[p. 518]
|518| activity of a society of young people who combine to compose essays for their practice, for the advancement of their culture, and lend themselves to one another to hear them read out.
Apart from the material side, this written manner, with the consequences it had to have on the whole course of the handling of business, was probably also a ground for the utterance of a representative cited in Section VIII, p. 20, declared indeed to be unseemly, “that if the petitions received had not furnished matter for entertainment, one would not have known how to ward off boredom“. – In any case, if the debates of estates of the realm were to consist chiefly in a communication of written deductions, their personal assembling would be rather superfluous and many costs would be saved; the whole could be dispatched by circulation of the essays. Whoever is accustomed to reading in any case prefers to read such essays himself rather than lend himself to listening; but everyone would also have the choice of having them read out to him by his wife or a good friend, and the votes could then be sent in in writing just as well.
But to pursue the historical further, right at the beginning of the sittings of the assembly of estates the great political event occurred, the arrival of Bonaparte in France from the island of Elba. Already two days after the opening of the estates the King informed them of the measures taken in Vienna. An occurrence of this kind was suited to put in a light, through their conduct and bearing in it, the disposition and the whole character of a German assembly of estates. If it had been possible that a German people could have received this event with joy and hope, it might have seemed dangerous that estates of the realm, which were in the intentions already indicated, opposed to the will of their King, should be gathered together at this time. But since that was impossible, such an
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