[p. 523]
|523| this distinction between the personality of the prince and his representation of a land became more visible also with regard to the general German state, and all the more easily if within the land this separation of the person of the prince and his subjects had already been constituted through estates of the realm. The Palatinate, which had no estates of the realm, passed over to the Catholic side without resistance, and the struggle of the Palatines with their Catholic princes over religious grievances has continued down to the most recent times, whereas in Hesse and in Württemberg the separation had already become legal through estates of the realm, and the religion of the land too [was] made to count in respect of the relation to the German Empire and set before the personality of the prince, who thus appears at the Imperial Diet not as an individual but as a representative.
Attention to this distinction, which religion occasioned, has now extended to other differences, and lands which have come under one prince have obtained separate votes for the prince, and here too it is no longer, as formerly, when even the ruler of several principalities had only one vote, or several princes among whom a principality was divided each had a vote for himself, the unity of the individual, and so not the personality but his capacity of being a representative, that has been made the principle.
But as the nourishment of a healthy body, used by a sick body, would corrupt it still more, so this true and genuine principle, that the land gives strength and right of vote, brought into the condition of the German Empire, has contributed all the more to its dissolution.
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