state officials superintending the affairs of the
others at a cost, in salaries alone, of upward of five hundred million
dollars a year.

In no political or philosophical sense was the French Revolution a
revolution at all. It was a change of administration and leaders, but
not a change of political theory. The French Revolution put the state
in impartial supremacy over all classes by destroying exemptions
claimed by the nobility and the clergy, and thus extended the power of
the state. The English Revolution without bloodshed reduced the power
of the state, not for the advantage of any class, but for individual
liberty and local self-government. We Americans are the political
heirs of the latter, not of the former, revolution.

Germany was stirred slightly to hope for freedom, but stirred mightily
to protest against anarchy later. These were the two influences from
the French Revolution that affected Germany, and they were so
contradictory that Germany herself was for nearly a hundred years in a
mixed mood. One influence enlivened the theoretical democrat, and the
other sent the armies of all Europe post-haste to save what was left
of orderly government in France.

But Prussia was not what she had been under Frederick the Great.
Frederick was more Louis XIV than Louis XIV himself. The economic and
political errors of the French Revolution found their best practical
exponent in Frederick the Great. In the introduction to his code of
laws we have already mentioned are the words: "The head of the state,
to whom is intrusted the duty of securing public welfare, which is the
whole aim of society, is authorized to direct and control all the
actions of individuals toward this end." Further on the same code
reads: "It is incumbent upon the state to see to the feeding,
employment, and payment of all those who cannot support themselves,
and who have no claim to the help of the lord of the manor, or to the
help of the commune: it is necessary to provide such persons with work
which is suitable to their strength and their capacity."

When Frederick died he left Prussia in the grip of this enervating
pontifical socialism, which always everywhere ends by palsying the
individual, and through the individual the state, with the blight of
demagogical and theoretical legislation. The fine army grew pallid and
without spirit, the citizens lost their individual pride, the nation
as a whole lost its vigor, and when Napoleon marched into