[p. 572]
|572| expense of German estates, Austria and Prussia stand at least equal, if the former does not still have advantages.
It is visible, however, that through the ten years’ struggle and the misery of a large part of Europe so much at least has been learned in concepts as to become less accessible to a blind clamour of freedom. In this bloody play the cloud of freedom has dissolved, in whose attempted embrace the peoples have plunged themselves into the abyss of misery, and determinate shapes and concepts have entered popular opinion. The cry of freedom will have no effect; anarchy has separated itself from freedom, and that a firm government is necessary to freedom [is] deeply engraved, but just as deeply that the people must cooperate in laws and in the most important affairs of a state. The guarantee that the government proceeds according to the laws, and the cooperation of the universal will in the most important affairs concerning the universal, the people has in the organisation of a body representing it, which has to grant to the monarch a part of the state levies, but especially the extraordinary ones; and as formerly the most essential, personal service, depended on free agreement, so now does money, which comprehends all other influence within itself.
Without such a representing body no freedom is any longer conceivable; all other indeterminacies, all the emptiness of the cry of freedom has vanished through this determination. It is not individuals who know it through learning, as a scientific concept, as a result of arbitrary study, but this determination is a principle of public opinion, it has become a part of healthy common sense. Most German states have such a representation; the estates of the realm of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary have given their monarchs free extraordinary contributions to the war with France.
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