[p. 576]
|576| foresee that this class would begin by reserving its rights to itself – rights which in this indeterminacy left undecided what relationship this estate had in the state, and which in their old extent contradict every organism of the state. – It has shown itself in most cases of great political movement that prince and people have been of one mind and will, but that only too often a middle estate, as in France the nobility and the clergy, so in Württemberg the former and the civil aristocracy of scribedom, instead of constituting the bond of the two, as is its vocation, stiffened itself upon privileges and monopolies and hindered, indeed brought to nothing, the actualization of the principles of rational right and the general welfare. Through the position which belongs to the middle estate in general, of constituting the intelligence of a people and of directly handling its rights as well as its duties, it is able, when it rather defends its own privileges against it, to draw the people into the delusion of placing itself on the side of this its enemy. Then arises the spectacle, as disgusting as it is sad, that wrong, which has been called right for a hundred years, has passed as such and has brought the people to despair, is supported by the people itself, deceived by this name.
Now that the principles, the spirit and the interests of this assembly have sufficiently made themselves known from what has gone before, the further history, which is only a dry consequence of it, has less interest any more and can be summarised more briefly.
In pursuing the historical account we stopped at the point that on 26 June the estates did not go into giving to what in the important royal concessions was acceptable to them, with which the points likewise acceptable from the royal constitution could be brought into connection, the form of an agreement, but rather maintained
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