[p. 529]
|529| authorisation, they gave themselves a position stepping out of the organism of the state, standing over against the government as an independent power, the basis of which, if the poison of a revolutionary principle is not already in it, at least borders closely on it. In accordance with this position the assembly of estates called its dealings with the government negotiations, – there were notes which it exchanged with it; it called its submitting of addresses to the ministry a diplomatic way (Section VIII, p. 81) – a way which only sovereign states tread towards one another. The situation in which the government found itself through the distress of the moment and even through the tension caused by the assembling of such an assembly of estates under such circumstances, – besides, the circumstance that the King perhaps did not care to break off so soon his work begun on his own authority, may have contributed their part; but the moderation of the King is always also to be recognised in overlooking the informal and presumptuous character of such a relation, in engaging with the assembly in this way and, although it disdained to be the estates of his realm, yet continuing to treat it as such.
So much for the formality of the relation into which the estates of the realm put themselves. But to consider more closely the essential side of it, it can be remarked that, after the King had made known his constitution to them, they could do three things: either refuse to let it count as binding unexamined, hence enter into an inquiry into it and declare themselves only after its result; secondly, accept it, but reserve to themselves to work on what was still missing and undeveloped and to occasion corresponding proposals of laws; or thirdly, reject the royal constitution unseen, produce one on their own part and demand of the King the acceptance of it. – The demand may seem not merely fair but absolutely just, that a people must itself examine the
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