[p. 512]
|512| protest against the statement contained in the address that the nobility as a whole, there present, had reserved its rights. Their declaration delivered on this points out that the speeches of the two members of which the address was the consequence were delivered partly so quickly, partly in so weak a voice, that they could not be heard; further it is remarked that rising from the seats was supposed to take the place of a formal vote, but the occasion and the purpose of this rising were not generally known. – The formality of voting had above all to be determined in an assembly and known to its members; even if for the first moment a manner and way had to be devised, it had to be accompanied by an utterance and declaration that its meaning could be subject to no doubt. The picture of dumbness is completed by the mention of the quick reading out of the addresses and the soft voice with it. Is this a picture worthy of the first appearance of an assembly of estates, of an appearance with which it took for ever its decisive, indeed its only resolution? – Those six members gave the unreserved declaration that they accept gratefully the constitution given by the King. This explicitness contrasts sharply with the turns of the address, for the sense of which one otherwise had to be prepared and instructed in order to know that it was to be the non-acceptance of the constitution. It would have looked more open and more worthy of an assembly of German men and representatives of the people if it had declared its non-acceptance of the royal constitution as unreservedly as those six noblemen their acceptance. In what follows the delicacy to be observed towards the King is at times mentioned; but genuine delicacy lies without doubt in a cultivated frankness, and the most undelicate conduct and tone, towards the King and towards itself, is surely the contrivedness and bearing mentioned above.
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