ut which by act
of the year mentioned was elevated to a condition of quasi-statehood.[284]

[Footnote 284: See p. 285.]

Prior to the formation in 1867, of the North German Confederation,
each of the twenty-five states was sovereign and essentially
independent. Each had its own governmental establishment, and in many
instances the existing political system was of considerable antiquity.
With the organization of the _Bund_, those states which were
identified with the federation yielded their independence, and
presumably their sovereignty; and with the establishment of the
Empire, all gave up whatever claim they as yet maintained to absolute
autonomy. Both the _Bund_ and the Empire were creations, strictly
speaking, of the states, not of the people; and, to this day, as one
writer has put it, the Empire is "not a juristic person composed of
fifty-six million members, but of twenty-five members."[285] At the
same time, it is not what the old Confederation of 1815 was, i.e., a
league of princes. It is a state established by, and composed of,
states.[286]

[Footnote 285: P. Laband, Das Staatsrecht des
deutschen Reiches, I., 91.]

[Footnote 286: On the more purely juristic aspects
of the Empire the best work in English is Howard,
The German Empire (Chap. 2, on "The Empire and the
Individual States"). A very useful volume covering
the governments of Empire and states is Combes de
Lestrade, Les monarchies de l'Empire allemand
(Paris, 1904). The monumental German treatise is P.
Laband, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches (4th
ed., Tuebingen, 1901), in four volumes. There is a
six-volume French translation of this work, Le
droit public de L'Empire allemand (Paris,
1900-1904). Other German works of value are: O.
Mayer, Deutsches Verwaltungsrecht (Leipzig,
1895-1896); P. Zorn, Das Staatsrecht des deutschen
Reiches (2d ed., Berlin, 1895-1897); and A. Arndt,
Das Staatsrecht des deutschen Reiches (Berlin,
1901). There is a four-volume French translation of
Mayer's important work, under the title Le droit
administratif