Proceedings of the Estates of the Kingdom of Württemberg

[p. 543]

|543| that a prior laying before them of the needs of the state and of a computation of the revenues of the exchequer, inspection of the accounts of these, examination of the actual employment of the moneys granted, and an administration of the moneys of the land by the estates should be bound up with it. – The King withdrew the restriction of the concurrence of the estates made in his constitution and conceded that not only the increase but the direct and indirect taxes in general should be granted by the estates; only from the year 1815 to 1818 were the present ones to remain in force. A share in the levying, on the other hand, as also a fund under their direction, he did not concede to the estates; but the most exact inspection of all the revenues and expenditures of the state and a complete control with regard to their employment, with the exception of the revenues from the royal patrimonial and domanial property, in connection with which the King declared that he was not opposed to a civil list, to be founded indeed on the domanial property. Further, an authority for the payment of debts is to be set up, with the co-opting of deputies of the estates in equal number with royal deputies. – No remark is needed on the liberality of these royal concessions. That in a fief of the Empire, but not in a state, estates can have the administration of the exchequer, has been discussed above. That the chambers in France and the Parliament in England have no such administration is well known, – as also that in the former country the chamber of deputies appoints deputies from among its members to the sinking fund. The expression moneys of the land, which the commissioners of the estates use instead of moneys of the state, served to designate the right which the land has, since the moneys are its own, also to administer them itself. – The earlier habit of the fief of the Empire, of setting government and land in opposition, could not find its account in the expression state, in which the old sense of that opposition falls away and

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