[p. 566]
|566| to small estates and of exploiting small advantages, more on the line with less great estates, because, like France’s, its statecraft is wholly calculating, its military power was disproportionate to its extent and therefore had to seek the sum of small advantages, – just as the French republic acted throughout according to general principles, pursued them with its power into the smallest details and suppressed all particular rights and relations under these principles, – and one could say, because its new policy has not proceeded from a royal, majestic principle but from burgherdom and stands, for example, towards the Austrian power in the relation of a burgher, who has laboriously acquired his treasures by his work from the penny up, towards the free nobleman, rich from forefathers, whose possession rests on his soil and remains the same even if in trifles he lets his household or neighbours have their way. His wealth is not a sum – the sum, however, is diminished by taking away particulars – but something abiding, unalterable.
The small estates, which must have the greatest apprehensions for their independence, can attach themselves with confidence only to a power whose policy and magnanimity are at once capable and inclined to protect their continued existence, and one has always seen the ecclesiastical princes, abbots and imperial cities attach themselves to the Emperor and observe their obligations towards him and the German Empire most faithfully.
Even if the more powerful estates of the Empire wished to unite among themselves and devised a way by which such a coalition should not have the fate of all coalitions, even if the union of their troops formed a power that could resist one great power, they would nevertheless never come into the position of having apprehensions of only one power, – for this one power would necessarily have to fear the participation
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