Proceedings of the Estates of the Kingdom of Württemberg

[p. 589]

|589| in that out of the rights of the state iura singulorum had come to be.

Among other voices of the better mind, Herr von Varnbüler (Div. XV, p. 59) replied to Herr Lang, who had made the admonition to take heed of conscience and had called out “with pathos”: “No negotiation”, – that he (Herr v. V.) on the contrary had to hold conscience endangered by such a proposal, in that in the end it could much sooner come to receiving no constitution at all. “By the old constitution’s continuing in right,” he continues, “the people is not helped, and with learned treatises we cannot answer it if it should one day call out to us: ‘You have played a presumptuous game; you have staked everything on nothing; we were to have been given:

Participation in legislation,
the right to grant taxes,
the old church property,
accounting for the state expenditure,
personal freedom,
responsibility of the servants of the state,
the right of emigration,
the continued activity of the estates,

but you have rejected everything! Who is to blame that we have lost everything?’” – It is remarkable that several gentlemen of the nobility here distinguished themselves above other deputies by more moderate and more unprejudiced views. – Herr Bolley believed (Div. XV, p. 6) that he had to defend himself against the disapproval which had not escaped him already during his delivery; he thought he had not deserved the reproach of bitterness and mockery, and that probably only his strong voice, with which he had delivered the speech, had caused some offence.¹²⁾ – It seems the assembly was weary of the

12) Editors: In Div. XVI, p. 161, the Prince of Waldburg-Zeil remarks that “most submissions are read out so quickly and so quietly” (in this sitting only Herr Bolley had read out submissions in the name of a committee on the draft of an address, and in the preceding one this draft itself), “that, if one is not exactly instructed” (like the committee), “one cannot grasp the whole content”. That circumstance, which has already been discussed above, readily associates itself with the reading out of essays, but is not conducive to an assembly’s own insight into the matter, which for that reason sees itself the more easily induced to rely on its committees and to go along unanimously with their opinions.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136