Mountains in Labor

Abstract

After Metternich’s digression into the field of decentralization and a more equitable balance of national interests during 1817, attention focussed again on the old twin evils of overburdening of government and monarch with trivial administrative decisions, and of the false position and function of the Staatsrat. The emperor urged the Hofstellen in vain to “make immediate decisions instead of writing reports”. Franz could not rouse them from their “timidity and indolence”, or prevent them from producing memoranda “at the least hint of doubt and hesitation”. Nor could the mistrustful emperor himself refrain from breaking his own rules in order to ensure that his wishes had been complied with in some insignificant matter ¹.