Proceedings of the Estates of the Kingdom of Württemberg

[p. 493]

|493| foundations and does not contain their further development, nor the inclusion of closer provisions which could already be present as state institutions. Organic constitutional provisions and laws proper generally border very closely upon one another, and the further work of development and of subsumption of the already existing institutions could furnish chiefly an object for the activity of the assembly of estates.

These, then, are the main moments of the manner in which the King thought he had supplemented the hitherto existing constitution of the state of his realm with the important member of a representation of the people and with the recognition and proclamation of the general principles of justice in the life of the state; he believed he had brought about and completed the incorporation of that member, and with it the establishment of the foundation for the further formation and application of the principles of right, through the actual convocation of estates of the realm, undertaken in accordance with the provision of the constitutional charter, through his own public pledge upon the charter, its solemn delivery to his estates and its promulgation, as the instruction which conferred their authorization upon them. One would now perhaps expect that the further course of history would show how this new creature, the estates of the realm, moved within the circle conceded to it, and how this important vital element, added to the organism of the state, worked within it. But it is not the history of such an assimilating and life-active efficacy that unfolds before our eyes; rather, the members summoned to it refuse to let themselves be received into the state as this member, nevertheless declare themselves estates of the realm, but of another world, of a past time, and demand that the present be remoulded into the past, actuality into unactuality.

In the same sitting, on the 15th of March, in which the King believed he had completed the internal constitution of his

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