[p. 495]
|495| Count is ready, in due time, once a constitutional condition has come about in Württemberg, to state those provisions under which the county of Limpurg will be ready to enter, by a contract, into a relation of subjection to Württemberg.
How the royal ministry could regard such presumptions on the part of mediatized lords, even ridiculous ones, going as far as the non-recognition of the abdication of the Roman Emperor, does not belong here; but in an assembly of estates it may seem incomprehensible to concede participation and voting in its deliberations and resolutions to such members as formally declare that legally they do not yet belong to the kingdom of Württemberg at all, that they do indeed wish to take part in passing resolutions binding on the Württemberg people, but that these are not yet binding for such helpers, and that only once a constitutional condition has come about with their assistance will they declare upon what conditions they are pleased to join in it. – Even if otherwise the phenomenon of the presumption of making laws for others, but declaring oneself not subject to them, may lie closer to hand, it will on the other hand be harder to find examples, among estates of the realm, of such a degree of slackness as to let such things please them and to concede, on such a condition, no less arbitrary towards the King, a share in the deliberations and resolutions.
One further estate, namely the prelates, took after a few days the insignificant step of putting forward in an address, but only as a wish, that they be represented1) as a particular estate in the assembly of estates and that the former
1) Hegel’s footnote. Since in the assembly of the land of the former duchy of Württemberg all fourteen prelates had seat and vote, they were therefore not represented in it, but appeared as individual votes, as peers.
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