[Sidenote: Prussia and Emperor.]
If the two great leading powers of Germany do not regard this danger (as
apparently they do not) in the light in which it presents itself so
naturally, it is because they are powers too great to have a social
interest. That sort of interest belongs only to those whose state of
weakness or mediocrity is such as to give them greater cause of
apprehension from what may destroy them than of hope from anything by
which they may be aggrandized.
As long as those two princes are at variance, so long the liberties of
Germany are safe. But if ever they should so far understand one another
as to be persuaded that they have a more direct and more certainly
defined interest in a proportioned mutual aggrandizement than in a
reciprocal reduction, that is, if they come to think that they are more
likely to be enriched by a division of spoil than to be rendered secure
by keeping to the old policy of preventing others from being spoiled by
either of them, from that moment the liberties of Germany are no more.
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