This opening statement from Robert Mohl's study of ministerial responsibility, published in 1837, summed up an axiom of mid-nineteenth-century German liberalism. However, as Otto Pflanze has shown recently, most German liberals did not demand the political or parliamentary responsibility of ministers. They believed that legal responsibility, or the chambers' right to impeach ministers, would guarantee constitutional government and thereby fulfill theirRechtsstaatideal, which called for the strict observance of public law.