Page:Constitutional Charter of the Kingdom of Poland, In the Year 1815.pdf/50

 by the Emperor. From this state of things, accompanied as it was by the slavery of the press, resulted a frightful disorder in every branch of the administration; every thing was done without a plan, and without a spirit of order.

During the fifteen years which the kingdom has subsisted, not a single budget has been submitted to the diet; and every thing relating to the subject has been done arbitrarily and by royal decrees. Thus they were enabled to continue, indefinitely, particular taxes, which had only been imposed under a pressing necessity; and the sums levied in this way, in the utmost distress of the country, were applied to the support of an army of placemen and spies, in the shape of a special police, under the immediate controul of his Imperial Highness, and of his agents Nowosylsoff, Lubowidzki, and Roznieki. The greater part of these officers would have been wholly needless, but for the distrust which prevented the government from making use of the people—the citizens, according to ancient custom, would else have formed themselves into a gratuitous local police, and there would have been no occasion for a system which sapped the public welfare at the very foundation.

No constitutional budget was brought forward between the last diet, in the Emperor Alexander’s reign, and the first which was held after the accession of Nicholas. More than four years had elapsed in the interim, but the taxes were levied and executed as before.

In the year 1825, a short time before the convocation of the last diet that was held under the reign of Alexander, that monarch published an ordinance, under the title of Appendix to the Charter: by this act all the assemblies of the diet, the