It was formerly the easier for all this to go on because the said overpowerful members of the Estates, who usually made common cause with the Ministers in charge of the Provinces, generally had in their hands the fortunes, both of the Crown and of the Estates themselves, and thus disposed of them according to their pleasure, for which very reason the Ministers here in Vienna gave every support to the prerogatives which brought them so much advantage.
And although the result was only detriment to the public interest, yet the Estates insisted on these prerogatives the more stubbornly because most of them failed to understand the position and easily allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by these their own representatives.
Neither do I myself wish, nor do I advise my successors, to encroach on the useful and legitimate privileges of the Estates, seeing that the welfare of my dominions is inexpressibly dear to me, and I cannot repeat often enough that if I had found their privileges so clear, or if they had conducted the administration more justly than I or the Crown, I should not merely not have hesitated to submit and abrogate my authority entirely to them, I should rather myself have diminished and renounced or limited it for my successors, because I should always have placed the welfare and prosperity of the Provinces before my own or that of my family and children. But neither my own interest nor that of my successors, and least of all the public interest, can be sacrificed to illegitimate abuses which have taken root with the connivance of the Ministers; wherefore such alleged privileges as are founded on abuse and an evil tradition should not be confirmed without extreme caution and careful consideration, and I have often observed that Crown rights which have fallen into desuetude through the connivance of the Ministers are questioned with the object of tying the Monarch’s hands in these respects also; this applies above all to the supervision of the Estates’ domestic funds and the management of them, and also to the equalization and adjustment of taxation, which should be conscientiously undertaken in the interest of justice and of the general welfare.
The Austrian Provinces in particular have made every endeavor to exclude my supervision and disposition on these cardinal points.
For this purpose, I began with the Inner Austrian Provinces and insisted, the more firmly because their conduct of their own affairs had been so unbusinesslike, both on dictating to them their allocations for local expenditure and also, for my own satisfaction and that of the Provinces, on adjusting the taxation in accordance with the principles already observed, and have continued to give the completion of the operation my most careful attention.
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