[p. 470]
|470| instead of soldiers furnished only now levied recruits, another paid no Roman months, a third withdrew his contingent at the time of the highest need, many concluded peace treaties and neutrality agreements, the great majority, each in his own way, annihilated the defence of Germany, then constitutional law proves that the estates had the right to such conduct, the right to bring the whole into the greatest danger, harm and misfortune, and because they are rights, the individuals and the totality must guard and protect most strictly such rights of being ruined. For this edifice of right of the German state there is therefore perhaps no more fitting inscription than this:
Fiat iustitia, pereat Germania!
It is a trait in the German character, if not a rational one, yet in a way a noble one, that right in general, let its ground and its consequences be constituted as they may, is to him something so sacred. If Germany as a separate, independent state, as all appearances suggest, and the German nation as a people altogether perishes, it will still afford a pleasing sight to see, among the destroying spirits, awe of right foremost.
Such a view would be afforded by the political condition and the constitutional law of Germany if Germany were to be regarded as a state; its political condition would have to be considered a legal anarchy, its constitutional law a system of right against the state. But everything agrees that Germany is no longer to be regarded as a united whole of a state, but as a multitude of independent and, in essence, sovereign states. But, it is said, Germany is an Empire, a body politic, it stands under a common head of the Empire, stands in the imperial union. These expressions, as legal titles, cannot by any means be infringed upon; but a consideration in which concepts are at issue
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