through a
body of trained administrators such as up to that time existed nowhere
else.

The next elector obtained the royal crown. Prince Eugene said that
the emperor's ministers, who had advised the grant, deserved to be
hanged. But in fact they were not less prescient than he, for they
warned Leopold that Prussia would deprive his family of the empire.
The King of Prussia became the head of the Protestant interest in
Germany. That prerogative had been forfeited by the Elector of Saxony
when he received the crown of Poland and became a Catholic. Rome
alone protested against the Protestant king, and spoke only of a
margrave of Brandenburg until after the death of Frederic II. All the
Catholic Powers acknowledged the new title and disregarded the
protest. For the first time there was a kingdom within the empire, a
kingdom, moreover, which was Protestant. It was a step towards the
break-up of that irrational body.

The second king succeeded in 1713 and died in 1740. He is the Peter
the Great of Prussia. For him, the whole secret of government is the
increase of power at home. His idea was that monarchy cannot be too
absolute. It requires to be wisely administered; but it does not
require to be limited. Concentration cannot be too intense. No enemy
outside is so dangerous as public opinion within. He announced that
he would establish his power on a rock--"un rocher de bronze." He meant
that the power of the State must be independent of the changing
motives of the hour, that it must be directed by a will superior alike
to majority and minority, to interests and classes. He spent his
reign in very deliberately contriving such a machine. The king, he
said, must do his work himself, and not shrink from trouble. He was
perpetually in harness. He was like a madman in his vehemence and his
crudity of speech. But there was method in his fury, and calculating
design and even practical wisdom. He gave an impetus as powerful as
that of the Tsar Peter; but he was superior to him in knowledge of
detail as well as in point of character. He was a hard taskmaster,
but he knew what he was about; and it does not appear that his
subjects desired to be governed in another way or that they would have
been satisfied with a monarch who did not strain their strength to the
uttermost.

The object in which they agreed with him--the supremacy of the
Prussians in Germany--was not to be obtained if they would not go into
tra