But I soon saw that this still would not bring me realization of my main objective, especially as both Chancellors, besides the Hofkammer and nearly all the Ministers, were very hostile to this institution, to the great detriment of its authority and standing, and were only looking for a chance to think up suggestions and difficulties and so, sooner or later, to put things back on their old, bad footing; especially since those Ministers and the Councillors under them who should, owing to their positions, have been the chief supporters of the reform, were its greatest enemies, avowing their intention both openly and privately to destroy it, and poisoning public opinion against it. And always thinking as I was to provide not only for the present, but also the future, solidly, so that my children should not fall into the same labyrinth as I, I was for that very reason sometimes too precipitate and undertook too much at once, and thus set everyone against me, particularly those who were sitting at the fleshpots. And since it was impossible to grant any help or relief to the poor and oppressed, because of the urgency of the emergency, there was general discontent, which brought on me much unpopularity.
Consequently, after long and mature thought, having perceived that the root cause of my Monarchy’s troubles lay in the fact that each Minister and his staff was always satisfied to play the advocate and protector of the Province in his charge – often with only halfhearted regard to the general welfare and to the interests of the Crown – and to shift all burdens onto other Provinces, and next after this, to discredit the Cameral services so as to make them incapable of serving the public interest by gradually reducing their activities to the keeping of balance sheets and manipulation of figures – in spite of which, whenever a crisis arose, the Ministers always expected the Hofkammer to produce the money to meet any requirement, although they must have known how empty were its hands and how extremely limited its competences; furthermore that, instead of promoting the service by good agreement between the branches, they wasted time unconscionably in arguments and disputes to the neglect of any constructive work, with the result that practically every opportunity was always missed, having become alive to all this, I determined to alter the whole rotten Constitution, central and Provincial, completely and to set up new institutions of nature to put the system on a firm footing.
To this end I abolished altogether all the Cameral agenda of the former Hofkammer in the Austrian and Bohemian Provinces and limited its activities to Hungary and to the Court finance, the latter only for the lifetime of the present President, and abolished both Chancelleries and transferred all administrative and Cameral agenda, with the non-technical military, to the newly established Directorate.
For justice in the Bohemian and Austrian Provinces I established a single supreme instance (the staff lists, instructions, and plans of these two offices are attached), thus ensuring that the uniformity at which I was aiming should not be interrupted, nor any opportunity be left to look back at the harmful old Constitution.
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