiously mustered for the external establishment and preservation, and inwardly, therefore, the means had to be gathered together by a vigorous ministerial government and made ready for use in a firm hand. Now the time had come when not merely the power of the state but also its will could become alive. The good fortune and the exertions of the European governments and their peoples had succeeded in freeing the sovereignty of the German realms from the restriction under which it still lay, and thereby in bringing about the possibility of in the first place promising free constitutions to the peoples. A higher necessity, however, than lies in the positive bond of a promise lies in the nature of the concepts that have become a general conviction, which attach to a monarchy the determination of a representative constitution, of a lawful condition, and of an influence of the people upon legislation. – Frederick II now also took this second step, of creating the monarchical state inwardly.
The promise could be fulfilled in a way which might be held to be the shrewdest, and even be given out as the most rightful, but which would have been the most perfidious counsel that the ministers could have given. If the princes of the new realms had wished to deceive their peoples quite thoroughly and to acquire honour, so to speak, before God and men, they would have given back to their peoples the so-called old constitutions; – honour before God and the world – for, after so many public voices and in particular also after the history before us, one might think that the peoples would have streamed into the churches and sung loud Te Deums. – For the shades of Machiavelli the princes would have won the fame of the fine policy of the Augusti and the Tiberii, who likewise let the forms of the preceding condition, at that time a republic, continue to stand, while the thing itself was no longer
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