[p. 598]
That the religion of each country, of each imperial city is legally determined, the one purely Evangelical, the other purely Catholic, a third parity-based (what if a country so violated the Peace of Westphalia and from purely Catholic became purely Protestant, or from purely Protestant purely Catholic, or from a parity-based one a pure one?), that the votes in the Diet, in the Imperial Chamber Court, in the Aulic Council are determined, that offices and embassy posts depend on it, that a large part of the Catholic votes, the archiepiscopal and episcopal, are most intimately interwoven with the ecclesiastical system, – these are legal determinations of relations of state according to religion, hallowed by the most solemn treaties and fundamental laws of the Empire; but they are slight evils compared with the legally so famous itio in partes, – the right of the one or the other religious party not to submit to the majority; if this right were restricted to religious matters, it goes without saying that this separation would have to be legal, and it would also be quite harmless to the state, because it would concern only objects that are none of its business. As it is, however, it has many sides that wholly annihilate relations in a state; first, a multitude of things are connected with religion, property, prerogatives of every kind, which through the connection with religion become church matters, the affair of a separate state. Whole states of Germany, an enormous mass of goods in Catholic and Protestant states, matrimonial matters, which according to the admission of the Protestants, as far as their own are concerned, are purely things capable of contract, whose relation is necess[arily] an object [of] contracts and requires a government, are withdrawn from the general state. Still more, however, and this is strong, the activity of the state can be completely checked in every general affair of state that has absolutely no reference to religion; on war and peace, taxes a[nd] o[n] the little that is left to the state, those of one religion can assemble and hinder everything that was to be decided by the majority. Brandenburg does not pay the increased Chamber contributions, for this reason. It goes too far when one, as some do, places this right in complete parallel with the right of insurrec[tion], which is sanctioned in the Robespierrean constitution. The difference is that the G[erman] E[mpire] has in its various parts, independently of the whole, governments; but if the state and the gov[ernments] and l[aws] rested on the resolutions of E[mperor] and E[mpire], then the two would have to be set equal.
c) in tearing the state apart, religion has however helped to promote
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