Title 7.
Art. 29. The estates of the kingdom shall be comprised of 100 members appointed from the departmental colleges, namely: 70 are elected from the class of the landowners, 15 from among merchants and manufacturers, and 15 from among scholars and other citizens who have rendered outstanding services to the state.
The members of the estates do not receive any pay.
Art. 30. Every three years one third of them shall be replaced; the members leaving can be re-elected immediately.
Art. 31. The president of the estates is appointed by the king.
Art. 32. The estates convene upon the summoning ordered by the king.
They can only be convened by the king, and their meeting can only be prolonged, postponed, or dissolved by him.
Art. 33. The estates pass a resolution on the bills drafted by the state council. These bills are presented to them on the king’s orders, both with respect to obligations or the annual financial law and with respect to the changes to be made to the civil code, the code relating to corporal and capital punishment, as well as the coinage system.
The printed reports by the ministers shall be presented to them every year.
The decisions by the estates on bills are reached by the absolute majority of votes collected in secret. [ . . . ]
Source: Bulletin des lois et décrets du royaume de Westphalie [Bulletin of Laws and Decrees of the Kingdom of Westphalia]. Vol. 1. Kassel: Königl. Buchdruckerei, 2nd ed., 1810. pp. 6-15, 19.
Reprinted in Walter Demel and Uwe Puschner, eds. Von der Französischen Revolution bis zum Wiener Kongreß 1789-1815 [From the French Revolution to the Congress of Vienna, 1789-1815], Deutsche Geschichte in Quellen und Darstellung, edited by Rainer A. Müller, vol. 6. Stuttgart: P. Reclam, 1995, pp. 114-19.
Translation: Erwin Fink
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