In consequence, this is made known to the ---- College; and it is ordered punctually to obey the points affecting the college herein contained, and make them known, for the same purpose, to its subordinate officials. CHRISTIAN. --------------- STRUENSEE. HIRSCHHOLM, _July 15, 1771_. * * * * * We may notice here the favourite's ignorance of forms. When his patent as Count was granted him, he would have countersigned it himself, had not Hoier, who was present, warned him. But the royal order appointing him prime minister was communicated to the departments and the ministers of the foreign courts by copies countersigned by himself alone. As Reverdil very justly remarks, the king, after declaring to all Europe that he intended himself to govern, suddenly delegated his whole power to one man; and it was conferred with less pomp and formality than would have been used in former times with an order of the Treasury. No one attested to having been present at so important a deliberation except the man who was the subject of it. Struensee suddenly found himself transformed from an officer of the palace into a grand vizier, and invested with greater power than had ever been granted to the chancellors, or even the lieutenant-generals of the kingdom,--known in the time of the aristocracy by the name of grand masters. Thus was accomplished what Struensee had announced at the outset of his career. He had told Reverdil's faithful friend, Hoier, and probably many other persons, that everything was vicious in the government of the state, and that he would not leave one stone of it upon the other. The nation, revolted by so rapid a fortune, by this unlimited power entrusted to a stranger and a parvenu, considered it a crime on his part to accept it; and even a crime foreseen by the regulations of the _Lex Regia_,[154] the only unchangeable law in the kingdom. Article twenty-six of this law enjoins the future kings to defend their hereditary rights, and never allow them to be encroached on; declares null and void any powers granted to the prejudice of the royal authority; and proclaims those who had obtained them guilty of high treason. It was asserted that the man whose orders were to be obeyed without any external proof that they emanated from the king, had arrogated a portion of the sovereign authority; and this interpretation, forced though it was, was seriously alleged hereafter.