Proceedings of the Estates of the Kingdom of Württemberg

[p. 554]

|554| and being dissatisfied, this confusion, of ascribing to the will of the government what was a consequence of the monstrous relations and events of the last 25 years. One sees in this collection of grievances, in this respect, likewise that the estates lacked knowledge of the needs of the state and of the situation of the exchequer, and that the complaints about the impositions are raised without any comparison with the needs of the state. In special respect, however, it would have to be investigated whether the abolition of the old-Württemberg constitution was the sole ground of the well-founded grievances, for this was the foremost thought that was to be proved by it or rather not proved but straightway presupposed; still less is it shown that the royal constitution, with the further provisions just conceded, would not be capable of remedying the grievances, indeed that they would rather have to continue to exist under it. This latter point of view, whose development is not thought of at all, would have been the sole nerve of the remonstrance which was to be supported by this mass of grievances.

Such investigations, which might at first show themselves to be justified, become altogether superfluous, however, since this work, which seemed so weighty, was afflicted from the outset with a fundamental defect and was bound to remain without important consequences, indeed was even meant to remain without any. – Here only this little may be remarked, that the country’s gravamina, the Cahiers des doléances, have been a well-known article in the business of the former estates of the Empire. Equally well known is how little was ever accomplished by them, how every diet of the land or of the Empire mostly found the mass of grievances of its predecessor still unsettled and sought to swell it further with fresh material, so that this moles itself, together with the habit, grown firm on the one side, of the estates of the realm or parliaments, of indulging, in accordance with duty and conscience, in such a prolix exposition, drawing in everything possible, of

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