[p. 580]
|580| and princely colleges the princes, if they did not wish to appear themselves, should not let themselves be represented by princes of their house or at least by their most eminent vassals. In such an assembly the manner of proceedings too, the dictation of protocols, would not be applicable, but deliberation and voting would be oral, and the talents and the splendour of the representatives, if they were only from princely and the noblest families, would lend to such a princely assembly a lofty standing and aspect.
Even if all parts were to gain by Germany becoming one state, such an event has never been the fruit of deliberation but of force, and even if it [were] in keeping with general culture and the need of it were felt deeply and determinately. The common mass of the German people together with their estates of the realm, who know of nothing else than the separation of the German peoples and to whom the union of them is something wholly alien, would have to be gathered by the force of a conqueror into one mass, they would have to be compelled to regard themselves as belonging to Germany.
This Theseus would have to have magnanimity to concede to the people which he had created out of scattered peoples a share in what concerns all – since a democratic constitution, such as Theseus gave to his people, is in our times and in great states a contradiction in itself, the share would be an organisation – [as well as] character enough – even if he could not be assured, through the direction of the state power which he would hold in his hands, of not being rewarded with ingratitude as Theseus was – to be willing to bear the hatred which Richelieu and other great men drew upon themselves, who shattered the particularities and peculiarities of men.
If the sociable nature of man has once been disturbed
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