nt,
stout-hearted, subject men, with a very considerable quantity of radical
fire, very well covered in; prevented from idle explosions, bound to
a respectful demeanor, and especially to hold their tongues as much as
possible.

Friedrich Wilhelm has not the least shadow of a Constitutional
Parliament, nor even a Privy-Council, as we understand it; his Ministers
being in general mere Clerks to register and execute what he
had otherwise resolved upon: but he had his TABAKS-COLLEGIUM,
Tobacco-College, Smoking Congress, TABAGIE, which has made so much noise
in the world, and which, in a rough natural way: affords him the uses
of a Parliament, on most cheap terms, and without the formidable
inconveniences attached to that kind of Institution. A Parliament
reduced to its simplest expression, and, instead of Parliamentary
eloquence, provided with Dutch clay-pipes and tobacco: so we may define
this celebrated Tabagie of Friedrich Wilhelm's.

Tabagies were not uncommon among German Sovereigns of that epoch: George
I. at Hanover had his Smoking-room, and select smoking Party on an
evening; and even at London, as we noticed, smoked nightly, wetting
his royal throat with thin beer, in presence of his fat and of his lean
Mistress, if there were no other company. Tobacco,--introduced by the
Swedish soldiers in the Thirty-Years War, say some; or even by the
English soldiers in the Bohemian or Palatinate beginnings of said War,
say others;--tobacco, once shown them, was enthusiastically adopted by
the German populations, long in want of such an article; and has done
important multifarious functions in that country ever since. For truly,
in Politics, Morality, and all departments of their Practical and
Speculative affairs, we may trace its influences, good and bad, to this
day.

Influences generally bad; pacificatory but bad, engaging you in idle
cloudy dreams;--still worse, promoting composure among the palpably
chaotic and discomposed; soothing all things into lazy peace; that all
things may be left to themselves very much, and to the laws of gravity
and decomposition. Whereby German affairs are come to be greatly
overgrown with funguses in our Time; and give symptoms of dry and of
wet rot, wherever handled. George I., we say, had his Tabagie; and
other German Sovereigns had: but none of them turned it to a Political
Institution, as Friedrich Wilhelm did. The thrifty man; finding it
would serve in that capacity withal. He had take