munications to the said Committee of the United Diet upon the State finances, the regulations of the 11th Section of the Ordinance on the formation of the United Diet are to come into full operation.

Section 7.-The conduct of business and the presidency of the Committee of the United Diet is to be assumed by a Marshal, to be appointed by us, who will be represented, in case of need, by a Vice-Marshal, to be similarly appointed.

Section 8.-The Committee of the United Diet is to deliberate as an undivided assembly. Its resolutions are, as a general rule, to be adopted by a simple majority of votes.

Petitions and complaints are only to be laid before us if they have been voted by at least two-thirds of the members.

If the Committee of the United Diet declares itself, on the deliberation of a law, against the law, or some of the provisions of the same, by a less majority than that above mentioned, the views of the minority are also to be laid before us.

Section 9.-The Provincial Diets are to communicate to their several Committees no instructions or proposals for the Committee of the United Diet.

Section 10. The regulations of the 17th, 19th, 20th, 21st, 22d, and 23d Sections of the Ordinance of this day, on the formation of the United Diet, are also to come into full operation in the Committee of the United Diet.

Given undef our royal hand and seal, at Berlin, February 3d, 1847. FREDERICK WILLIAM.

ORDINANCE FOR THE FORMATION OF A DEPUTATION OF THE DIET FOR THE AFFAIRS OF THE STATE DEBTS.

We, Frederick William, etc., ordain as follows:

1. In the execution of the co-operation proposed in the 6th Section of the Ordinance of this day, relative to the formation of the United Diet, in the contraction of State loans in times of war, and for the current co-operation of the Diet in the reduction and extinction of the State debt.

A deputation of the Diet shall be formed for the affairs of the State debt.

2. This deputation to consist of eight members, of whom one is to be chosen in each of the eight provinces, by the States of the province, for a period of six years.

The election to take place at the United Diet, but in the interval between one Diet and another, at the Provincial Diets, according to the regulation relative to the proceedings in election of Diets of the 22d June, 1842. The election must only fall on persons who are members of the Diet in question. If one of the elected members loses the qualification before the lapse of the sexennial period, he is also to secede from the deputation. If, however, his secéssion is caused by his not having been re-elected as a Deputy of the Diet, he is to remain a member of the deputation till the next Diet.

To each member of the deputation two locum tenentes are to be chosen, of whom one is to replace him in case of emergency, as well as in the event of a vacancy occurring in the interval between one Diet and another. The choice of these locum tenentes is to be made conformably with the regulations respecting the actual members.

3. The members of the deputation are to be sworn to the fulfillment of their duties in their summons.

Section 4.—To the province of the deputation appertain the following duties, exclusively of the co-operation in the contraction of war loans conferred by the six sections already mentioned.

1. The deputation is to take charge of the redeemed State debt documents, according to the regulation of Article 14 of the Or dinance of 17th January, 1820, and to effect their deposit in the Judicial Chamber.

2. It is to audit the annual accounts of the interest and extinction of the State debts, after they have been previously revised by the upper chamber of accounts, and to cause them to be presented to us for our approval by the United Diet, or the Committee thereof, on its next assembly, according to the 14th Article of the Ordinance of January 17th, 1820.

3. It is authorized to undertake extraordinary revisions of the fund for the extinction of the State debts and the control of the State papers, on the occasion of its meeting.

The deputation for the affairs of the State debt will regularly meet once a year, and besides this, as often as occasion demands; the summons to be made by the Minister of the Interior.

6. The deputation is to elect a President at each meeting, who must be presented to the Minister of the Interior.

The presence of at least five members will be requisite to constitute a valid act of the deputation.

[King Frederick William IV., on opening the Diet, made the following speech, of sufficient importance to be added here, when the circumstances of the grant of the Constitution are considered.]

ILLUSTRIOUS noble Princes, Counts, and Lords, my dear and trusty Orders of Nobles, Burghers, and Commons, I bid you from the depth of my heart welcome on the day of the fulfillment of a great work of my father, resting in God, never to be forgotten, King William III., of glorious memory.

The noble edifice of representative freedom, the eight mighty pillars of which the King of blessed memory founded deep and unshakably in the peculiar organization of his provinces, is today perfected in your Assembly. It has received its protecting roof. The King wished to have finished his work himself, but his views were shipwrecked in the utter impracticability of the plans laid before him. Therefrom arose evils which his clear eye detected with grief, and, before all, the uncertainty which made many a noble soil susceptible of weeds. Let us bless, however, to-day the conscientiousness of the true beloved King, who despised his own earlier triumph in order to guard his folk from later ruin, and let us honor his memory by not perilling the ex

istence of his completed work by the impatient haste of begin

ners.

I give up beforehand all co-operation thereto. Let us suffer time, and, above all, experience, to have their way; and let us commit the work, as is fitting, to the furthering and forming hands of Divine Providence. Since the commencement of the operation of the Provincial Diets, I have perceived the defects of individual portions of our representative life, and proposed to myself conscientiously the grave question, how they were to be remedied? My resolutions on this point have long since arrived at maturity. Immediately on my accession I made the first step towards realizing them by forming the Committees of the Provincial Diets, and by calling them together soon after.

You are aware, Lords and Gentlemen, that I have now made the days for the meeting of those Committees periodical, and that I have confided to them the free working of the Provincial Diets. For the ordinary run of affairs their deliberations will satisfactorily represent the desired point of union. But the law of January 17th, 1820, respecting the State debts, gives, in that portion of it not as yet carried out, rights and privileges to the Orders which can be exercised neither by the Provincial Assemblies nor by the Committees.

As the heir of an unweakened crown, which I must and will hand down unweakened to my descendants, I know that I am perfectly free from all and every pledge with respect to what has not been carried out, and, above all, with respect to that from the execution of which his own true paternal conscience preserved my illustrious predecessor. The law is, however, carried out in all its essential parts; an edifice of justice has been built upon it, oaths have been sworn on it, and it has, all unfinished as it is, maintained itself as a wise law for seven-and-twenty years. Therefore have I proceeded, with a cheerful heart indeed, but with all the freedom of my kingly prerogative, to its final completion. I am, however, the irreconcilable enemy of all arbitrary proceedings, and must have been a foe, above all, to the idea of bringing together an artificial arbitrary assembly of the Orders, which should deprive the noble creation of the King, my dear father I mean the Provincial Diets-of their value. It has been, therefore, for many years my firm determination only to form

this Assembly, ordained by law, or by the fusion together of the Provincial Diets. It is formed; I have recognized your claim to all the rights flowing from that law; and, far beyond—yes, far beyond-all the promises of the King of blessed memory, I have granted you, within certain necessary limits, the right of granting taxes—a right, gentlemen, the responsibility of which weighs far more heavily than the honor which accompanies it. This august Assembly will now denote important periods in the existence of our State, which are treated of in my patent of February 3d. As soon as those periods occur, I will assemble the Diets on each separate occasion round my throne, in order to deliberate with them for the welfare of my country, and to afford them an opportunity for the exercise of their rights. I have, however, reserved the express right of calling together these great Assemblies on extraordinary occasions, when I deem it good and profitable; and I will do this willingly and at more frequent intervals, if this Diet gives me proof that I may act thus without prejudice to higher sovereign duties.

My trusty and free subjects have received all the laws which I and my father have granted them for the protection of their highest interests, and especially the laws of the 3d of February, with warm gratitude, and woe to him who shall dare to dash their thankfulness with care, or to turn it into ingratitude.

Every Prussian knows that for twenty-four years past all laws which concern his freedom and property have been first discussed by the Orders, but from this time forward let every one in my kingdom know that I, with the sole necessary exception of the occurrence of the calamity of war, will contract no State loan, levy no new taxes, nor increase existing ones, without the free consent of all Orders.

Noble Lords and trusty Orders, I know that with these rights I intrust a costly jewel of freedom to your hands, and that you will employ it faithfully. But I know, as certainly, that many will mistake and despise this jewel that to many it is not enough. A portion of the press, for instance, demands outright from me and my Government a revolution in Church and State, and from you, gentlemen, acts of importunate ingratitude, of illegality-nay, of disobedience. Many also, and among them very worthy men, look for our safety in the conversion of the natural