dependants; or to preserve the unity and
tranquillity of the empire. The most furious private wars, accompanied
with every species of calamity, were carried on between the different
princes and states. The imperial authority, unable to maintain the
public order, declined by degrees till it was almost extinct in the
anarchy, which agitated the long interval between the death of the last
emperor of the Suabian, and the accession of the first emperor of
the Austrian lines. In the eleventh century the emperors enjoyed full
sovereignty: In the fifteenth they had little more than the symbols and
decorations of power.

Out of this feudal system, which has itself many of the important
features of a confederacy, has grown the federal system which
constitutes the Germanic empire. Its powers are vested in a diet
representing the component members of the confederacy; in the emperor,
who is the executive magistrate, with a negative on the decrees of the
diet; and in the imperial chamber and the aulic council, two judiciary
tribunals having supreme jurisdiction in controversies which concern the
empire, or which happen among its members.

The diet possesses the general power of legislating for the empire; of
making war and peace; contracting alliances; assessing quotas of troops
and money; constructing fortresses; regulating coin; admitting new
members; and subjecting disobedient members to the ban of the empire,
by which the party is degraded from his sovereign rights and his
possessions forfeited. The members of the confederacy are expressly
restricted from entering into compacts prejudicial to the empire; from
imposing tolls and duties on their mutual intercourse, without the
consent of the emperor and diet; from altering the value of money; from
doing injustice to one another; or from affording assistance or retreat
to disturbers of the public peace. And the ban is denounced against such
as shall violate any of these restrictions. The members of the diet, as
such, are subject in all cases to be judged by the emperor and diet, and
in their private capacities by the aulic council and imperial chamber.

The prerogatives of the emperor are numerous. The most important of them
are: his exclusive right to make propositions to the diet; to negative
its resolutions; to name ambassadors; to confer dignities and titles; to
fill vacant electorates; to found universities; to grant privileges not
injurious to the states of the empire; to r