[p. 83]
Hegel’s last publication, which appeared in the “Allgemeine Preußische Staatszeitung” in 1831 (nos. 115, 116 and 118). The printing broke off after the third instalment and the announced continuation never appeared there; a note marks the place (p. 116), and the German edition gives the remainder from the text of the Freundesverein edition. Translated from the German text of the Werke (vol. 11, “Berliner Schriften”); additions in curly braces come from Hegel’s manuscript.
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The figures between vertical bars, e.g. |93|, mark the beginning of a page of the printed edition, so that a passage can be found again in one’s own copy.
In the notes, “Editors:” introduces a note by the editors of the German edition and “Hegel’s footnote.” one of Hegel’s own.
Cross-reference: The only text in which Hegel judges a political question of the day from the concept of the state. In the Groundlines this belongs to the estates element (§ 301 ff.), the election of deputies (§ 308, § 311) and landed property and primogeniture (§ 305 f.); on English “positive right” see the Remark to § 3. The two drafts from his papers stand as an appendix at the end. The German text is on the German side of this edition.
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Contents
On the English Reform Bill1)
1) Editors: in: Allgemeine preußische Staatszeitung, 1831, Nr. 115-116, 118
The Reform Bill now before the English Parliament intends, in the first place, to bring justice and fairness into the distribution of the share which the various classes and factions of the people have in the election of the members of Parliament, by putting a greater symmetry in the place of the present {most bizarre, most shapeless}2) irregularity and inequality that prevails in it. It is numbers, localities, private interests that are to be placed differently; but it is at the same time, in fact, the noble entrails, the vital principles of the constitution and condition of Great Britain into which that change penetrates. From this side the present Bill deserves particular attention, and to bring together here these higher points of view, which have been touched upon in the debates of Parliament so far, shall be the subject of this essay. That the Bill has met with such a many-voiced opposition in the House of Commons, and has passed the second reading only by the chance of one vote, cannot cause surprise, since it is precisely the interests of the aristocracy, powerful in the House of Commons too, that are to be attacked and reformed. If all those who are to lose privilege and weight hitherto enjoyed, partly personally, partly in the case of their constituents, were to oppose the Bill, it would at once have the majority decisively against it. Those who introduced the Bill could rely only upon this, that against the obstinacy of privileges the feeling of justice had now become powerful in those themselves who
2) Editors: Additions in curly brackets derive from Hegel’s manuscript.
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