Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Documents
(unless they had previously enjoyed such a privilege), nor the county, nor noblemen, officers of the Chamber or the army, but only and solely those who have been duly granted the rights of a citizen; nor shall it be permitted to import foreign wine without the permission of the Council, and if any man, whosoever he may be, dares to transgress this regulation on retailing wine, the Council itself shall have full authority to prevent it; furthermore, the right of retailing wine shall be exercised by the city itself, as has been the custom to this day, for the benefit and profit of the public weal for fourteen days in every quarter of the year, and no citizen shall be permitted to retail wine during that time, save at inns for guests and travellers; furthermore, the city shall, within its own boundaries, enjoy rights of pasturage, the common of estovers, the common of fowling, hunting, fishing, together with the revenues of fishing the Danube up to the middle limit and extent of the river water and the islands that belong to the city included; and likewise the city shall be entitled to levy tolls on mills, landing-places, banks, from ships both discharging and in passage, from goods and persons subject to toll; and the city shall be empowered to set up taverns, eating-houses, druggists, baths, municipal physicians and ordinary physicians, barber’s shops, bakehouses, limekilns and brickkilns, to take the profits of all these ventures, and to devote all revenues from these to the benefit of the city community; furthermore, the city shall be empowered to set up stone-quarries, theatres, shooting-ranges, aqueducts, as well as other public structures and markets; and the said citizens of Pest shall continue to enjoy the full and untrammelled right of brewing within the freedom to import beer from the provinces for a certain sum to be devoted to the needs and maintenance of the hospital. It shall appertain solely to the power and dignity of the Council to have a care that legal measures of capacity and weight be used, that legal and public measures of capacity and weight be maintained for dry and liquid food, that their falsification or fraudulent use be punished, that violence in public markets and fairs be prevented, that merchant and agent newcomers as well as others be afforded local protection; that handicrafts and other commodities be produced without fraud, falsification or guile according to the rule of the art and that they remain in continuous supply, to see that reasonable market-dues, usual at other places, be collected from market stalls of produce and other places and for cattle sold there, but that a further gracious patent of ours shall be especially required in this respect. The city shall be empowered to admit citizens and inhabitants to the community, to tolerate or banish Jews and gypsies; to care for orphans and their property, to appoint guardians and custodians obliged to render account, to appoint a divine, that is, a parish priest, for a daily sum, and to present him to those concerned, to detail citizens for service in the defence of the municipality and for aid if this be required by the needs of the community, to impose taxes and collect dues in conformity with the laws of the country and which are accepted and in use in the other royal boroughs, to frame municipal statutes among themselves which do not contravene the laws of the country, to expropriate the estates of citizens dying here intestate and leaving no heirs, to collect exit dues on property leaving the country, to exercise the municipal authority of the public power within the city in political and civil matters, or where offences are committed; to look into all offences everywhere, to arrest the offenders and to punish them according to the gravity of their offence; and finally, the public municipality shall be empowered to decide on and establish its own marks and seals; likewise, all citizens and inhabitants of this city, as well as those who practise an art or follow a craft or trade in this city or are the noble or non-noble 85
