Another abuse, very detrimental to the service, was that the heads and Presidents were paid and remunerated by the Estates at their pleasure. They consequently remained in a state of constant dependence on the Estates, the more so because they were always trained up in these false principles.
It is surprising that under these conditions my ancestors were able to entrust the preservation of the Monarchy to them.
For proof of this it is only necessary to consider the condition of the Austrian Provinces on my accession. They had always governed themselves as they pleased, the Chancellery paying little or no regard to their interests, and the secret documents and Provincial accounts show that any threat of control, however minor, was often averted by lavish remunerations and donations, a share of which was often allotted to the Prince.
The chief evil was that at that time many Ministers were regarding each only the welfare of his own Province, and none of them had the courage or the will to draw down odium on himself, which aggravated the calamities that befell in the Italian and Hungarian wars the more because no Minister dared make further demands of the Province in his charge; and thus the others seized the occasion to attack him and hold him up to public contempt. So credit was hampered in every Province, and yet credit was necessary to cover requirements of the State: the exchequer had no more funds or resources to draw on or pledge, so that everything had to be raised on the credit of the Provincial war tax, which brought little or no profit to the Prince or the paying common man, but great profit to a few private individuals. The long period of peace was used only to mislead the sovereign, to multiply factions, and to seek opportunity to realize the wretched Spanish plans, which were brought up again and again and were strongly favored by very many Ministers and also, assuredly, were not displeasing to the generous sentiments of the Monarch.
Thus when war broke out, all was in the greatest confusion, without any system or idea of inner or foreign policy, and this Monarchy was consequently exposed to the most extreme danger, especially as the internal domestic debt of the Austrian Provinces then amounted to over twenty-four million, the interest on which alone came to 1.2 million, which had necessarily to be deducted from the sum paid into the war chest; and this was the more irresponsible because, to spare the landowners, most of whom paid nothing at all, the earlier contributions to the Treasury had been paid out of borrowed capital.
These disturbing conditions justified me in deciding to be more cautious in how I trusted my Ministers and Councillors.
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