The German Constitution

[p. 536]

|536| to the totality of everything that exists, as well as of a more liberal handling of the affairs of the state and of a certain freedom in this, which is more independent of rules and can, according to circumstances, situation and need, trust itself more and animate the machinery of administration somewhat more freely, – if therefore the nobility personally finds a preference in all states, then [it] must, just because it is personal, [be] freer, that is, find itself in a possible competition, since in any case the artificial organization of our states, which occupies so much and imposes unspeakable labour, also makes necessary the hard diligence and the skills and knowledge, to be won with toil, of commoners, and, given the other elevation and the importance produced in more recent times of this estate, the way must lie open to knowledge and skills that rise above [the] character.

This side, in which nature and most modern states, such as Prussia in part in civil business, England, Austria and other states on the other hand also in military respects, diminish the difference, has risen to the highest degree in France. The judicial posts as well as the military career have been opened to them [sc. the commoners] and the purely personal has been made the principle.

Representation is so deeply interwoven with the essence of the feudal constitution in its further development, together with the emergence of an estate of burghers, that it can be called the silliest fancy if it has been held to be an invention of the most recent times¹⁹⁾. All modern states

19) In the margin: Through the transformation of the free into rulers the feudal constitution was established, that is, in the present lands a state in which the individuals, no longer each having an immediate will of his own in every national affair, [rather all] obey a whole founded by themselves and its individuations and branches, that is, a state and laws, a lasting, firm centre to which each has a relation arising mediately, through representation.

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