The German Constitution

[p. 535]

|535| but the significance in the state has not on that account become wholly personal. The lord who has seat and voice in the council of the people is, by virtue of primogeniture, the representative of his great family; otherwise the younger son of the Duke of Chatham, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is Mr Pitt. Personally the nobleman who is not the first-born comes up to the general barriers of the career, at which every commoner stands, and from which the course to the highest honours lies open to him as well as to the son of the duke through talents, character and culture, just as in the Austrian monarchy, for the external social tone, every well-dressed man is greeted “Herr von” and to everyone the way to the highest military and political offices lies open, and he who attains them is raised into the estate of the nobility, and is thus placed on an equal footing with it, outside the relations that involve a representation, as in England.

The misfortune of France must be sought entirely and solely in the complete degeneration of the feudal constitution and the loss of its true character; through the lapse of the assemblies of the Estates General, higher and lower nobility no longer appeared in the character in which its chief strength in the political organization consists: that of being a representative¹⁸⁾; its personality, on the other hand, was driven to the highest, revolting degree.

18) In the margin: just as the third estate too no longer has its own representation in operation and in the case of the new États Généraux no gradual transition had been made from the harsh old form to a more suitable one.

If the nobility, through prosperity, is removed from youth onwards from the dirt of trade and the exertions of need, and a free mind is preserved to it thereby as well as by the inherited carefree [disposition], unconcerned with things, and it is therefore more capable of martial bravery, which [gives up] all possession, all cherished property and habits of limitation and accustomedness

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