[p. 543]
|543| have not gone into fulfilment. If all these rights were suddenly to receive a voice, what a confused, infinite din would arise!
Claims are undecided rights. Their quiet has been imposed on them not by judicial decision – for they are not decided – but by the fear of right – for a claim is always better than a right denied, a possible lawsuit better than a lost one – and by the fear of the more powerful, who in an open feud going on in their neighbourhood would naturally have to take sides, from the more recent and more general ground of right of the security of their borders and their land, in which the not powerful, both those against whom this participation would be directed and those for whose benefit it was to come, would find no advantage. Thus the feuds have ceased, the public peace has established quiet, that is, it has brought the contradiction of the rights to silence, not to decision, and in the enjoyment of the object of right is that party which happens to be in possession – beati possidentes! – and over the possession no right has decided. So it is not a condition that puts in possession him who is in the right that preserves a certain quiet in Germany, like the condition of a state, but, given the astonishing difference in the power of the estates, their guarantee is fear and policy, not the venerableness of the rights themselves on which they depend, not an inner power of their own.
20)With this lack of a state power, necessary as has been shown – it is necessary because the object of this power, the unalterable preservation of rights, would be impossible – it is conceivable that the multitude of isolated estates, because they find themselves in the old condition, namely of co-operating towards a universal so far and
20) In the margin: If no legal agreement is to be expected, yet a voluntary one.
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