11. Eleventhly, as We have hitherto given preference before others to natives, especially nobles, in the conferment of prelacies and canonries, this system shall be retained also in the future. Yet persons of burgher origin are not to be excluded, but protected in accordance with the customs and statutes traditional in each locality. We will, however, particularly maintain Our preference for natives over others, and will also promote them to prelacies, ecclesiastical benefices, dignities, Councillorships, and high public offices before any non-natives and foreigners who may with advantage be employed in Our business and the common business of the realm, in consultations, legations, and similar questions, and who have rendered or may in future render good service to the country. So also the sons of deceased persons, if they are capable, shall be given due consideration and admitted before any foreign nationals, not so much as their parents’ heirs, by virtue of succession, since positions of responsibility cannot be made hereditary, but in their personal capacities and by virtue of choice. We cannot, however, so far allow Our hands to be tied as to renounce the right to confer benefices and offices of State on well-qualified non-natives and foreigners who have done notable, good and useful service to Us and to the State, or could do so; We hereby expressly reserve this right to Ourselves, Our heirs and successors.
In order, however, that the Estates of the Land may have even greater token of the special gracious love and affection which We constantly bear toward them, We further graciously declare that since Our subjects of Electoral Brandenburg are in Our Lands of Cleves, Prussia, and the Lands appertaining thereto, excluded from offices, benefices, Captaincies, and other services of those Lands, so the same principle shall be applied reciprocally, and natives of those Lands shall be treated similarly in these Lands of Electoral and Mark Brandenburg, and held incapable of enjoying any of the benefices and services to which Brandenburgers are not admitted in Prussia and Cleves, and further, in the future, shall not be promoted so long as the said Prussians and Clevelanders adhere to their present decisions. And the same rule shall apply in all Our Provinces which may make the same demand regarding the employment of natives.
[ . . . ]
[Art. 12 provides that all cloisters, except one, which is to be turned into a school, shall be left in possession of their statutes, and the number of their inmates may return to the prewar figures as soon as circumstances allow.
Art. 13 promises not to increase the obligations by which Chapters and their subjects were traditionally bound to provide food, lodging, and horses for certain categories of travelers, and to make moderate use of such rights in these respects as the Elector is unable to renounce. For instance–to take one example out of a long list–cooks and Electoral employees are not to be given special tips when quartered on a Chapter, “because they are not employed in the service of the Chapter, but in Ours.”
Art. 14, which binds the Elector to consult with the Estates before taking decisions on questions of major importance, should by modern standards have been the most important of the entire document. In fact, it was a dead letter from the first, and that not solely of the Elector’s fault; the Estates had already long ceased to attempt to influence foreign policy, except in the sense of objecting to the taxation made necessary by wars. But such as it is, it runs:]
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