ARRET OF THE EVANGELICAL BODY AT RATISBON.

When the protestant states in arms against the court of Vienna were put under the ban of the empire, the evangelical body, though without the concurrence of the Swedish and Danish ministers, issued an arrêt at Ratisbon, in the month of November of the last year, and to this annexed the twentieth article of the capitulation signed by the emperor at his election, in order to demonstrate that the protestant states claimed nothing but what was agreeable to the constitution. They declared, that their association was no more than a mutual engagement, by which they obliged themselves to adhere to the laws without suffering, under any pretext, that the power of putting under the ban of the empire should reside wholly in the emperor. They affirmed that this power was renounced, in express terms, by the capitulation: they therefore refused to admit, as legal, any sentence of the ban deficient in the requisite conditions: and inferred that, according to law, neither the elector of Brandenburgh, nor the elector of Hanover, nor the duke of Wolfenbuttel, nor the landgrave of Hesse, nor the count of Lippe-Buckebourg, ought to be proscribed. The imperial protestant cities having acceded to this arrêt or declaration, the emperor, in a rescript, required them to retract their accession to the resolution of the evangelic body; which, it must be owned, was altogether inconsistent with their former accession to the resolutions of the diet against the king of Prussia. This rescript having produced no effect, the arrêt was answered in February by an imperial decree of commission carried to the dictature, importing, that the imperial court could no longer hesitate about the execution of the ban, without infringing that very article of the capitulation which they had specified: that the invalidity of the arrêt was manifest, inasmuch as the electors of Brandenburgh and Brunswick, the dukes of Saxe-Gotha and Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, and the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, were the very persons who disturbed the empire, this, therefore, being an affair in which they themselves were parties, they could not possibly be qualified to concur in a resolution of this nature; besides, the number of the other states which had acceded was very inconsiderable: for these reasons, the emperor could not but consider the resolution in question as an act whereby the general peace of the empire was disturbed, both by the parties that had incurred the ban, and by the states which had joined them, in order to support and favour their frivolous pretensions. His imperial majesty expressed his hope and confidence, that the other electors, princes, and states of the empire, would vote the said resolution to be null and of no force; and never suffer so small a number of states, who were adherents of, and abettors to, the disturbers of the empire, to prejudice the rights and prerogatives of the whole Germanic body; to abuse the name of the associated states of the Augsburgh confession, in order forcibly to impose a factum entirely repugnant to the constitution of the empire; to deprive their co-estates of the right of voting freely, and thereby endeavouring totally to subvert the system of the Germanic body. These remarks will speak for themselves to the reflection of the unprejudiced reader.