Proceedings of the Estates of the Kingdom of Württemberg

[p. 587]

|587| opposition between the royal intention and the demand of the estates determines itself as the question whether the royal constitution, with the concession that agreement was to be reached about modifications of it, or the Old Württemberg one with the same concession should be taken as the basis. If in diplomatic negotiations it occurred that the one party demanded that its proposition be taken as the basis with the concession of further modifications to be agreed upon, and the other party demanded the same, then, since the matter is wholly the same, according to the proverb the cleverest would give way.

In the royal rescript of 13 November, which finally brought about a decision, not indeed on the matter, but yet on the course of the estates’ libelling so far, the essential legal assertions of the estates, especially that of incorporation, were entered into, and their shallowness was shown in a separate enclosure, the main standpoint repeated, that it was a matter of a constitution of the state by which the new and old lands are united into one whole under the public law of the state. The king declares that, with the constitution of the German Empire abolished, where in an uncertainty of right there were also no judges any more, he could not enter into a merely general recognition of the old treaties of the land without a statement going into particulars of their content. First, a complete and clear development of this content, scattered in many documents and often doubtful, would be indispensable, so that the constitutional provisions should no longer [be] the exclusive property of a few (of the old committee gentlemen, perhaps not even of all of these and chiefly only of their consultants), but could rather become the common property of the people. – In the unhappy case that a settlement on a common constitution should not come about and the estates should still further refuse to enter into negotiations for one, the king would be resolved to introduce in

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