[p. 535]
|535| assembly of the estates had an objective respect for the petitions of the people, that is, insofar as they were not merely serviceable for the assembly’s intentions.
As regards, moreover, the earnestness about the old constitution, so much emerges from what followed, that the assembly was not concerned merely with the support which it found in public opinion through that magic formula; by its majority it lastingly maintained its earnestness about that constitution and made it in particular the main point to demand that the formal principle of right be recognised. The spirit of formalism and of particularity has, as is well known, always made up the character and the misfortune of Germany in history; this spirit has shown itself here in all its strength. If one wishes to call it Germanness, nothing could have been more German than the disposition of the old-Württemberg deputies, the nobility included. If, however, one understood by Germanness something universal and rational in its concept – notwithstanding all diversity of territorial lordship -, it will be hard to find anything more un-German than that disposition.
The immediate consequence, however, of the position which the assembly of the estates gave itself by rejecting, setting aside, ignoring the royal constitution, was that it made itself incapable of an organic vital activity. It placed itself directly over against the government, did not form an opposition within a common ground, and put itself out of the relation of being able to undertake and bring about effective work on institutions of the state. When a New-Württemberg representative, Herr Gleich of Aalen, at last lost patience after the lapse of three months and vain waiting for something beneficial to appear, and reproached the assembly (Section VIII, p. 20 f.) among other things with occupying itself almost always only with side issues and losing sight of the
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