Note 276 — Chapter XIV · THE GERMANIC CONSTITUTION: THE SEVEN ELECTORS.
Reading edition
The electoral prince (Kurfürst) of Hessen-Cassel. His retention of the title has this advantage, that it enables the Germans readily to distinguish electoral Hesse (Kur-Hessen) from the Grand Duchy (Hessen-Darmstadt) and the landgraviate (Hessen Homburg). [Since the above was written (in 1865) this last relic of the electoral system has passed away, the Elector of Hessen having been dethroned in 1866, and his territories (to the great satisfaction of the inhabitants, whom he had worried by a long course of petty tyrannies) annexed to the Prussian kingdom, along with Hanover, Nassau, and the free city of Frankfort. Count Bismarck, as he raises his master nearer and nearer to the position of a Germanic Emperor, destroys one by one the historical memorials of that elder Empire which people had learned to associate with the Austrian house.]