When we hear that “to retrograde to a confederation of states, or to establish a weak federal state, by a powerfully impressed independence of the individual states, would only be to create a mournful period of transition to fresh catastrophes and new revolutions;” that from such a course of proceeding would result the danger “of harbouring in Germany revolutionary movements, or perchance civil war, for a series of years;” that the nation would arrive at “the most undesirable consummation of rendering itself ridiculous for ever by trumpeting to the world German unity and German power, and presenting in reality a spectacle the very reverse”—when we hear that “no dynastic interests can be taken into consideration if the nation wills unity;” that “to construct a new empire, and at the same time to permit an organisation tending to an inevitable contest for the supreme sovereignty between the individual states, would be to sow disunion instead of unity, to create weakness instead of power;” and that, consequently, “the imperial power must, in a degree, absorb in itself the sovereignty of the individual states, abolish the diplomatic intercourse of the individual states at home and abroad, and concentrate it in its own hands, appropriate to itself the unconditional disposal of the national forces, and not allow governments or their constituent State Assemblies to occupy themselves with affairs appertaining to the National Assembly alone, since a perfectly established central state, in which other perfectly established states are encased, would be virtually a monstrosity,”—when we hear all these things, and weigh the tendency of their views, we can see in them no other result than the abasement of the individual sovereigns, an absorption of their power, which would leave them no more than useless and ridiculous puppets, and, consequently, their inevitable overthrow in the course of time, and the establishment of republican institutions, whatever the name given to the new form of republic, whatever the title bestowed upon its head, be it even Emperor, or _Reichs Verweser_, Regent, Protector, Administrator, or President.