In this particular,
the two German courts seem to have as little consulted the publicists of
Germany as their own true interests, and those of all the sovereigns of
Germany and Europe. This admission of a false principle in the law of
nations brought them into an apparent contradiction, when they insisted
on the reestablishment of the royal authority in France. But this
confused and contradictory proceeding gave rise to a practical error of
worse consequence. It was derived from one and the same root: namely,
that the person of the monarch of France was everything; and the
monarchy, and the intermediate orders of the state, by which the
monarchy was upheld, were nothing. So that, if the united potentates had
succeeded so far as to reestablish the authority of that king, and that
he should be so ill-advised as to confirm all the confiscations, and to
recognize as a lawful body and to class himself with that rabble of
murderers, (and there wanted not persons who would so have advised him,)
there was nothing in the principle or in the proceeding of the united
powers to prevent such an arrangement.
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