§ III. _The Christian state recognizes the legal existence of Corporations, and depends on their organic co-operation._
The author has before shown that the Christian religion, following the principle of conciliatory equity, recognizes, without reference to their origin, all existing rights and interests. Hence the Christian religion can co-exist, and has in fact co-existed, with every form or species of government. But there are some governments which, from their spirit and constitution, are more congenial than others to Christianity; and it is in this sense we speak of the Christian state.
We have already seen that there are five essential and eternal corporations--the family--the church--the state--the guild, and the school. These great corporations have each their several and subordinate institutions or corporations, which are accidental and transitory by nature, and consequently vary with time, place, and circumstances.
The Christian state is that which best secures and preserves to those essential corporations, and all their subordinate institutions, their due sphere of action. Hence our author shows that, under certain circumstances, and in certain countries, the Republic, whether democratic or aristocratic, may answer that end as well or even better than monarchy; and that it is only because, in great empires, monarchy is best calculated to maintain the free developement and organic co-operation of corporations, that it may be called, par excellence, the Christian state. But what form of monarchy is best adapted for this end? The absolute monarchy[15] is certainly the least: there then remain only the representative system, and the constitution of the three estates, or as the Germans call that mode of government, Stände-verfassung. Schlegel proceeds to examine the respective characteristics of those two forms of government, and to show the points in which they agree, and in which they differ. The constitution of estates is the old, legitimate constitution of the European states, whether republican or monarchical; but, in too many countries, this noble institution has been undermined by despotism, or destroyed by revolution. On the other hand, the representative system is comparatively modern, and, on the continent, has, amid the great convulsions produced by the French revolution, sprung out of a defective and superficial imitation of the British constitution. It is therefore to the latter constitution the author, when he has occasion to treat of the representative system, principally directs the attention of his readers.