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You see at once then, gentlemen, that this plan ultimately proceeds simply on a perfectly consistent and more regular carrying out of this principle, which the epoch just then drawing near its close had taken as its foundation—I say on a logically consistent, more complete and regular carrying out of the principle that the possession of land should be the ruling element, which alone should entitle any one to a participation in the management of the State. That any one could demand such participation on the ground that he was a man, that he was a reasonable being, without the possession of any land, of that the peasants had not the most distant idea! The times were not yet ripe for this, the thoughts of men not yet become sufficiently revolutionary.
Thus, then, this movement of the peasantry, which proceeded with such revolutionary determination, was in its essence thoroughly reactionary: that is to say, instead of resting on a new revolutionary principle, it rested unconsciously on the old established principle of the period which was at that very time dying out: and it was precisely for this reason, because it was in fact reactionary, while it believed itself to be revolutionary, that the peasant movement was unsuccessful.
In opposition both to the rising of the peasants and that of the nobles (under Franz von Sickingen), both of which had in common the principle that participation in the management of the State should depend, even more strictly than had hitherto been the case, on the possession of the land, the sovereign authority of the Princes, founded on the idea of a State sovereignty
