These are only projects and one cannot tell to what extent they are realizable. We shall see, however, that the Constitution of Weimar has timidly commenced an effort to realize them.
If the National Assembly has not completely realized the unitary state and has allowed traces of the federal régime to remain, it has fully admitted the principle of national sovereignty and has applied it to a greater extent than any other country in the world.
The democratic principle was adopted by the majority of the National Assembly without any difficulty. But in the public opinion there became manifest certain tendencies which are either directly contrary to this principle or whose consistency with this principle is debatable; and some of them have received and are still gaining active and influential adherence.
It is important therefore to define in reference to the principle of national sovereignty the theories to which it finds itself subjected in practice.
1.--THE POWER OF THE STATE IS DERIVED FROM THE PEOPLE.
Democracy is defined as government by the people; a democratic government is a government in which sovereignty resides in the people, or, to speak more precisely, one in which the will of the majority determines sovereignty.
That this principle was completely ignored in practice in Germany before the Revolution we already know. According to the Constitution of 1871 sovereignty belonged to the ensemble of confederated princes, Germany being governed by an association of monarchs under the all-powerful direction of one of them, the King of Prussia.
Such a system obviously could not survive the disappearance of the monarchs themselves; and after the Revolution the democratic principle, to which Bismarck had given the semblance of expression in creating a Reichstag elected by universal suffrage, became fully applied. One consideration contributed above all to the establishment of government by the greatest number: The German Princes had governed and had conducted themselves as monarchs by divine right; under their régime no social class could develop to which a certain political power could be given over, which the people would become accustomed to regard as authoritative. There was in Germany no political nobility, no bourgeoisie invested with political power. So that when sovereignty fell from the weakened hands of the monarchs it could be taken over only by the people.