[p. 545]
|545| be superfluous, insofar as there result, in the pamphlet cited above on p. 495, The Administration of the Württemberg Exchequer of the Land, examples that the narrower committee, which had the administration of the exchequer and the right to convoke the larger committee, decreed and had paid to the latter monetary compensations for the fact that it had not convoked it; it knew, then, how to produce an increase of costs without there being any business and without any sittings being held. – Only a short while ago it became known to the public that the assembly of the estates whose proceedings are considered here cost the state 260,000 fl. In the printed minutes before us it is indeed mentioned a few times that reports were made on the salaries of the members of the estates and on other expenses, and that a committee was active on this; but in the printed minutes it remains always at these notices alone, without the content of the reports or resolutions being given, without sums being named anywhere. Precisely this object an assembly of estates had least of all to treat with secrecy, but should rather have given it publicity with all openness, once it accepted payment in money for its labours or at least for its being together. This article of the royal constitution, much as it ignored the others, it had at least accepted utiliter. – It is in itself in a high degree objectionable when members of the estates of the realm receive salaries or daily allowances; it is a circumstance of the highest importance, it alters something essential in the character and position of a representation of the people; it belongs also among those by which preponderance is given of itself to property in the elections, besides that it is otherwise most closely connected with the honour of such an assembly. Estates of the realm, in the case that they are salaried, can never escape the suspicion or reproach that, if not for all, yet for many or some members, such a receipt is a
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