ror; the violation
of the religious treaty, and the presumptuous usurpations of the Aulic
Council, which in the present reign had begun to extend its jurisdiction
at the expense of the Imperial Chamber. Formerly, in all disputes
between the Estates, which could not be settled by club law, the
Emperors had in the last resort decided of themselves, if the case were
trifling, and in conjunction with the princes, if it were important; or
they determined them by the advice of imperial judges who followed the
court. This superior jurisdiction they had, in the end of the fifteenth
century, assigned to a regular and permanent tribunal, the Imperial
Chamber of Spires, in which the Estates of the Empire, that they might
not be oppressed by the arbitrary appointment of the Emperor, had
reserved to themselves the right of electing the assessors, and of
periodically reviewing its decrees. By the religious peace, these
rights of the Estates, (called the rights of presentation and
visitation,) were extended also to the Lutherans, so that Protestant
judges had a voice in Protestant causes, and a seeming equality obtained
for both religions in this supreme tribunal.

But the enemies of the Reformation and of the freedom of the Estates,
vigilant to take advantage of every incident that favoured their views,
soon found means to neutralize the beneficial effects of this
institution. A supreme jurisdiction over the Imperial States was
gradually and skilfully usurped by a private imperial tribunal, the
Aulic Council in Vienna, a court at first intended merely to advise the
Emperor in the exercise of his undoubted, imperial, and personal
prerogatives; a court, whose members being appointed and paid by him,
had no law but the interest of their master, and no standard of equity
but the advancement of the unreformed religion of which they were
partisans. Before the Aulic Council were now brought several suits
originating between Estates differing in religion, and which, therefore,
properly belonged to the Imperial Chamber. It was not surprising if the
decrees of this tribunal bore traces of their origin; if the interests
of the Roman Church and of the Emperor were preferred to justice by
Roman Catholic judges, and the creatures of the Emperor. Although all
the Estates of Germany seemed to have equal cause for resisting so
perilous an abuse, the Protestants alone, who most sensibly felt it, and
even these not all at once and in a body, came forwa