[p. 534]
|534| it comes to speaking about general affairs, still more given the novelty of the situation, the lack of concepts among the people about a constitution of the state, since it had never had the thing, given the transition from its political nullity into a hitherto unknown share and influence in the whole of a state – it was all the more the position of the assembly of the estates of the realm to leave the people with its previous opinions out of play. – In the fifth sitting Count von Waldeck found it necessary, since according to reliable reports the people had been disquieted by the publication of the royal constitutional charter, to quiet it, and proposed as the means of doing this without attracting notice that the representatives should report to the people that they had placed themselves at the head of its prejudices. Who would call that a quieting of the people, when the assembly of the estates declares to it that in the assembly – in opposition to the King – it is to see the support of its disquiet! For the rest, however many petitions were read and however much the assembly of the estates prided itself on them, one sees again that they were very much neglected, and one does not recognise from the minutes by what the choice was determined to read one part, but, as it seems, not even to mention others and to note them in the minutes. Only a few examples: In a sitting of 20 Dec. 1815 (Section XVII, p. 49), a motion occurs to note at least in the minutes a number of addresses that had come in, to accept them as read and to lay them among the files. On 21 Feb. 1816 a petition from the town of Riedlingen of 12 April 1815 comes up for reading. On 5 April 1816 a representative asks to be allowed to hand over to a section of the assembly a petition already submitted on 11 June of the previous year; but under this date, on which there was no sitting, and also on 12 June, on which a sitting was held, no mention whatever is made of that petition. – Many other such data do not exactly show that the
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