,
hardest-working Merchant's Clerk, to increase his industrial Capital by
any the smallest item!

"One day, these things will deserve to be studied to the bottom; and to
be set forth, by writing hands that are competent, for the instruction
and example of Workers,--that is to say, of all men, Kings most of all,
when there are again Kings. At present, I can only say they astonish me,
and put me to shame: the unresting diligence displayed in them, and the
immense sum-total of them,--what man, in any the noblest pursuit, can
say that he has stood to it, six-and-forty years long, in the style of
this man? Nor did the harvest fail; slow sure harvest, which sufficed
a patient Friedrich in his own day; harvest now, in our day, visible to
everybody: in a Prussia all shooting into manufactures, into commerces,
opulences,--I only hope, not TOO fast, and on more solid terms than are
universal at present! Those things might be didactic, truly, in various
points, to this Generation; and worth looking back upon, from its
high LAISSEZ-FAIRE altitudes, its triumphant Scrip-transactions and
continents of gold-nuggets,--pleasing, it doubts not, to all the gods.
To write well of what is called 'Political Economy' (meaning thereby
increase of money's-worth) is reckoned meritorious, and our nearest
approach to the rational sublime. But to accomplish said increase in
a high and indisputable degree; and indisputably very much by your own
endeavors wisely regulating those of others, does not that approach
still nearer the sublime?

"To prevent disappointment, I ought to add that Friedrich is the reverse
of orthodox in 'Political Economy;' that he had not faith in Free-Trade,
but the reverse;--nor had ever heard of those ultimate Evangels,
unlimited Competition, fair Start, and perfervid Race by all the world
(towards 'CHEAP-AND-NASTY,' as the likeliest winning-post for all the
world), which have since been vouchsafed us. Probably in the world there
was never less of a Free-Trader! Constraint, regulation, encouragement,
discouragement, reward, punishment; these he never doubted were the
method, and that government was good everywhere if wise, bad only if not
wise. And sure enough these methods, where human justice and the earnest
sense and insight of a Friedrich preside over them, have results, which
differ notably from opposite cases that can be imagined! The desperate
notion of giving up government altogether, as a relief from human
blockhe