to publish in London satires on George the Second approaching to the
atrocity of those satires on Frederic, which the booksellers at Berlin
sold with impunity. One bookseller sent to the palace a copy of the most
stinging lampoon that perhaps was ever written in the world, the Memoirs
of Voltaire, published by Beaumarchais, and asked for his Majesty's
orders. "Do not advertise it in an offensive manner," said the King,
"but sell it by all means. I hope it will pay you well." Even among
statesmen accustomed to the license of a free press, such steadfastness
of mind as this is not very common.

It is due also to the memory of Frederic to say that he earnestly
labored to secure to his people the great blessing of cheap and speedy
justice. He was one of the first rulers who abolished the cruel and
absurd practice of torture. No sentence of death, pronounced by the
ordinary tribunals, was executed without his sanction; and his sanction,
except in cases of murder, was rarely given. Towards his troops he acted
in a very different manner. Military offences were punished with such
barbarous scourging that to be shot was considered by the Prussian
soldier as a secondary punishment. Indeed, the principle which pervaded
Frederic's whole policy was this, that the more severely the army is
governed, the safer it is to treat the rest of the community with
lenity.

Religious persecution was unknown under his government, unless some
foolish and unjust restrictions which lay upon the Jews may be regarded
as forming an exception. His policy with respect to the Catholics of
Silesia presented an honorable contrast to the policy which, under very
similar circumstances, England long followed with respect to the
Catholics of Ireland. Every form of religion and irreligion found an
asylum in his states. The scoffer whom the parliaments of France had
sentenced to a cruel death was consoled by a commission in the Prussian
service. The Jesuit who could show his face nowhere else, who in Britain
was still subject to penal laws, who was proscribed by France, Spain,
Portugal, and Naples, who had been given up even by the Vatican, found
safety and the means of subsistence in the Prussian dominions.

Most of the vices of Frederic's administration resolve themselves into
one vice,--the spirit of meddling. The indefatigable activity of his
intellect, his dictatorial temper, his military habits, all inclined him
to this great fault. He drilled his peop