Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 07.djvu/232

212 The views of most of the journals were not of the most brilliant kind, excepting only the National, and there was again heard the old war-cry, which the Restoration had originated: "Le roi règne, mais ne gouverne pas." The three men and a half who then occupied themselves with politics in Germany translated his axiom, if I do not err, with the words, "Der König herrscht, aber er regiert nicht"—"The king rules, but does not reign." But I do not approve of that word herrschen; there is in it, according to my manner of thinking, a shade of despotism. And yet this maxim indicates the difference of the two powers, the Absolute and the Constitutional.

In what does this difference consist? He who is politically pure at heart may most accurately discuss the question even on the other side of the Rhine. By deliberately turning it round and round, people have succeeded in making it on one side an aid to the most daring Jacobinism, and on the other to the most cowardly servility.

As the theory of Absolutism, from the contemptible but learned Salmasius down to Herr Jarke, who is not learned at all, has been