[p. 557]
|557| over individual grievances in the attainment of their higher purpose, their sole concern, but nevertheless have to fulfil a sacred duty by the presentation of the grievances”. – If it was to be by negotiations that the grievances were to be dealt with, these would indeed have furnished material for years-long or rather endless negotiations, since there was no longer any Aulic Council present for their conclusion. But if the estates wished to engage neither in legislative labours nor in so-called negotiations, hence not to engage at all, to what end that ballast of grievances? – Was it to be left to the ministry to remedy them in its own way? – In truth this ballast served for nothing further than that the estates, as they call it, had fulfilled a sacred duty; the more sacred, but to be sure more arduous duty, of making through legislative labours the introduction of a remedy, did not come up for discussion. On 21 July (X. Div., p. 14) the king gave the only possible reply, that he must be put in a position by the reports of his ministries to give his decision upon the grievances presented.
Among the multitude of grievances, however, one touches in passing upon what was called the scribe nuisance. Through the untiring reminders of Herr von Forstner this subject has been lifted out of “the melancholy litany of grievances” and brought to a fuller illumination, which acquaints the public with an institution quite peculiar to Württemberg, the institution of scribedom, and opens up a condition of legal and moral as well as intellectual stagnation which, among other things, gives information about an important moment, the interest in the good old right, and is to be considered more closely on account of its far-reaching influence.
As early as 15 May Herr von Forstner put forward the influence which
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