Page:Constitutional Charter of the Kingdom of Poland, In the Year 1815.pdf/51

 first and last excepted, were to be private. Independently of the mischief done by this ordinance in preventing the publicity of the debates, it was an essential infringement upon the constitution. The fact of its publication, established the principle that the Charter was an act revokable at the will of the sovereign, and thereby rendered its existence vain and illusory.

During the fifteen years that the kingdom existed, not a single financial law was ever laid before the chambers.

The reports of the Council of State, which never failed to give a brilliant account of the state of the country, were always printed; but it was impossible to obtain the publication of the observations drawn up by the commissioners of the two chambers, although the Charter expressly guarantees the liberty of the press. In like manner the pleadings of the state against any individual, for a state crime, and the speeches of the government lawyers were printed and disseminated with the utmost profusion, whereas a few copies only, of the defence, were permitted to be printed, for the sole use of the judges, and the Grand Duke and his police prevented their publication.

In the proposed law already mentioned in the remarks on article thirty, it was intended to give such an interpretation to this law as would prevent the senate from deliberating upon mal-administrators, except at the instigation of the King, or his lieutenant; the accusation of the chamber of nuncios being declared insufficient. Mr. Niemoiewski, and his brother, (both nuncios) contributed, by their utmost endeavours, to the rejection of this law in the diet of 1820, a law which would destroy all responsibility in government agents, and by so doing subverted the whole constitution. The consequence