[p. 550]
|550| the consequences were only these, that three weeks afterwards, and at the same time long after the answer to the royal resolutions had been effected, Herr Amtsschreiber Bolley, and again eight days later Herr Dr. Weishaar, read essays against the ideas of Herr Dr. Cotta. To a vote on the matter itself it did not come at all. – Of what Herr Bolley, as he called it, wrote down and the reading of which, as the minutes (Section IX, p. 114) state, was received by the assembly with lively thanks, this may be singled out, that he took account in it of the well-known work of the Minister of State Herr von Wangenheim, Idee der Staatsverfassung, and (Section IX, p. 124) does him the justice “that the rights of the people, namely of the Württembergers, have found in the noble author so warm a defender”. – This too may still be cited from it, that the author, in relation to a disposition by the estates of the realm over the tax exchequer, assures (ibid., p. 135), [that,] “if high purposes of the state in extraordinary cases demand the speedy procuring of moneys, the estates, having the most important in view, will certainly never hesitate to support the sovereign to the best of their ability”. – This certainly is very naive; in such an assurance the guarantee was supposed to lie for the state that it is not dangerous to it to constitute two independent governmental powers. This certainly is all the more naive since one could ask what purpose of the state could be more important, what case more extraordinary, than the moment of Napoleon’s reappearance in France? How, only just then, a few weeks before Herr Bolley read his essay and this assurance of his, the Württemberg assembly of the estates had supported its sovereign to the best of its ability and had attached itself to the cause of Germany and of Europe, we have seen.
A more comprehensive occasion to enter upon the articles at hand was given to the assembly by the courageous, eloquent address of Herr Gleich of Aalen of 23 June, already cited several times, excellent in thought
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