[p. 596]
|596| were read out before the assembly, which listened to them in order to justify itself through them and to refute, as it was likewise called, at times in a droll manner, the “calumnies and slanders hatched against it”, as it was called.
In the sitting of 17 September 1816 (Div. XXX, 1st part, p. 32) it was announced that the instructing committee had finished its labours relating to the constitution, which were now to be laid before the assembly little by little. Some of them were still read out. But even in this last quarter of a year the assembly did not come to a deliberation, still less to resolutions on them. – Shortly before the death of King Frederick II, which took place in the night of 29 to 30 October 1816, there had once more, on 24 October (Div. XXXII, p. 48), been heard in the assembly indignation against the scribbling nuisance. The announcement of a crying case seemed to tear it out of its hitherto lethargy about it. The committee appointed for it was strengthened, and since Herr Knapp, “on account of constitutional business piled up for eight months”, had not been able to complete the report entrusted to him and the assembly had not come to any deliberation, an address was now (21 November, Div. XXXIII, pp. 99 f.) submitted to the new ruler, asking him to appoint a commission of the sovereign and the territorial estates, to which the work should now be entrusted which had hitherto been expected of the estates. For the joint work with royal deputies it is alleged: because these bring with them great experience, which only the highest authorities can have, – an admission which might well also have been present in the drawing up of an essay on grievances, the organisation of estates of the realm and other cases. – But because “every month of delay sensibly damages the country” (why had the assembly hesitated so many months with a work on its side? its first committee it had
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