[p. 533]
|533| means which would have been of more external force, at least, than the awakening of the magic formula, as the name of the old-Württemberg constitution is also called by them. The so-called unanimity of the assembly on this we have seen. That high and lower nobility which still laid claim to rights that stood in contradiction with the interest and right of the people and of the state, which indeed posed it as problematic whether it already belonged to Württemberg at all, and spoke of conditions under which it alone would be pleased to be inclined to enter into a relation of subjection, – had to find the magic formula “good old right” entirely fitting for its claims. The so-called New-Württembergers, who could not at first see the remedy for the manifold oppression under which they sighed directly in the royal constitution, attached their opposition to the present condition to that title in the first confusion about the matter.
From all sides there poured in addresses and petitions from the towns and districts, deputations appeared which expressed the demand for the restoration of the constitution of the hereditary lands, and a large part of the sittings of the assembly was spent in the reading of the addresses. Worn out and discredited as the means of popular addresses has become, it was not disdained here; it was the easier to apply, the greater the influence of the class of scribes is among the people, of which there will be talk later; but the less content and authority could that means have in the eyes of the more discerning; it was rather suited to cast a shadow on the assembly.
– In any case it is in itself the place of an assembly of estates to be the mediating organ between prince and people; and under the prevailing external circumstances of the new disturbances in France, given the lack of understanding, common with all good will, of the so-called people, when
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