“We may easily suppose,” they add, “that the metropolitans of Germany, and especially those who are also electors of the empire, have borne with much unwillingness this great diminution of their rights, with respect to the confirmation of the new bishops, elected in their respective provinces; and the grievances drawn up at Constance under the emperor Sigismund, by the deputies of the provinces of Germany, and laid before the Council of Constance afterwards, by deputies of the same nation, as Galdart relates, clearly evinces: [here follows what we read in the 3d chapter]: Every time that it becomes necessary to proceed to an election, after it shall have been terminated, let it be examined according to legal form by the immediate superior; and, if found canonical, let it be confirmed; and let not the sovereign pontiff be allowed in any way to attempt any the smallest thing to the contrary, unless that the elected be immediately subject to him; in which case he may intimate his prohibition; or, unless they have acted in some way contrary to the regular forms: in such case, as he is bound to the observance of the law, so is it allowable to him when any thing is done contrary to that law, or attempted to be done, to reform it, and even correct and punish the transgressors. We have before proved, that this latter power belongs to the sovereign pontiff of common right. Although the council of Constance in the 36th session, to prevent the peace of the church being disturbed, ratified the confirmation of bishopricks, made by popes whom it deposed shortly after; and, although it directed the expediting and signing in its name the bulls which had never been given to bishops who had abdicated, or who were driven from their sees; it, nevertheless, thought seriously at the same time of reducing the confirmation of bishops to the terms of the ancient law, since, in the decree of the 40th session, by which it prescribed to the pope who was about to be elected, by way of salutary caution, many points of the great-est importance, to which in the sequel a better form was to have been given, it inserted in the 5th article that of the confirmation of electors. But what the council of Constance only premeditated, we know that the council of Basle carried more fully into effect: for, after having annulled the reservation as well general as particular, it only allowed, that in cases where the church or the commonweal might suffer damage, the sovereign pontiff might be resorted to for the confirma* tion of canonical elections; adding, that if the confirmation was refused at Rome, the new election should devolve on the chapters. For the rest, it clearly directs, that the elections be made without impediment; and confirmed after examination, agreeable to the disposition of the common law. The grievances of Mayence, drawn up after the council of Basle in 1440, and reported in Scakenburg under the term