The late king of Prussia was more than once pitted against his
imperial sovereign; and commonly proved an overmatch for him.
Controversies and wars among the members themselves have been so
common, that the German annals are crowded with the bloody pages
which describe them. Previous to the peace of Westphalia, Germany
was desolated by a war of thirty years, in which the emperor, with
one half of the empire, was on one side, and Sweden, with the other
half, on the opposite side. Peace was at length negotiated, and
dictated by foreign powers; and the articles of it, to which
foreign powers are parties, made a fundamental part of the Germanic
constitution.
If the nation happens, on any emergency, to be more united by
the necessity of self-defense, its situation is still deplorable.
Military preparations must be preceded by so many tedious
discussions, arising from the jealousies, pride, separate views, and
clashing pretensions of sovereign bodies, that before the diet can
settle the arrangements, the enemy are in the field; and before the
federal troops are ready to take it, are retiring into winter
quarters.
The small body of national troops, which has been judged
necessary in time of peace, is defectively kept up, badly paid,
infected with local prejudices, and supported by irregular and
disproportionate contributions to the treasury.
The impossibility of maintaining order and dispensing justice
among these sovereign subjects, produced the experiment of dividing
the empire into nine or ten circles or districts; of giving them an
interior organization, and of charging them with the military
execution of the laws against delinquent and contumacious members.
This experiment has only served to demonstrate more fully the
radical vice of the constitution. Each circle is the miniature