  Although Rehberg and the Hannoverians were eager to uphold the traditional order against the radical currents of the Revolution, it is also important to be clear about just what kind of order they wanted to preserve.  They were sharply critical of the ancien régime of Friedrich II's Prussia and of Louis XVI's France. They feared and condemned the despotic power of absolute monarchs, which they saw as threats to the traditional liberties of the estates. Their sympathies were for the pluralistic structure of the old Kleinstaat, where each locality or province had its traditional laws and customs, and where the estates gave some degree of representation.  The Hannoverians saw the constitution of their own Electorate as the norm for the German Kleinstaat. In the late eighteenth century the Electorate of Hannover still had a thriving aristocracy, a pliable peasantry, and a still nascent middle class. The government was still in the hands of the Stände, i.e., governing committees representing clergy, town and landed interests. If these could only be reformed along the lines of the British Parliament, Rehberg believed, German states would not have to fear the excesses of absolutism or radical democracy.  