Whereas, his Majesty the Emperor of the French, and their Majesties the Kings of Bavaria and Wirtemberg, their Electoral Highnesses the Arch-chancellor and the Elector of Baden, his Imperial Highness the Duke of Berg, and their Highnesses the Landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt, the Princes of Nassau Weilburg and Nassau Usingen, of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Siegmaringen, Salm-Salm, and Salm-Kyrburg, Isenburg, Birstein, and Lichtenstein; the Duke of Ahremberg, and the Count of Leyen; being desirous to secure, through proper stipulations, the internal and external peace of southern Germany, which, as experience for a long period and recently has shown, can derive no kind of guarantee from the existing German constitution, have appointed to be their plenipotentiaries to this effect; namely, his Majesty the Emperor of the French, Charles Maurice Talleyrand, Prince of Benevento, minister of his foreign affairs; his Majesty, the King of Bavaria, his minister plenipotentiary, A. Von Cetto; his Majesty, the King of Wirtemberg, his state-minister the Count of Wintzingerode; the Elector Arch-chancellor, his ambassador extraordinary the count of Beust; the Elector of Baden, his cabinet minister the Baron of Reitzenstein; his Imperial Highness the Duke of Berg, Baron Von Schele; the Landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt, his ambassador extraordinary Baron Von Pappenheim; the Princes of Nassau, Weilburg, and Usingen, Baron Von Gagern; the Princes of Hohenzollern-Hechingen and Siegmaringen, Major Von Fischer; the Prince of Isenburg-Birtsein, his privy-counsellor M. Von Gretzen; the Duke of Ahremberg, and the Count of Leyen, Mr. Durand St. André, who have agreed upon the following articles: Art. 1. The states of the contracting princes (enumerated as in the preamble) shall be for ever separated from the Germanic body, and united by a particular confederation, under the designation of “_The confederated States of the Empire_.” 2. All the laws of the empire, by which they have been hitherto bound, shall be in future null and without force, with the exception of the statutes relative to debts, determined in the recess of the deputation of 1803, and in the paragraph upon the navigation to be funded upon the shipping tolls, which statutes shall remain in full vigour and execution. 3. Each of the contracting princes renounces such of his titles as refer to his connexion with the German empire; and they will, on the 1st of August, declare their entire separation from it. 4. The Elector Arch-chancellor shall take the title of Prince Primate and Most Eminent Highness, which title shall convey no prerogative derogatory to the entire sovereignty which every one of the contracting princes shall enjoy.