[p. 544]
|544| when the individuals will, might return to the old conduct, if [even] otherwise they are in no lasting and standing association, in the time of a need or danger to come together freely and thereby to form out of their isolated powers, for the need that is at hand, a state and a state power, both inwardly, if their rights were attacked, and outwardly, if they were attacked in general or in a particular one of their members.
Such a determinate case were formerly attacks on the Protestant religion, an object which came not from an ambition wholly indifferent to their subjects but from the most popular, most inward interest. There is no object which could have gathered the princes and their peoples round it so unanimously, so with forgetting of other jealousy, and so freely and zealously as this. Every other object touches the peoples themselves less, beside every other object other interests that are in conflict may recall themselves and assert themselves.
One knows, however, what an ignominious end the Schmalkaldic League came to. The whole League was filled with petty strivings of vanity and was so sunk in the enjoyment of self-complacency in itself and in the noble work, so satisfied before all deed, that the first blows scattered it like dust. Yet some members of the League had here still held themselves bravely and really let it come to battles, but the Protestant Union of the following century already proclaimed, by the trifles with which it occupied itself in its origin, the whole nullity of its essence, which revealed itself completely as soon as a work was to be undertaken.
As an inner association of this kind only the so-called League of Princes can still be regarded, which was directed against the conduct of Joseph II that seemed dangerous to many estates. The idea of this League of Princes appeared brilliant both through the prince who stood at its head,
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