his dealings as established in in-country under my administration, ' and I am proud of him." trigue, falls into the error fo common to all us mortals, of thinking there is intrigue wherever there is fimplicity; hence it is that we do not fee the truth that is under our nofes." "The most brilliant æra of the king's government, in his own eyes, is that which is diftinguished by fome useful improvement in agriculture, I was told an anecdote which does him more honour than the emperor of China derives from opening the ground with a golden plough. There is a privy-counfellor here of the name of Brenkenhoff, a man who, born without a penny, had made himself worth millions by his industry. This gentleman, fome years fince, diftinguished himself by his improve ments in agriculture. Amongft other things, he fent for rye from Archangel, which fucceeded fo well, that by degrees they begged his feeds all through Pomerania, Silefia, Brandenburgh, and Pruffia; and the country gained confiderable fums, which before used to be paid to the Poles and Ruffians for this commodity. In confequence of this, whenever Mr. Brenkenhoff has any thing to atk of the king for himfelf or the province, he always couches his requeft in the following manner : ' had not I brought rye 'from Archangel, your majefty and your subjects would have been without fo many thousands you ' now poffefs; it is therefore fit ' and proper that you likewife grant me my requeft. The king not only makes it a rule never to deny him any thing he afks, but has often faid, Brenkenhoff is the moft extraordinary man born in this 6 "I cannot fend away this letter without obferving, that the very way in which the king exercifes the functions of his government, is a plain proof of his not having any fecret or myfterious views with respect to any of his fubjects. A defpot, who is not to be confined by any regard to rectitude and juftice, who is always diftinguishing betwixt his own advantage and the utility of the whole, and who wants to cheat his people without their obferving it, muft have either fools. for his minifters, whom he may cheat as he does the people, or he must have a favourite, whom he can make ufe of for his myfterious purpofes. Neither of thefe is the cafe with the king of Pruffia. His minifters and counfellors are all of them the most enlightened patriots; and many of them would make a figure as men of letters, if they had time, or would give themselves the trouble of writing. With regard to a favourite, the very name is unknown in this country. Voltaire, the marquis D'Argens, Alga rotti, Quintus Icilius, and Baftiani, were only the companions of idle hours, and knew lefs of the government than any body, as Voltaire has often proved by his bon mots. These beaux efprits were obliged to keep within their proper fphere, and never could bring the king to be familiar with them, how little foever he made them feel the difference of rank in the ordinary affairs of life. The king poffeffes the rare and great talent of letting hinfelf down to every man, without forgetting himself in the leaft. His reader B 3 and and fecretary dare not bring him either complaint or petition. The `king appears to be exceedingly mistrustful of himself, and to fear left his daily conversation and familiarity with all forts of people fhould lead him into error. His fecretary, who paffes fo many hours of every day with him in private, muft lay all the business to be done before him in form. His minifters are the only perfons he refers to; they are the executors of his will. It has been frequently obferved, that no king upon the face of the earth is fo well ferved as the king of Pruffia, though there is none who pays his fervants fo ill. But thefe good fervants are not to be procured by mere feverity; they must have obferved, that the king far excels them in understanding, and that he himself strictly adheres to the rules of juftice and equity, which he lays down for the conduct of others. Had they discovered a weak fide, either in the head or heart of the monarch, there would have been an end of their good fervices. It is only to this extreme impartiality, his juftice, and his fuperior understanding, that we muft afcribe the activity and order in the Pruffian courts of justice. No prince of the blood has the flightest ad vantage over a farmer in a law-fuit. When a difpute happens with a fubject upon any part of the domain or crown lands, there is no judge who dares have a leaning towards the king's fide; on the contrary, in this cafe they are ordered to have a leaning against him. The fame averfion to defpotifm leads him to make it no fecret, that he does not think the kings of the earth placed here as gods of it, and vicegerents of the Almighty. He looks upon the royal dignity as a ftation, which, like that of a general, and many others, has been established through human difpofitions, and to which, in confequence of thefe difpofitions, birth alone gives a title. He makes as little ufe of religion as he does of politics, to blind his people, or keep up his authority by faith and opinion. The confcioufnefs that he is capable of no injuftice or act of power, can alone fet him above this Machiavelian policy. To conclude my thefis, that the king is nothing lefs than a defpot, I must observe, that he has no over-bearing paffion; fame is by no means his purfuit; he defpifes all the applause of men from his heart. The great phyfiognomift, Lavater, muft have obferv. ed in his countenance, that he defpifes man himself; at least I think I can affirm, with a degree of sufficient confidence, that the king appears lefs in no man's eyes than he does in his own. Flatterers have very little to expect from him; and thofe who have written against him with the greatest bitterness, may be affured that he has no gall againft them. The Abbé Raynal, who is at prefent here, is a fure proof of this. There is no place in the world in which there is less noife made about the king's actions than there is at Berlin. None of he newspapers of the country fay a word about them; and there would not have been a word faid about them at all, if fome patriots of other countries had not tak n it into their heads, of late, to blow the trumpet of fame, whenever their governors did any thing that was not palpably abfurd or impertinent. Thefe ful fome fome panegyrifts ftirred up fome Pruffian patriots, who love, their king, to fhew the world, that Frederic, who is fo unknown to moft ftrangers, does more in filence than balf a dozen other demi-gods of the earth put together. The world was aftonished when it learned, that for years past the king had diftributed feveral millions amongst his fubjects, and the writers of newspapers took it very ill that he had done this without their knowledge. It was not till within these few years, that we knew that the land tax in the Pruffian dominions is never altered, though this system is as old as the time of the king's coming to the crown. Long before the philofophers of the last twenty-five years, (for, till within these laft five and twenty years, there has been no philofophy) began to declaim against capital punishments, the torture, and the duration of law-fuits, all these things had been banished out of the Pruffian dominions, without any fcribbler taking the trouble to fing a Te Deum about it (Beccaria himfelf makes this obfervation). Avarice is as little the king's weak fide as the love of fame. Nobody gives more willingly than he does, when he fees that the money is likely to be made good use of. He has money in his head, and not in his heart; and economy is one of the the firft virtues of a governor. But I thall fay more of this in my next." When you hear the king of Pruffia mentioned in the fouthern parts of Germany, you think they are fpeaking of an angel of death, whofe employment and amusement it is to kill the people by hundreds and thousands, to burn cities and villages, and to be the first general of his day. This opinion commonly refts upon the fame ground as another, which was very generally received by the common people during the laft Silefian war, of the king of Pruffia's having taken up arms against France and Auftria for the extirpation of the Roman-catholic religion. Auftria had often recourse to such little artifices; the was wont to appeal to the religious and paffionate feelings of the people, whenever her troops were beaten, and probably found_fome confolation in it, not that only which arifes from exciting compaffion, but the more fubftantial one of the support derived from the riches and forces of fome of the catholic princes of Germany. Such prejudices in the populace are easily produced; but when you read in the writings of fome of the most famous Auftrian ftatefinen and literati, that the king of Pruffia's whole fyftem is contrived for the purpose of making himself terrible to his neighbours, of plundering them, and of living by robbery, you do not know whether to laugh moft at their ignorance, or be most afhamed at their impudence. Out of Germany, they look upon the king of Pruffia as a great general, but are not therefore blind to his other virtues. Our countrymen, whofe impartiality and juftice in judging of the merits of great men no body can controvert, read his civil ordinances, his bon mots, and the anecdotes of what paffes in his family, with as much pleasure as they do the account of his expeditions. Even they however, impartial as they are, form quite a false opinion of the king, when they confider his military conduct as the greateft of his exertions, and think B 4 his his principal merit confifts in being the greatest general of his day. It is natural enough for the love of fplendid actions to make us more attentive to the buftle which has attended his fervices in the field, than to his still and benevolent occupations. But we should not therefore afcribe to him a love of this buftle, and a delight in the occupations of war, which no king upon earth likes lefs than he does. Nourished in the arms of the muses, and attentive only to the progrefs of philofophy, fcarce had he afcended the throne, when one of the most extraordinary events of this century happened, an event which must naturally call his attention very ftrongly to it. He was one of the many princes who had pretenfions to the fucceffion of Charles VI. What he claimed was fome marquifates in Silefia. The point was how effectually to fecure thefe rights. Moft probably he would have taken the part of Maria Theresa, attacked as the was on all fides, had a proper attention been paid to his requifitions; but the Auftrian miniftry, ever blinded by its own confequence, only answered his manifeftoes with infolence and contempt. The confequence was, that after having defeated the imperial troops in the field, he made free with all Silefia, which gave great offence. Then however he discovered the moderation of his nature, for it would have been easy for him, by supporting Charles VII. to have funk a house, which was the moft dangerous to him in all Europe. But his politics did not allow him to commit an injustice. It was neither the king of Pruf fia's love of plunder, nor any thing. indeed, except the pride of the Auftrian miniftry, and the little knowledge it had of the strength of the Pruffian dominions, that was the true caufe of the lofs of Silefia. The Auftrians despised a court which had no princes and dukes in its pay, but only merchants and knights à quaranto ecus for minifters and generals. They faw no further than the outfide of the court of the prefent king's father, who, under the mask of a ridiculous fingularity, had laid the foundation of the Pruffian greatnefs; they laughed at his unpowdered hair, his dirty boots, his turnep dinners, and his tall men. People knew not that these tall men, whom they looked upon only as his particular amufement, were under the best of discipline; they knew not that his unbetitled and unbeftringed minifters were the most enlightened patriots; that the moft exact economy had made the fmall country of Prussia richer than the proud and mighty Austria. In fine, they knew not that Spartan economy, and Spartan fubordination, which this ridi culous king was making the characteriftic of the nation, must get the better of indolence, effeminacy, and profufion, even though the tribe of gentlemen had not been so numerous in Auftria, as it was. This ignorance was the true thing which fome persons have affected to call the good fortune of the prefent king of Pruffia. The invafion of Bohemia, which took place fome time after the conqueft of Silefia, was undertaken in confequence of the most pressing and repeated inftances of the em * Knights worth fifty crowns. peror, peror, the head of the German empire, of which the king was a mem ber. I have converfed with an old and respectable Dutch officer, who accompanied count Seckendorff, as adjutant, to Berlin, when he went to defire the king to help the emperor out of the diftrefs which he muft otherwife have funk under. The king was for a long time deaf to all representations and entreaties. As count Seckendorff was preffing him one day upon the parade, he fhewed him a regiment which had fuffered confiderably in the first Silefian war. 'Behold,' fays he, 'what war cofts me; this regiment has loft above half its men, and 'fhall I expofe my people to the danger of being fo roughly hand'led again?'-This is the king whom people cry out upon as a robber and tyrant!-Seckendorff, who was a greater statesman than he was a general, in vain tried all his rhetoric to carry his point, nor would any thing have induced the king again to become the enemy of Auftria, but the being informed in what an unmanly manner the Auftrians had behaved in Bavaria, how they had plundered the archives, robbed the nobility, laid wafte the country, and carried the peasants into captivity; that in fhort, their known pride, their spirit of revenge, and their cruelty, gave caufe to apprehend every thing for the houfe of Bavaria. The king undertook to free the emperor from his diftrefs, without hurting Auftria much, and he compaffed it with a moderation, which the unprejudiced part of the world ftill admires. He obliged prince Charles to give the emperor breathing room, by forcing him to haften with his army from the Rhine to Bohemia. When he had done this he was quiet, and afking nothing for himself, was contented with having done what equity and the fhare he took in the emperor's calamity required of him. It is well known what little thare his love of robbery and conqueft had in the breaking out of that war in which he eclipted all that had been done by ancient or modern heroes. In the very heat of this war, in which he himself gathered fo many lau rels, he wrote a letter to Voltaire, filled with wifhes for philofophical quiet, and full of lamentations on the cruelties of war. Very far from being intoxicated with his fame, and untainted with any degree of the pride which filled the breaft of that Roman governor, who returning from the government of a diftant province, thought that all Italy muft inceffantly be filled with the praife of his administration; he afked Gellert, who fued to him for peace in the middle of the theatre of war, whether he had not heard or feen that there were three powers in arms against him; and whether he thought it depended upon him to make Germany a prefent of peace! So free was he from being elated with the eclat of his wonderful arms, and fo far from thinking of higher things than how to defend himself. In this wonderful letter to Voltaire, he promises, when he fhall once be quiet, to cut off the most diftant pretences for war, nor to take any concern in the politics of Europe; but to give up all his time. to the improvement of his own country, amidft the bleffings of peace.. This promife he has hitherto moft religiously adhered to. You think, perhaps, that he did not, in the affair |