THE PRUSNIAN GOVERNMENT,

13]

and dresses in a kind of soldier's relief cap. The plays 1838.
begin af six and close af nine, and all the world goes to bed mp. 24
o ten or eleven,” ®
It is to be remembered in reading this, that it was written
forty years ago. Not a few considerate observers even now
Bold that tne prospect of German progress which Cobden
sketches, would have been happily realized, if Prussian
Statesmen of 5 bad school had not interrupted the working
of orderly forces by a policy of military violence which
Precipitated unity, it is true, but at a cost to the best
Causey in Germany and Europe, for which unity, artificial
8nd unstable as it now is, can be no worthy recompense.
As for the contempt which the passage breathes for the
English constitution, it is easy to understand the disgust
Which a statesman with the fervour of his prime upon him,
and with an understanding at once too sincere and too
Strong to be satisfied with conventional shibboleths, might
well feel alike for the hypocrisy and the shiftlessness of a
Sysbem, that behind the artfully painted mask of popular
"opresentation concealed the clumsy machinery of a rather
dul] Plutocracy. Tt is not right to press the phrases of the
hasty letter of a traveller too closely. If, as it is reasonable
bo think, Cobden only meant that the energetic initiative
of central authorities in promoting the moralization of a
Country is indispensable in the thick populations and
divided interests of modern times, and that the great want
of England is not a political equality which she has got, nor
® natural equality, which neither England nor any other
Sountry is ever likely to get, bub a real equality in access
to justice and in chances of mental and moral elevation, —
then he was feeling his way to the very truths which, of all
others, it is most wholesome for us to understand and to
Becept. Whatever we may think of the good word which
5 To P. Oobden, flapt, 11, 1838.