[p. 575]
|575| costs of the state was to be abolished and it was to be left to the discretion of the princes what they should consider necessary for the needs of the country. This extension of the power of princes, by which the princes of that time would have abolished the whole principle on which the modern states rest, and what consequences? would have prepared for their descendants, – this extension of – if one likes – German freedom was prevented by Emperor Leopold, and the advisory opinion of the Imperial Diet was not ratified by him; he would in his German lands, Bohemia, Austria, have been equally entitled to abolish the rights of his lands. He would [further] have been entitled by the Imperial Diet, if only the nexus with the Empire of the Burgundian Circle, [still] always in a certain way subsisting,28) had been made valid, [to abolish] the rights of the estates there, which had degenerated into a despotic aristocratism, and to carry out that on which Joseph II foundered more than a century later.
28) In the margin: how did the Austrian Netherlands come to Austria? Their nexus with the Empire?
From the side of the interest of this German freedom the relation of the Emperor to Germany appears in another light, and his relation very different from the relation of Prussia. Through the power of time the great interest of the people has returned to its source, – as a need, which, however, has not yet found its satisfaction through a state organisation appropriate to it.
The principle of the original German state, which has been spread from Germany over the whole of Europe, was the principle of monarchy, a state power under a head for the conduct of the universal affairs and with the cooperation of the people through its deputies. The form of this has survived even in what is called the Imperial Diet; but the thing has vanished.
In the long wavering of Europe between barbarism and
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