He considered that, while a universal republic would be the positive ideal, we shall probably have to be contented with what he calls a negative substitute, consisting in a federation of peoples bound by a peace-alliance guaranteeing the independence of each member.

But to assure the permanence of this system it is essential that each state should have a democratic constitution.
For such a constitution is based on individual liberty and civil equality.

All these changes should be brought about by legal reforms; revolutions--he was writing in 1795---cannot be justified.
We see the influence of Rousseau's Social Contract and that of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, with whose works Kant was acquainted.

There can be little doubt that it was the influence of French thought, so powerful in Germany at this period, that turned Kant's mind towards these speculations, which belong to the latest period of his life and form a sort of appendix to his philosophical system.

The theory of Progress, the idea of universal reform, the doctrine of political equality--Kant examined all these conceptions and appropriated them to the service of his own highly metaphysical theory of ethics.