that one could not without danger long deprive us of liberty." Yes, we have been duped again, and we must confess that falsehood has again scored a great triumph and harvested fresh laurels. In fact, we are the conquered, and since the heroic deception has been officially proclaimed, since the promulgation of the deplorable resolutions of the German Diet of the 28th June, our heart has been made sick in our breast with anger and affliction.
Poor unhappy Fatherland! What shame is before thee should'st thou endure this outrage—what agony if thou dost not!
Never yet was a people so cruelly insulted by its rulers. Not only in this, that those ordinances of the Diet presuppose that we agreed to everything—they would persuade us that we have suffered no wrong or injustice! Yet, if you really could reckon with confidence on slavish submission, you had at least no right to regard us as fools. A handful of common nobles, who have learned nothing beyond horse-trading, card-sharping, drinking tricks, and similar stupid rascal accomplishments, with which, at the utmost, only peasants at fairs can be duped—such men think they can befool an entire race, and one at that which invented gunpowder, and also printing and the "Criticism of Pure Reason." This undeserved affront, that you regard us as stupider
