[p. 490]
|490| been seen that it was not present, apart from the impossibility of basing a financial constitution on other principles all at once, the Württemberg estates of the realm could acquiesce in this article out of gratitude towards the prince who had been the first and up to now, after two and a half years, almost the only one to give his land such an open and liberal constitution, – towards a prince towards whom, as Herr Count von Waldek says in the first speech with which the assembly of estates opened its sittings, right at the beginning (Proceedings, II. Section, p. 3), all the estates of the land, all the provinces of the realm vied in feelings of gratitude over his resolution to establish a constitution, – towards a prince to whom Herr Count von Waldek goes on to give the praise (ibid.):
“that he has guided Württemberg through all the storms of the last decades with rare strength” (“rare qualities”, it says in the continuation of the speech (Proceedings, II. Section, p. 4), “have from of old distinguished the rulers of Württemberg”; for this indeterminate word the further historical exposition there gives, in their case, apart from Duke Christoph, the closer meaning of domineering arbitrary will or weakness of character) –
the praise “that he has given Württemberg a considerable extension” (namely through the so-called mediatisation of German estates formerly immediate to the Empire – an extension which Herr Count von Waldek (VI. Section, p. 93) characterises as an unlawful condition, an infringement of the rights of the mediatised lords and of their subjects entrusted to them by God, as an extension which those through whose incorporation it took place could not escape only because they had to yield to force) –
the praise “that he now loses not a moment in order to annul again the consequences, foreign to his will, of the circumstances of the year 1806, namely the abolition of the constitution founded for eternal times by His Illustrious
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