[p. 575]
|575| could tear the estates constitution out of the indifference and estrangement, indeed contempt, of the people towards it, to which earlier German estates of the realm had sunk.11) Old Württemberg has had no significant nobility on its side; instead, that more unassuming but more oppressive aristocracy had established itself. So long, however, as these fetters of the people were not broken, no representation belonging to it could emerge of itself; and as indispensable as it is for the concept of a monarchical state that estates of the realm be in it, it would itself be preferable to have none at all than to tolerate the continuance of those privileges, of that oppression, deception and stupefaction of the people, and in any case better than to have estates of the realm which are the representatives of the privileges of this aristocracy. – The ministry could likewise know the principles of the other aristocracy, which had only just been incorporated into Württemberg or, according to the sense of a part of it, was only yet to be incorporated. It had to
11) Hegel’s footnote. Spittler in der Sammlung einiger Urkunden und Aktenstücke zur neusten württembergischen Geschichte, Göttingen im Jahre 1796, says in the Entwurf einer Geschichte des engeren landschaftlichen Ausschusses, II. Teil S. 359 f.: “In many a land its well-arranged collegial constitution has become a far better bulwark of the general welfare than even the estates constitution. Hence there often rests on this or that sovereign college a general reverence of the whole public, while the permanent corps sinks into a disregard which, given its original vocation, should be almost impossible and yet breaks out everywhere unmistakably” – Much else from that essay, which would also find application to the more recent relationships, could be recalled; only this further: on p. 444 it says, with regard to the arrangement of the control over the administration of the land treasury by the narrower committee, that a worse control would not easily be found, but that, a few human failings excepted, management had on the whole been in conformity with the compacts. – At that time the management of the land treasury cited above had not yet been brought to light. – Equally remarkable is what occurs on pp. 445 f. on how the principals, the town magistrates, departed ever more from the knowledge and understanding of the rights, so that their clumsiness could assert no rights and their ignorance no authority any more – against the committee gentlemen, – as it could not go otherwise, since the general affairs were no longer conducted in the manner of the people but in the manner of advocates and, besides, in secret; further how at diets the relationship between the committees and the remaining diet deputies took shape, the committee gentlemen reporting and the votes of the rest “being heard, as it were, only to pass the time”.
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