[p. 456]
The share in public power which the individual has acquired for himself is thereby withdrawn from the power of the universal. To this power of the universal, to the monarch (emperor) and the assembly of estates (Imperial Diet), the necessary character, sovereignty, has thereby been left in a most feeble measure.8)
8) In the margin: From this side the German Empire is, like the realm of nature, inexhaustible in the great and unfathomable in the small, and it is this side which fills the initiated into the knowledge of the infinite detail of the rights with that admiration, that astonishment before the venerableness of the German body politic.
This endeavour to make public power a private property means nothing other than to dissolve the state, to annihilate the state as a power.
To the extent that each part not only has a share in the whole, but has also isolated itself, set itself outside the power of the state, to that extent is this independence assured to it as a right; and daily the parts strive to withdraw out of dependence on the whole, and far more, even beyond the limit that is sanctioned. The rights of separation from the whole which the individual estates have won for themselves are sacred, inviolable rights, on whose preservation the whole so-called edifice of the state rests, and the German edifice of the state means nothing other than the sum of the rights withdrawn from the state, rights which are preserved with the greatest conscientiousness and the most timid solicitude, and this justice is the principle, the soul of the constitution. Every judgement that from the concept and essence of a state …
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