130

LIFE OF COBDEN,

[oB*

1838. become by-and-by only imaginary; and some Radicals wil
Ar, 84 hereafter propose, as we have done in Manchester, to go!
rid of the antiquated boundaries of the townships of Hes:
Oldenburg, ete., and place the whole under one Comm?”
Council at Berlin. There are heads in Berlin which ha%
well reflected upon this, and their measures will not dis
appoint their country.
“T very much suspect that abt present, for the great me
of the people, Prussia possesses the best government i
Europe. I would gladly give up my taste for talking
politics to secure such a state of things in England. Hd
our people such a simple and economical government, #
deeply imbued with justice to all, and aiming so constant!
to elevate mentally and morally its population, how mud
better would it be for the twelve or fifteen millions in the
British Empire, who, while they possess no electoral right?
are yet persuaded they are freemen, and who are pystife’
into the notion that they are not political bondmen, by the!
great juggle of the ¢ English Constitution’—a thing #
monopolies, and Church-craft, and sinecures, armorial hoot®
pocus, primogeniture, and pageantry | The Government J
Prussia is the mildest phase in which absolutism ever pe
sented itself. The king, a good and just man, has, by P*
suing a systematic course of popular education, shatter?
the sceptre of despotism even in his own hand, and has fo
ever prevented his successors from gathering up the frag
ments. . . . Yon have sometimes wondered what econ?
of the thousands of learned men who continually pass fro?
the German universities, whilst so few enter upon: mercant’
pursuits. Such men hold all the official and Govern?
appointments ; and they do not require 10001. a year go I
respectable or respected in Prussia. Habits of ostentatio”
expenditure are not respectable there. The king dines’
two. rides in a plain carriage, without soldiers or atten dan