[p. 522]
|522| the principle of the independence of the state from the church and of the possibility of a state in spite of the diversity of religions has been [so] acted against, but in fact [thereby], in that different religions are present and Germany is to be a state, it has been recognised.
More important is another separation, likewise brought about by religion and lying still closer to the possibility of the state. Originally, namely, the votes in the general deliberations and resolutions rested on the full personality of the princes; they had votes only if they appeared in person, and the prince of several lands otherwise separate had only one vote. Their person and their land, the personality and the capacity of representation of a land, did not appear separated. Through the religious schism this distinction emerged. To which side was a vote to adhere if the prince and his land were of different religion and if a vote was once counted, by the fundamental law of the Empire, to a religious party?
As state power he ought in general to be on neither of the two sides, but the times had not matured to this. At first, moreover, this was not reflected upon in this way either. The prince of Protestant Palatinate-Neuburg, who became Catholic in the seventeenth century, was counted among the Catholic votes both at the Imperial Diet and in the courts of the Empire, whereas the vote of the Elector of Saxony, who at the close of the very same century16) changed his religion, remained Evangelical, as was also the case with the later changes of religion of the princes of Hesse [and] of Württemberg.
16) In the margin: the Westph. peace between the two
Although even before this only princes who had land and people to govern had seat and vote at the Imperial Diet, so that a land seemed inseparable from the concept of an estate at the Imperial Diet,
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