[p. 563]
|563| the right of cooperation, of rejoining for general cooperation, even the capacity of deliberating with its fellow estates about it.
Sweden, it is true, at the renewal of the war publicly offered to furnish its contingent. But it has been reported that Prussia did not wish to permit passage through the line of neutrality. Through the fact that Brandenburg not only in this war completely separated its interest from the interest of the German Empire and induced other estates likewise to separate theirs, and then put itself in the position of being able, as guarantor, to compel them legally and by its power to hold themselves separate, that it took from the knighthood of Franconia its immediacy and from the imperial city of Nuremberg a part of its territory, and at the moment of need accepted the complete surrender of the magistracy for occupation, afterwards occupied Hanover, which was in alliance with it for the tranquillity and security of northern Germany, disarmed it and laid upon it the requisition of provisioning, – through all these circumstances it has become clear, what had long been present, that Prussia is to be regarded not as a German prince of the Empire on an equal footing with the other estates, but as a separate, sovereign, powerful state, not as an estate that would be capable of accepting equal conditions with other estates in an association.
In general, more truth has come into [the] relations of the states through the last [war]. Insofar as the states stand to one another in the relation of power, the delusions about this have vanished, and this relation has manifested itself everywhere and been made valid, and the weaker states have been brought to the recognition that they cannot place themselves on a level with the greater. When a republic of Geneva conducted itself as a sovereign state and boasted εὔχετο to be the first to send an envoy to the French republic and formally to recognise it, the relation of Geneva to
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