[p. 537]
|537| as soon as the King obtained the conviction that they accord with the interest of the entire kingdom.
What more and what else could the King reply to their indistinct declaration? – The King demanded matters which they were to lay before him; in their reply of 23 March they remain standing at what is devoid of matter and merely formal. A more detailed draft of a submission, composed by Herr Bolley, in which the declaration is indeed made at the outset that the estates abstain from entering upon a complete examination of the new charter, but which nevertheless put forward remarks against many of its points, they held back; it was, however, to count as the document of their political confession of faith and as the account of the grounds of their conduct, and, if it should be necessary, to be laid in due time before the royal ministry of state (Section I, p. 67). Nothing would indeed have been more necessary than to lay before the ministry the grounds from which they could not accept the royal charter, but above all to enter upon the complete examination. – Nor are they remarks whose laying before the ministry could advance the matter; to remarks one makes counter-remarks. The so-called diplomatic path, which is introduced in such a manner and may lead to results as it will, otherwise also brings this with it, that the negotiating parties put forward grounds and counter-grounds. Besides that it is not suited to the relation of government to subjects – a relation into which the mediatised lords, to be sure, declared they had yet to enter – it is something quite other than what a chief activity of an assembly of estates ought to be: examinations and discussions within itself about its objects. – One may have the thought that if the ministers of state, as is contained in the royal charter § 26, had now begun to attend the sittings and had taken the floor, the proceedings would perhaps have been given, from the very outset,
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