que l'uniformité de leur application à toutes les branches d'administration, ont été le premier fruit de mes efforts.

Les anciennes divisions des Pays en Districts ont disparu. Les obstacles qui gênaient la liberté des communications réciproques et du commerce ont cessé. Les différens Territoires sont maintenant des parties inséparables d'un tout. La différence de Religion et d'Etat n'en met plus aucune entre les rapports civils des Habitans. Tous contribuent dans une égale proportion aux charges publiques. Ils ne connaissent qu'un seul et même intérêt, étant tous Citoyens d'un même Etat. Il n'y a plus que des Würtembergeois.

Je rends avec satisfaction à mon Peuple le témoignage que par sa fidélité et son obéissance il a secondé mes desseins et contribué efficacement à la conservation du Royaume. Mon Armée a illustré le nom de Würtemberg par sa bravoure et sa conduite au milieu des dangers dans la carrière glorieuse des Armes.

Mes Ministres m'out secondé dans mes entreprises; mes Sujets de toutes les Classes ont supporté avec courage et patriotisme les fortes charges que les circonstances ont rendues nécessaires.

C'est ainsi que le rétablissement de la Paix Générale promettant maintenant un ordre de choses durable, je mets la dernière main à l'édifice de l'Etat, en donnant à mon Peuple une Constitution couvenable à ses besoins et à son bonheur.

La liberté personnelle et les droits civils des Individus y sont assurés; la Nation est appelée à s'unir, par le moyen de ses Représentans, au Chef de l'Etat, pour exercer les droits les plus importans de l'Autorité Souveraine.

La Constitution fondera, je l'espère, d'une manière solide, le bonheur de mon Peuple; elle écartera toutes les vues étroites et les considérations personnelles, pour produire un esprit National qui aura la plus forte influence sur les véritables intérêts de l'Etat et le bien des Individus.

Je serai toujours prêt à écouter tous les vœux Constitutionnels de mon Peuple qui auront ce but pour objet, et qui me seront communiqués par ses Représentans.

PRINCES, COMTES, NOBLES, MINISTRES DE LA RELIGION, REPRE SENTANS CHOIsis par mon Peuple,

Réunis pour les Affaires de la Nation, qui sont l'objet de la Convocation Constitutionnelle de cette Assemblée, resserrons ensemble avec une confiance réciproque le saint noeud qui m'unit à mes Sujets. Que tous soient animés par un seul intérêt, celui du Roi et de la Patrie, et par un même esprit, celui du bien général.

Alors nous serons forts et heureux; ce jour sera le plus beau de mon Règne, et je trouverai la plus grande récompense des efforts que j'ai faits depuis 17 ans, dans l'attachement et la fidélité de mon Peuple

que je souhaite conserver sans altération et transmettre à mes Succes

seurs.

Mon Ministre de l'Intérieur vous fera connaître les Articles de la Constitution.

Le Comte de Reischach, Ministre de l'Intérieur et des Conférences a parlé ensuite en ces termes:

MESSIEURS LES Deputes de l'AsSEMBLEE GENERALE DES ETATS, Vous avez entendu avec émotion le Discours de Sa Majesté : des époques brillantes ont signalé son Règne glorieux; mais la plus remarquable est celle où le Monarque, bornant lui-même son autorité, donne aujourd'hui à la Nation une Constitution fondée sur le Système Représentatif.

Sa Majesté a réuni, dans une Assemblée Générale des Etats, les premières Familles de la Noblesse, les grands Propriétaires, les Membres du Clergé et les Représentans choisis par le Peuple.

Les droits des Sujets, leur liberté civile et leur égalité devant la Loi, ces avantages dont la conservation est le devoir du Chef de l'Etat, sont maintenant établis, et trouvent une nouvelle garantie dans la Constitution.

L'exercice des principaux droits de l'Autorité Souveraine dépend maintenant de l'assentiment libre des Etats. Elle ne doit s'exercer d'une manière tout-à-fait indépendante, que lorsqu'il sera question d'exécuter les Lois, d'affermir l'ordre et la sûreté de l'Etat, tant dans l'Intérieur qu'au dehors.

Partout où ces principes ont été méconnus, les Constitutions n'ont pu se soutenir.

Telles sont les bases d'une Constitution qui fournit aux Etats les moyens de se garantir eux-mêmes contre l'infraction de ses Articles, et qui leur donne un organe pour porter librement devant le Trône leurs demandes et leurs vœux.

C'est ainsi, Messieurs, que vous êtes appelés à concourir avec le Roi au bien-être de la Commune Patrie. Vous remplirez avec zèle et fidélité ces nobles et importantes fonctions. Vous bannirez de vos délibérations toute passion et tout esprit de parti. La vérité sera votre règle unique: et votre union intime avec le Souverain deviendra l'inébranlable fondement de la prospérité publique.

Après ce Discours, le Conseiller-d'Etat d'Otto a fait lecture de l'Acte Constitutionnel. Sa Majesté a dit ensuite:

L'Acte Constitutionnel que l'on vient de communiquer à nos fidèles Etats énonce notre volonté Royale.

Fermement persuadé que nos Sujets y verront la plus forte preuve de nos soins paternels, nous voulons et nous ordonnons que leurs droits, réglés par cette Charte soient maintenus par tout le monde, comme ils le seront par nous-mêmes. Appuyés sur la droiture et la

pureté de nos intentions, nous nous engageons par notre parole Royale à observer religieusement tous les Articles du présent Acte Constitutionnel.

MANIFESTO of The King of Wirtemberg, on the Dissolution of the Assembly of the States.-Ludwigsburg, 5th August, 1815.

(Translation.)

FREDERICK, by the Grace of God, King of Wirtemberg, Sovereign Duke of Swabia and of Leck, &c. &c. &c.

LOVING AND FAITHFUL SUBJECTS,

IN our Manifesto of the 11th January of the present year, we proclaimed to you our Resolution, in the state of peace and tranquillity which had then commenced, and which promised to be permanent, to give to our Kingdom a Representative Constitution, suited to its internal and external position, and corresponding with the wants of all portions of the Country united in one collective whole, in order to establish, by a well-ordered system of civil and political liberty, the prosperity of our Royal Subjects in that respect.

In our Rescript of the 29th January, moreover, the form of the Representation was further defined, and an exact regulation communicated, showing in what manner every Town, having the predicate of "Gut," and every District of a superior Bailiwick, in addition to the Possessors of Estates belonging to the Classes of Princes, Counts, and Nobles, and to some Members of the Class of the Clergy, would have to elect a Representative, and to depute him to the first Meeting of the Representative Estates convoked for the 15th March.

In conformity with these regulations, not only did the Possessors of Estates of the Classes of Princes, Counts, and Nobles, who were entitled to peculiar Votes by virtue of the new Constitution, and the Members of the Class of the Clergy, appear at the appointed time, and prove their right thereto, before our Royal Commission; but also the Representatives, who were chosen, according to the regulations prescribed in the Constitution, and, in a manner essentially different from the former local Constitutions, by the Towns having the predicate of "Gut," and by the Districts of the superior Bailiwicks.

We solemnly opened this Assembly in our own exalted Person, and, as we had promised in the Manifesto of 11th January, delivered to it the Constitutional Act which had been sanctioned by ourselves, in order that, as the first Assembly of the Representative Estates of the Kingdom, it might then exercise the rights relative to legislation, taxation, and petitions, which belong to the Representative Estates of the Country according to that Constitution; and we at the same time also caused that Act to be promulgated throughout the Kingdom, so that

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since the 15th March it has been observed as Law by every Authority, in all the points bearing upon the privileges of our Royal Subjects.

By how much the more confidently we considered ourselves justified in expecting that our intentions, which were directed to the permanent happiness of our People, would be acknowledged with suitable thanks, by so much the more deeply were we grieved to find that the sentiments of the assembled Estates did not correspond with our hopes. For, although, at the very commencement, when it was to be supposed that they could not consider themselves as the legal Representatives of the People, or act as such, without having recognized the new Constitution, they had, in subscribing their first Report, affixed to their signatures only the designation, "convoked as an Assembly of Representative Estates," and had not appeared disposed to assume any of the rights granted to the Representative Estates by the Constitutional Act; yet they afterwards believed that they could, nevertheless, assume to themselves the distinction of an Assembly constituted to restore a Constitution; and by this means they thwarted the principal object which we had had in view, as appeared from the declarations which we had promulgated upon convoking them.

Great indeed as must have been our anxiety, immediately upon the commencement of the Negotiations, that they should not fail to effect the object intended, and numerous as were the reasons which induced us to consider the Assembly of the Representative Estates which we had convoked, as not existing according to its own principles, and to defer further proceedings until better and more tranquil times, we still believed, that we ought first of all to overlook irregularities and informalities, where the permanent interests of our People were at stake. We therefore not only graciously accepted those propositions, petitions, and requests, which the Assembly of the Representative Estates, (although, according to their own notions, they were constituted only for the restoration of a Constitution,) had submitted to us, relative to various subjects affecting the government of the State, and having reference to the condition of the Country, and took them into our consideration, and communicated our decisions upon them, being actuated thereto solely for the prosperity of the State and of Individuals; but we also disclosed to the Representative Estates of the Country, the way in which to submit to us their views and desires, even on the subject of the Constitution itself.

The Assembly of the Representative Estates had demanded as a right, by virtue of the political compacts confirmed by us, the restoration of the Old Constitution, that is, of the one which, previously to the year 1806, had existed in a portion of our Kingdom, viz., in our hereditary Dominions; and this particular claim has been continually repeated in the further representations sent in by that Assembly. It could not, therefore, have been otherwise than unex

pected by us, that the Representative Estates of the whole Kingdom should demand as a right the restitution of the Old Constitution, which was applicable only to the hereditary Dominions, and to which, in an extreme case alone, those hereditary Dominions could lay claim besides, all the other portions of the Country, as well as the Nobility of the Empire, were strangers to that Constitution; and therefore if this claim, pretended to be made as a right, were to be entertained, and could be entertained, a partition of the Kingdom into two,or, if other portions of the Country or Classes of the Subjects should be disposed to claim in like manner their former Constitutional rights, which was not improbable,-into several indefinite portions, must necessarily follow.

But even if the hereditary Dominions alone be taken into separate consideration, it follows, from an investigation of the present circumstances, compared with those which existed in the year 1805, that, leaving out of the question the union of the newly-acquired portions of Country with the hereditary Territories which has been already effected, and likewise the rights of the landed Nobility, as well as the equality, in points of religion, of the subjects generally,―the very basis of the Constitution, and the point upon which it depended for its support, and to which it had reference in the most essential particulars of the administration of the State, and principally on the subject of Taxation, viz., the subjection to the Emperor, and to the authority of the Empire, no longer exists; and that, inasmuch as an independent Sovereignty has succeeded in lieu of the former subjection of the Sovereign to the Emperor, and to the authority of the Empire, and as the Sovereign has exercised as such, at least the rights appertaining to the Emperor and the Empire, the former political compacts, which were made with the Country, and which were based upon those circumstances, must necessarily undergo the most extensive alterations.

The Representative Estates of the Country themselves, certainly participated in this sentiment, since in all their demands for the former state of the Law, they expressly declared their willingness to entertain all those modifications which the spirit of the times, and the internal and external relations of the Kingdom, necessarily required.

They could not even deny that, in the former Constitution, many striking abuses had existed, which must be provided for, upon the introduction of a new Constitution.

The history of recent times must have convinced them, that during the dangerous political events, in which even the ultimate fate of Wirtemberg was interwoven, it required, on the part of the Sove. reign, a free display of his power, which was not restricted by the former regulations of the State, and a searching control, on the part of the Government, over all the branches of the administration of the Kingdom, in order to bring into operation those resources which the