[p. 524]
These preliminary steps, however, consisted in the assembly, in an address to the King of the same date, bringing together both, the constitutional matter and the measures which the present situation required, although the King had just had it announced to it that for a definitive decision on the former matter he was awaiting the return of the Crown Prince. This ground, evasive for the moment, was to the estates an argumentum ad hominem, since they proved in lengthy deductions of public law that the agnates had the right that their approval should be obtained in constitutional matters; the estates could draw from the consultation of the Crown Prince the consequence of a factual recognition of this right. – The estates declared themselves more closely in their address to the effect that nothing was more urgent than to put the people, through the united guidance of the monarch and of the estates, in a position to defend the fatherland, and that the will of the honest people offered itself to all that seemed necessary to its zeal; but they could build their actions only on the foundations of the hereditary-land constitution, and the restoration of the state credit was possible only through a constitutionally guaranteed loan, – that is, in that the collection of the taxes and the disposal of this part of the state treasury would be handed over to the estates. The like occurred in an address of 18 April, in which they state “that for all subjects, for the new as for the old, the name old constitution has a magic power“. It had however been shown from the petitions and addresses that came in that the general indignation at the reappearance of Bonaparte, the feeling of the danger threatening the fatherland from it, had by itself proved a magic power, had worked like an electric shock. If in the address it is stated immediately before that the fruit and wine harvest has been frozen and that therefore a great part of the subjects are literally wrestling with despair, it is not to be seen how the old constitution
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