The German Constitution

[p. 524]

[6. The Power of the Estates]

Cross-reference: The estates element in the Groundlines: § 301 ff.; on the distinction of private right and public law § 278.

When in the course of time the change of customs, of religion, especially of the relation of the estates according to wealth, had brought about a separation with regard to the inner coherence subsisting through character and universal interests, external legal bonds were necessary in order to unite Germany, whose inhabitants ceased to be a people and became a multitude, into a state.

A theory of such unifying relations is that in which one part of German public law consists. The old feudal constitution could have passed over into such a modern kind of state, in accordance with which all the states of Europe that have not undergone an overthrow in recent times are more or less organised, if among the vassals individuals had not been, or been able to become, so overpowering. To be sure, the multitude of weaker vassals too can become a power by organising themselves into a firm body against the state, as was the case in Poland; and the splendour alone that surrounded the Roman Emperor would not have equipped him with sufficient power against this. But even though in Germany the minority is not subject to the resolutions of the majority, yet partly this right, founded in the itio in partes, always has a certain restriction, partly it is not a single vote but only a religious party that is capable of paralysing the activity of the whole, partly if [in general] the individual estate by itself too believes itself not subject to the majority – as Prussia, in refusing the increased Cameral contributions, set up the principle that it was still undecided whether the resolutions of the majority in matters of taxation are binding at all – and each estate by itself enters into peace treaties and treaties of neutrality, all these rights and relations are later, and it was conceivable that, if the Emperor had had, through

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