[p. 573]
The interest of this German freedom more naturally seeks protection with a state which itself rests on this system of freedom. The interests which were formerly dominant in Germany have in part passed away. Prussia can therefore no longer attach itself to them; no war of Prussia can any longer count with public opinion anew as a German war of freedom. The true, abiding interest, sharpened to the highest in this time, can find no protection with it. The estates of the realm of the Prussian provinces have lost their significance under the power of the royal might. A new and artificial system of levies has been introduced in the Prussian lands, which has been made valid also in the newly inherited lands that had privileges and levies according to old rights and custom.
Against this burden of levies in the Prussian states, against the suppression of privileges, the German subjects of Prussia can expect help neither from the Emperor nor from the courts of the Empire.
Besides the less powerful estates, such as the imperial cities etc., the estates of the realm of the German territories have, already because the hereditary imperial lands are themselves a state which is founded on representation and in which the people have rights, and especially because of the judicial help at the Aulic Council, a natural interest in looking to the imperial court and in expecting [from it] the support of that which the world now understands by German freedom.
This kind of freedom has naturally had to suffer the more, the more the other kind of German freedom has increased and the more the power of the state over the individual members diminished.
In the Peace of Westphalia the sovereignty, or at least the suzerainty, of the Emperor over imperial cities, which belonged to the Emperors and which in the course of time was pledged to the imperial cities,
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