upon, by the most suitable
representations, to suffer some papers to be taken from the paper
office, of which his Prussian majesty already had copies; and thought
it necessary, to ascertain the dangerous design of the Saxon ministry
against him, to secure the originals; the existence and reality of which
might otherwise have been denied. He observed, that every man has a
right to prevent the mischief with which he is threatened, and to retort
it upon its author; and that neither the constitutions nor the laws of
the empire could obstruct the exertion of a right so superior to all
others as that of self-preservation and self-defence; especially when
the depository of these laws is so closely united to the enemy, as
manifestly to abuse his power in her favour.

But the most important step which his Prussian majesty took in his own
justification, was that of publishing another memorial, specifying the
conduct of the courts of Vienna and Saxony, and their dangerous designs
against his person and interest, together with the original documents
adduced as proofs of these sinister intentions. As a knowledge of
these pieces is requisite to form a distinct idea of the motives which
produced the dreadful war upon the continent, it will not be amiss to
usher the substance of them to the reader's acquaintance. His Prussian
majesty affirms, that to arrive at the source of the vast plan upon
which the courts of Vienna and Saxony had been employed against him
ever since the peace of Dresden, we must trace it as far back as the
war which preceded this peace; that the fond hopes which the two allied
courts had conceived upon the success of the campaign in the year one
thousand seven hundred and forty-four, gave occasion to a treaty of
eventual partition, stipulating that the court of Vienna should possess
the duchy of Silesia and the county of Glatz; while the king of Poland,
elector of Saxony, should share the duchies of Magdeburgh and Croissen;
the circles of Zullichow and Swibus, together with the Prussian part
of Lusatia; that after the peace of Dresden, concluded in the year one
thousand seven hundred and forty-five, there was no further room for
a treaty of this nature; yet the court of Vienna proposed to that of
Saxony a new alliance, in which the treaty of eventual partition should
be renewed; but this last thought it necessary, in the first place,
to give a greater consistency to their plan, by grounding it upon an
alliance bet