[p. 574]
|574| that is, to their magistrates, was declared irredeemable. The bailiff appointed by the Emperor, or whatever title he had in other cities, always had to keep the magistrates in a certain respect. They were [in] a kind of supervision under the eyes of a person independent of them, who by his connection with the head of the Empire had to have weight. Since in the Peace of Westphalia the freedom of the imperial cities was in one kind entirely secured, by the state power pledged to them becoming irredeemable, the other kind of freedom has suffered all the more; it is known into what burden of levies, neglect of the administration of justice, weight of debt, in general into what inner corruption so many imperial cities have sunk, in which the citizenry had no supervision over the administration and employment of public offices, no voice in the assessment of levies, in which the impositions and their employment, the filling of offices, have come wholly into the power and arbitrary will of the magistrates. Some have succeeded in freeing themselves from that German freedom of the magistrates by the help of the Emperor; others had already before the last war been plunged by the consequences of that system into great embarrassment and confusion of finances, which has been not a little increased by this war.
As regards the princely states, since the Peace of Westphalia the chamber dues, the costs of the contingents, of the embassies to the Imperial Diet, etc., have been shifted onto the estates of the realm.
27)The Council of Princes made in the year 1670 – [22] years after the winning of German freedom by the Peace of Westphalia – an advisory opinion of the Imperial Diet to the Emperor, in which the hitherto usual manner of delivering, according to treaties, the contribution to the
27) In the margin: Pütt[er] 2, pp. 271-73 ff. [Historische Entwickelung der heutigen Staatsverfassung des Teutschen Reichs, Göttingen 1786]
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