Proceedings of the Estates of the Kingdom of Württemberg

[p. 526]

|526| or rather, since the mode of election was already not in keeping with the old constitution, not have let themselves be elected at all and the electors should not have elected at all. – Since it now became a basic maxim of their activity to do nothing from which a consequence as to their factual recognition of the royal constitution could be drawn, they walked as on eggs even in the most external formalities. Right in the first address of 15 March they prudently abstained from the signature “Assembly of Estates” and signed themselves “Summoned to the Assembly of Estates”. When it was pointed out to them in the royal resolution of the 17th of the same month that the King had to expect petitions and motions in the prescribed form not from such but only from the assembly of the land constituted by Him, since only to the assembly of the land do the rights determined in the constitutional charter belong, that he would otherwise not let himself be held up by formalities and would for the time being overlook the lack of form – as this resolution in fact entered into the content of the petition of the estates -, the majority found in the signature “Assembly of Estates” a prejudice and inconsistency, until the representative of Marbach, Herr Bolley, remedied this scrupulosity by the neat expedient of signing so in their next petition (of 22 March), but at the same time of lodging in it a reservation! In this petition it is also said that a scruple with regard to formalities would have been an offence against the sole purpose, the welfare of the monarch and of the subjects, – namely in respect of their mode of election and their appearance after the summons. Why then do they remain so scrupulous about formalities in other respects? Have they not thereby offended against that sole purpose, as they say? – Notwithstanding that conclusum and the reservation attached, the secretary nevertheless had to announce in the sitting of the 28th that it had occurred to him only after the petition had been drawn up

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