d it
through a whole generation. The State also could no longer do without
the participation of the people, if it was not to fall back into the
old state of feebleness, which only a few years before had brought it
to the verge of ruin. Now, when life was impressed with new ideas, when
in hundreds of thousands a passionate interest in the State had sprung
up, the safest support for the throne itself was a constitution. For
the Prussians were no longer a nation without opinions or will, whose
destiny an individual could dispose of by his will.

But the King, however honest he might be, who wished to continue to
govern in the old way through pliant officials, was in danger from this
new condition of the world of becoming the tool of a noxious faction,
or the victim of foreign influence. He required a strong counterpoise
against the preponderating power of Russia, and diplomatic
entanglements with Austria. This he could only find in the strength of
an attached people, who in union with him would deliberate on the
policy and support of his State.

King Frederic William III. never felt the incongruous position in which
he had placed himself, in respect to the necessities of the time, for
his image was closely bound up with the grandest reminiscences of the
people; and the private virtues of his life made him, during a long
reign, an object of reverence to the rising generation. But his
successor was to suffer fearfully from the circumstance that he
himself, his officials, and his people had grown up under a crippled
system of State.

But that the Prussians of 1813 should so quietly have borne their
disappointed hopes, that--whilst already in the States of the Rhenish
Confederation parties were in vehement struggle--the "great State" lay
so lifeless, is to be attributed to other reasons besides loyalty to
the Hohenzollerns. The nation was exhausted to the uttermost by the war
and what had preceded it, and wearied to death. Scarcely had it
strength to cultivate its land. Years passed over before the live stock
could be fully replaced. Cities and village communities, landed
proprietors and peasants were all deeply in debt. The price of landed
properties sank lower than they had been before 1806. It often happened
that noble estates remained without masters for many years, when the
last proprietor had wasted the live stock, and that auctions were often
unattended by solvent bidders. Commerce and industry had been destroyed
by