The Statesmanship of Stein

I

MANY events in history show the inherent weakness of absolutism, but none in modern times more vividly than the eclipse of Prussia and the destruction of the old German Empire by Napoleon.

Frederick the Great had taken his father’s army (all save “The Tall Grenadiers"), his father’s treasury, his father’s principles of administration,— had developed and used all these with genius; but there was in his whole work just one fully developed man, — himself. He thought out the problems, laid the plans, pushed on work, baffled adversaries; and, despite sundry errors and absurdities, he did all this with genius.

At his command, the nobility marched to death or glory; the middle class manufactured and merchandized to fill his treasury; the peasantry laid down their lives as his soldiers or as serfs in illrequited toil, — the individual was nothing; the state, everything.

In the upper stratum of the population stood the army officers, high civil officials, clergy, and men of letters. The army officers had inherited stern ideas of duty, honor, and discipline from the days of the Great Elector and his still greater grandson, but their system and training were outworn; during the last years of the eighteenth and first years of the nineteenth century, they had “learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” Many of them were valuable, some of them admirable, but very few were of use in great affairs ; their power to originate, to direct, to take responsibility, had been gradually superseded by unreasoning obedience. The clergy had some exceptional men, but in general had become dull, heavy, stupefied by the Protestant orthodoxy and intolerance which set in after the death of Luther. The great German thinkers of the modern epoch were already at work, and powerfully; but as yet they had not taken full hold upon the German mind and heart; Kant and Schiller had spoken, but their full strength was yet to be revealed.

In the towns remained the mediæval medley of corporations, guilds, classes more or less privileged, but with the old Teutonic spirit of independence long since taken out of them.

Beneath absolutism and various intermediate strata, there remained the lowest and largest stratum of all, — two-thirds of the whole population, and virtually the whole rural population, subject to mediæval exactions and restrictions, — and including a widespread body of serfs.

Even during the lifetime of the great Frederick there had come warnings of approaching European trouble. The French philosophers had begun their work. Voltaire had set in motion currents of thought sure to bring storms; Rousseau had spread new ideas of right very dangerous to despotism, not merely in France, but in all countries; yet Frederick steered his ship of state steadily in spite of these ideas; sometimes, indeed, by means of them.

But in 1786 he died, and the times demanded that his successor be as great as he, or greater. To adjust the old state to the new ideas, there was needed not only a great ruler, but a great reformer, a genius hardly less than miraculous; and, at this time, of all times, Frederick the Great was succeeded by Frederick William the Fat.

He was the most worthless of the Hohenzollerns. Herein is seen the fatal vice of absolutism, — it demands a constant succession of men of genius on the throne, and such a succession never has been and never will be seen. A Frederick the Great has generally been soon followed by a Frederick William the Fat; a Charlemagne by a Charles the Simple; a Charles V by a Philip II; an Elizabeth by a line of Stuarts; a Henry IV by a Louis XIII; a Napoleon I by a Napoleon III; a Joseph II by a Francis I; a Peter the Great by an Alexis; a Catherine by a Paul; a Nicholas I by a Nicholas II.

The new Prussian king, in essentials, was much like Louis XV of France, — perhaps a better-hearted man, but, as a monarch, worse than worthless. Each of these two sovereigns received in early years the title of “well beloved,” — the French king being called “Le BienAimé,” and the Prussian “Der viel Geliebte.” Both were good-natured ; both lazily wished their subjects well; both firmly believed that their subjects existed for them, and not they for their subjects; both were hopelessly licentious, and at the same time excessively orthodox; both were consequently brought to grief by the wiles of women and priests; each was very anxious, while pampering his body, to save his soul, and to save the souls of his people; each had an instinctive dread of the new philosophy, and both resorted to the same futile means of checking it.

Decay in Prussia, and indeed, throughout Germany, now became rapid. Most effective of all disintegrating influences were two, and both mainly from France: the influence of the old French corruption and of the new French freedom; it was like applying to granite, first fire, then water.

For the only time in its history, Prussia was now largely influenced by courtesans and favorites, after the Louis XV manner. Frederick I, seventy years before, had shown some tendency toward Bourbon methods, but his good sense, inherited from his father, the Great Elector, prevented their becoming dominant; Frederick William I had kept them out by brutality; Frederick the Great, by common sense; and if either of these committed sins, they were not flaunted before his people.

The internal administration of the new King, Frederick William II, soon became, in its essential features, like that which had impoverished France and almost all the lesser courts and govern - mentS of Germany. For favorites and mistresses he carved estates from the public domain, and lavished treasure, patents of nobility, and orders of chivalry. His example spread his own view of life, first through the court and Berlin society, then through the higher classes of the whole country. Corruption came, then extravagance, then debts and dishonesty. Wöllner, called into the cabinet, distinguished himself by edicts thoroughly in the interest of the old Protestant orthodoxy, though expressly allowing the clergy to disbelieve, if they would keep their disbelief to themselves. He strengthened the censorship of the press, instituted doctrinal test examinations, and gave special instructions to prevent any new views filtering down among the people. Kant, at Königsberg, the future glory of Prussia and of Germany, was, indeed, elaborating a new and better philosophy; his work in establishing new foundations for morality was perhaps the greatest single force in human thought during the nineteenth century; but he showed some tendency toward freedom of opinion, and this brought from Berlin stern reproofs; he was told to hold his peace, lest worse befall him.

The external policy of the new King differed no less widely from that of his predecessor. The great Frederick had concentrated his efforts upon the safety and welfare of his own country; but Frederick William the Fat scattered his forces in efforts, more or less vague, to accomplish something noteworthy in other countries. It was a policy of meddling and muddling which brought neither strength nor glory. The Prussian army was sent into the Netherlands to aid one of the parties there, and gained some trifling victories; but the efforts of the Prussian Foreign Office to continue the work of Frederick the Great within the limits of Germany resulted mainly in a series of farces, the dupe being sometimes Prussia and sometimes Austria.¹

While this was going on. the flood of French liberty, equality, and fraternity seemed about to break over all barriers raised by German officialism. Three years after the accession of Frederick William the Fat, the French Revolution burst forth, showing as yet little of its evil side, but warming and stirring all Europe by its enunciation of new truths. The resistance of the States-General to king and court, the establishment of the National Assembly in apparent harmony with the monarch, the renunciation of privileges by the nobility, the pamphlets of Sieyès, the speeches of Bailly and Mirabeau, leavened German thought.

What was done in Prussia to meet this tide ? Worse than nothing. A few concessions as to military service were flung to the privileged classes; a few concessions of milder discipline to the army; a few shiftings of burdens from the upper classes, who made themselves heard, upon the lower classes, who were dumb; but the main mass of abuses in Prussia and in every other German state remained.

The political action of the Prussian Kingdom, both internal and external, at this period was profoundly immoral. In spite of pledges to protect the integrity of Poland, the partitioning of that wretched country went on. No doubt Poland had shown herself unfit to exist as a nation; no doubt her government had been the most preposterous in Christendom; her nobles anarchic; her laboring classes priest-ridden, and consequently ignorant and hopeless; no doubt the whole Polish people who came under the power of Austria, Prussia, and even Russia, were material gainers; but seizing and appro printing an independent nation in time of peace was setting a precedent which the partitioning powers had, and still have, reason to lament — bitterly.

Meantime, the French Revolution was passing into its more threatening phase, and Prussia made new blunders. The crowned heads of Europe took counsel together, among them, especially, the German Emperor Leopold and King Frederick William the Fat; and there was issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which simply drew upon Germany the French fury of 1792. In one of his admirable essays, Von Sybel declares the idea that the allied monarchs made war against France a popular fallacy. This assertion seems unworthy of so great a historian. Technically speaking, the war was made by France; really, it was made by the powers allied against her; the French, indeed, declared war, but the declaration by the allied monarchs had made war inevitable; the Republicans at Paris had the wit to see this; the Royalists at Berlin and Vienna had not.

The armies of Prussia and Austria were now pushed against France, and at first the French troops gave way; in some cases panic seized them: they threw down their arms and fled for their lives, strikingly like the Union troops invading the South at the beginning of our own Civil War. Essentially, their great panic near Saint-Menehould was amazingly like our great panic at Bull Run. But soon all was changed. Prussians and Austrians wore out their strength in intrigues regarding their shares in the plunder of Poland, and in wretched squabbles for precedence; worst of all, they issued the famous Brunswick Manifesto, which, by its threats, infused into every Frenchman the courage of desperation. The Germans now began to be pushed back; better commanders arose among the French, who beat the allies, first at Valmy and Jemappes, and later all along the Rhine, until at last, in 1795, Prussia escaped from the whole complication by making the Peace of Basle, — thereby deserting her ally, Austria, allowing France to take all the left bank of the Rhine, including Belgium and Holland, and receiving, as a bribe, permission to deal with the lesser North German States as she chose, to annex and oppress them to her heart’s content.

While Prussia was thus rapidly losing the strength and prestige given her by Frederick the Great, Frederick William, “the well beloved,” went on with his pleasures. Our Gouverneur Morris, who was presented to him at court in 1797, wrote home that, robust as the King seemed to be, it was evident that his time was to be short. This prophecy of the shrewd American was realized even more rapidly than he expected, for Frederick William II died that same year, and there came to the throne his son, Frederick William III.

The new King seemed more unpromising than his father in every respect save in morals. He was diffident, awkward, undecided, slow. He had been wretchedly educated, partly under bigots, partly under debauchees; his spirit had been crushed by the favorites of his father; he was at first, to all appearance, the most forlorn and hopeless Hohenzollern who ever existed; and yet, deep in his heart and mind was a spark of that genius which has given to the Hohenzollerns the German Empire. At his accession this showed itself in some spasmodic attempts at reform; the Countess of Lichtenau, who, through his father, had ruled the court, he banished, and Wöllner he drove from the service; but soon, though he kept clean, and clear from his father’s evil surroundings, he subsided into the hands of the old politicians of his father’s time: tricksters like Haugwitz, Lucchesini, and the like.

Meantime, history went on in France, also, and a very different history. The French Revolution had raised vast armies and developed great generals, and among these, Bonaparte. France had thrown off her old shackles, distributed her church lands and the estates of refractory nobles, transformed her serfs into free citizens, and developed the courage of desperation.

Germany and Prussia clung to the old system; even the people refused to accept reforms; Joseph II of Austria, for his efforts to better his country, had gained from the people, apparently, nothing but curses, and died of a broken heart. The game of the French, especially after Bonaparte had arrived as “the man on horseback,”—the natural result of liberty gone mad, — was easy; they played the continental governments against one another, bribing some, crushing others; and to prevent the larger states from becoming too powerful, they grouped the smaller states and tied them, by their ambitions, to France, — thus, in due time, creating the kingdoms of Bavaria, Wtirtemberg, Westphalia, the Confederation of the Rhine, and various petty satrapies, in which hopes of gain from France were substituted for loyalty to Germany. In 1803 large parts of Germany, outside of these greater divisions, were divided up to make bribes, — for such use among German rulers as the conqueror might think best; fifty thousand square miles, with three millions of inhabitants, were thus appropriated, and in this process over two hundred small German states were deprived of their sovereignty and extinguished. As in the time of Bismarck, sixty years later, princes who had steadily refused to make any concessions to patriotism or right reason were crushed and ground out of existence by men of “blood and iron.”

Austria, not being supported by Prussia, was stripped by successive conquests, humiliated at Ulm by one of the most ignominious capitulations in history, and finally, in 1805, crushed at the battle of Austerlitz, and forced to submit to the terrible Peace of Pressburg, which deprived her of her most important outlying territories on all sides.

Now began a new series of humiliations for Prussia. Had she joined heartily with Austria and Russia against Napoleon, the result might have been widely different; but she dallied and delayed until the treaty of Pressburg had ruined her natural allies, apparently forever. As usual in the early days of Frederick William III, before he had been schooled by disaster, he delayed until too late. Before the battle of Austerlitz he had sent Haugwitz to meet Napoleon, with an ultimatum threatening war; but the interview was put off until the battle had been fought, and that changed everything; Napoleon having utterly crushed Austria and driven off Russia, Haugwitz was obliged to put the ultimatum in his pocket and pretend that he had been sent to propose mediation for the benefit of Europe and to congratulate the conqueror on his victory. Napoleon knew that Haugwitz was lying, and Haugwitz knew that Napoleon knew that he was lying; but they now made the Treaty of Schönbrunn, a private letter from the Prussian King allowing Haugwitz to take the responsibility — a treaty apparently most favorable to Prussia, but really the greatest humiliation in her history.² For Napoleon, knowing the Prussian need of peace, promised that if Prussia would separate herself wholly from the allies, he would give her Hanover. This was a master stroke of rascality. If any new territory was coveted by Prussia, it was Hanover; but Hanover belonged to the ruling house of Great Britain; for Prussia to take it was to make Great Britain her bitter enemy, and to make all right-thinking Europeans despise her.

The Prussian government was very reluctant to make itself an accomplice in Napoleon’s system of robbery; but as he grew stronger every day, and showed decided signs of offering less favorable terms, the treaty was at last ratified. Napoleon seemed to delight in making it as humiliating as possible, utterly refusing to grant what the King of Prussia tried to claim as essential, and, while giving Hanover, insisting on taking, in return, so much other territory that the advantage given Prussia by this dishonor was, after all, next to nothing.

But this was merely a beginning. Napoleon’s genius in scoundrelism was as wonderful as his genius in war; having made the Prussian King his accomplice, he treated him like a lackey, forced him to send away his capable and patriotic foreign minister, Hardenberg, to take back Haugwitz, and to allow Prussian territory to be treated as virtually French.

Worse still, Prussia was openly made a dupe. While carving out of the states on the western side of Germany the Confederation of the Rhine and allying it, with its sixteen millions of Germans, to France, Napoleon soothed Prussia by graciously giving her permission to create a federation of North German States, and to put herself at its head; but when Prussia attempted this she soon found delays, objections, resistance on all sides, and ere long discovered that Napoleon, while allowing her to establish a federation, had virtually forbidden the German states to enter it. But a dupery even more vile followed. Prussia had accepted Hanover, thus breaking with her natural ally, England, and uniting with her natural enemy, Napoleon. She had done so with shame. Judge of the abyss of disgust into which every thinking Prussian was plunged, when, after the treaty was fully made,—after England had punished Prussia severely for it on the high seas; after Napoleon, on account of it, had demanded from Prussia great concessions of territory and enormous sacrifices of national respect, — it was discovered that Napoleon was secretly treating with England, and offering, on sundry conditions, to restore Hanover to her. Clearly there was no longer honor among thieves.

To cap the climax of degradation, Napoleon, in time of peace, contemptuously marched his troops through Prussian territory, utterly disregarding the simplest principles of international law, and allowed his generals to talk of an approaching war with Prussia.

There was also talk, loud and loose, on the Prussian side. It was reported that a high official at Berlin had openly declared that the King had several generals each as good as “M. de Buonaparte.” Prussia now entered secretly into arrangements with Russia against France, and finally, in the autumn of 1806, the Prussian army was set in motion; in a few weeks Napoleon had met it, had beaten it utterly and easily at Jena, at Auerstadt, at Saalfeld, and the edifice erected by ages of care and sacrifice —from the old Electors of Brandenburg to the death of Frederick the Great — was beneath the conqueror’s feet.

Napoleon now rises from glory to glory; enters Berlin amid the applause of its citizens, and from the old palace of the Prussian King dictates the hardest of conditions; then presses on toward Russia, holds his own at the fearful struggle of Eylau, wins the great victory of Friedland, and, having thus triumphed completely over Russia and Prussia, meets the Russian Emperor in the summer of 1807 on the Niemen raft and makes the renowned Treaty of Tilsit. By this the two emperors became accomplices in a scheme, more or less definite, for subjugating Great Britain and the European continent, thus depriving Prussia of her former devoted ally, the Russian Emperor, and leaving Napoleon free to deal with her as he would, —to reduce her one-half in territory and population, to take away her most necessary fortresses, to quarter a vast army upon her, and to use her army, her territory, her finances, as his own. Frederick William III now became a sort of discredited hermit prince in the remote northeast corner of his kingdom, — a kingdom reduced from five thousand German square miles to a little over two thousand, and from about ten millions of inhabitants to about six millions, and with prospects of even more serious reductions.

Worse than these reductions was the manner of them. Poland was taken from the conquered kingdom, thus making Prussia defenseless on the east; everything between the Elbe and the Rhine was taken from her, and thus she became defenseless on the west; the most important fortresses upon her other frontiers were filled with French troops, so that finally she was left defenseless on all sides. Thus the Prussian realm lay shattered, impoverished, open at any time to the armies of any neighboring states that Napoleon might choose to set upon it; indemnities to enormous amounts were levied upon the Prussian people, and enforced by every sort of extortion. There were also petty frauds especially exasperating. Typical is the fact that the French authorities at Berlin, within a year after their arrival, had struck counterfeit coin to the amount of nearly three millions of Prussian dollars.³

Hard upon all this spoliation followed galling insults. The great triumphal chariot, with its horses and Winged Victory of bronze, the main ornament of Berlin, was taken from the Brandenburg Gate and sent to Paris. The ingenuity of Napoleon in degrading the Prussian King and people before Europe was only equaled by his folly. He dragged the Prussian Queen Louise into his bulletins and letters; hinted at vileness in her character; set afloat monstrous calumnies regarding her; when he met her, was brutal, — her only offense being a patriotic devotion to Prussia. She seems to have had an artistic side which afterward reappeared in her eldest son, the next king, Frederick William IV; but she also had that sense of duty, steadfastness, and devotion to country which was destined to develop so beneficially in her second son, then a child at Königsberg, later the conqueror of France and ruler of restored Germany, — the Emperor William I.

Napoleon was fond, at times, of cruelty to women. Next to his colossal, ingenious, and persistent lying,⁴ this was perhaps the worst trait in his character; and as regarded Queen Louise, he gave this characteristic full play; she at last died of a broken heart, and was thereby made a sort of tutelar saint by the Prussian people. Her statues and portraits have become objects of popular worship; the peasants of Prussia have given her, from that day to this, much the same place in their hearts which the same class in another part of Germany gave in the Middle Ages to St. Elizabeth; more than once remembrance of the wrong done the martyred Queen has moved myriads of German households to pour forth stalwart peasant soldiers to take vengeance upon France.

But there was a still deeper humiliation. Upon entering the Prussian capital in triumph, as on entering other towns, Napoleon was received by the assembled crowds with applause: German misgovernment had, to all appearance, rooted out patriotism.

Yet from the darkness of the time light began to appear. The hard rule of Frederick the Great had not lasted longenough to crush out all manly vigor; the sensualism of Frederick William the Fat had not lasted long enough to destroy all morality; men who had been known hitherto only as routine officials now began to show the characteristics of statesmen; men who had been known simply as martinets now began to show military genius; in this terrible emergency genius and talent and a deep feeling of duty began to appear in every quarter, but above all in Prussia. A galaxy of great men arose who remind an American of the “war governors,” — the great soldiers, the strong counselors, who, during our Civil War, arose in our own country from what seemed to be a great foul mass of politicians hopelessly corrupted by subservience to slavery.

Foremost of all these great Germans in that fearful crisis was Frederick Henry Charles, Baron vom Stein. Born in 1757, near the old castle where his ancestors had lived as barons of the empire, — the Castle of Stein, on the river Lahn, above Ems, in Nassau, — he was the youngest but one of ten children. His family, having lived on the rock from which they took their name for seven hundred years, — until it was laid waste in the Thirty Years’ War, — had then built a house in the little village below, and there their representatives live to this day. Under the old “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation,” they ruled over two villages near them, with various attributes of sovereignty. Most of Stein’s brothers showed talent, but he was early recognized as possessing both character and genius, and so, by a family compact, he became the representative of the family name, — the family head. He was well brought up. After the old German fashion, he was taught to speak the truth, and was especially made to understand that his position not only gave rights, but imposed duties. The ability of the rest of the family seems to have been often alloyed with something of wildness or sensuality, but the Stein continued a steady course, —manly, stainless, independent, self-controlled, straightforward, energetic, — a power to be reckoned with.

The study which he most enjoyed was history, —ancient and modern, and especially English history. From 1773 to 1777 he studied at the University of Göttingen, in the department of jurisprudence; but for this he made preparation, not by scraps of metaphysics or by mere dalliance with literature, but by thorough work in constitutional law and history; chiefly in the law and history of his own country and of England. He revered great men, above all Charlemagne and Luther. His classical scholarship was passable, but his knowledge of French and English he made thorough and practical. Uniting to his historical reading close study of political economy, social science, statistics, and the like, he was deeply impressed by the study of Adam Smith’s new work, The Wealth of Nations; and as we note this and its result in the reforms which Stein instituted in Prussia, we obtain new light on the contention of Burke and Buckle that Adam Smith’s book was the greatest benefaction ever given the world by any man.

After remaining in Göttingen for four years, he traveled extensively through Germany, not merely for pleasure, but to study men and realities. For a considerable time he settled down at Ratisbon, in order to learn the manner of doing legislative business in the Imperial Diet; at Wetzlar, in order to know the mode of doing judicial business in the chief imperial courts; and at Vienna, in order to understand executive methods at the centre of the empire. All this actual contact with life prevented his becoming pedantic,—a man of mere formulas; during all this period he kept his eyes open to realities which a man who hoped to be of service to his country ought to know; he also went outside his country; visited Hungary, Styria, and finally England, looking closely into mining and manufactures, — everywhere studying the sources of national strength.

It had been understood from the first that he was to take office, as men of his standing with small means and large ambitions usually did, in some one of the German states. Many places were open to him. In almost any of the petty states under the empire, each with its own civil service demanding men of ability, there seemed some chance for him. His ancestral allegiance was to the house of Austria; but he knew its past well enough and could look far enough into its future to see that there was no hope for Germany from that source, and so, deliberately breaking away from his family traditions and from South German prejudices against North German methods and manners, he chose the service of Frederick the Great and Prussia. Deepest in his thoughts was a desire for German unity; he saw that this unity could never be accomplished under Austrian guidance, but might be accomplished under that of Prussia; and it was this feeling that caused him to go to Berlin, where, in 1780, he became an under official in that branch of the administration which had to do with mining, more especially, in Westphalia. His duty was to inspect the mines, to study and report upon the best means of production, and he at once went at this duty in a manner most thorough; made new studies in chemistry, mineralogy, and metallurgy, with the best professors, but prevented such studies from becoming pedantic by close observation of actual conditions and processes. His promotion was rapid, and, in 1784, he was made director in the administration of the mines and manufactures of Westphalia, —from that day to this one of the leading mining and manufacturing districts of Europe.

He now showed great vigor. The Westphalian functionaries in general had become sleepy; but he labored, pulled, pushed, to advance the public interest, and his skill, energy, and public spirit were at last recognized.

A year later he was suddenly called to a very different field. Frederick the Great, in closing his renewed struggle against Austria, wished to gain over to his League of German Princes sundry leading personages of the old empire, — especially the Elector of Mayence; and, breaking away from old traditions, he sent Stein to Mayence as his ambassador. The young man, unaccustomed though he was to this sort of work, cut through the tangled mass of petty lying and cheatery which had so long existed there in such matters, impressed the ArchbishopElector by his honesty, and gained his points by his common sense. This, for a man of his years, was counted a great victory.⁵

But he had accepted this diplomatic position with the greatest reluctance, — indeed, had at first utterly refused it, and was only led to take it by his sense of loyalty and honor; and now that his duty was discharged, he determined to have no more of it. One statement of his throws a bright light into his motives, for he speaks with dislike of the “alternation of idleness and crafty, calculating activity,” — a sentence in which the whole diplomacy of that period is perfectly summarized.

In 1786, Frederick the Great having died, Frederick William the Fat began his meddlesome policy, and sought to send Stein as ambassador, first to Holland, and then to Russia. These positions were most brilliant, and Stein’s career at Mayence gave every promise of success: all to no purpose; his aversion to this kind of service was unalterable, and he kept on with his work in Westphalia. There are many evidences that in taking this course he was influenced by the example of Turgot, whose life had shown, not only to the province which Turgot ruled and to France, but to all Europe, how much greater is constructive work, even provincial, than the sort of service which merely or mainly enforces the whims of courts and cabinets.

Stein’s duties in Westphalia were now rapidly extended, and he was soon devoting himself especially to promoting manufactures and to opening communications by land and water on a great scale. Here came an innovation as startling in his day as, in some parts of our country, in our own; for he did this work in opening roads of the best construction, not by forcing peasants to contribute unskilled labor, after the feudal fashion, but by labor scientifically directed and adequately rewarded. Thus it was that Stein, in 1786, as Turgot had done a few years before, arrived at the same conclusions and adopted the same methods which the State of New York and other great Commonwealths of the American Republic have reached, more than a hundred years later.

He also improved the internal tax system, and thus, during twenty years, wrought, not merely for the Prussian treasury, but for the well-being of the people at large.

During the first war of Prussia with the French Republic, which ended with the Treaty of Basle, he had reason to feel deeply the errors of Berlin statesmen, but steadily attended to his own business; more and more clearly he saw that by developing the resources of the country he could do more for it than by dabbling in foreign affairs. He constantly laid hold on new work, extending important lines of communication, improving roads and waterways, strengthening manufactures, dismissing useless functionaries, stopping peculation; but, what was even better than this, he developed public instruction, and began planning various reforms in the country at large, especially the abolition of the caste system and of serfdom.

His success led to the imposition of more and more duties upon him: he was called upon to superintend the work of incorporating into Prussia the new acquisitions made under her Basle treaty with the French Republic, and especially to curb the severity of underlings seeking to carry from the capital into these new territories the stiff, stern Prussian system.

His continued success led now to the highest provincial promotion. In 1796 he was made Supreme President of the Provincial Chambers and head of the entire administration in Westphalia. His duties after this promotion can best be understood by an American if we imagine the governor of one of our greatest states called upon to discharge duties, not only executive, but legislative, judicial, and diplomatic, and adding to them various functions of important cabinet officers at Washington. The system was undoubtedly bad, but his genius made it work well. His strength rose with his tasks; it was soon felt that his was a force to be obeyed, and that behind it all was a determined zeal, not for pelf or place, but for the good of the kingdom.

In 1804 he was transferred to a far greater sphere. He was made Minister of State of Prussia, the departments of finance, manufactures, and trade being placed in his hands, — his career as minister thus beginning a few weeks before Napoleon’s career as Emperor. In this new position, the feeling which inspired all his main efforts was an intense devotion to German unity under the lead of Prussia: both he and the French Emperor, whose most effective enemy in Germany he was destined to become, had the same instinct, — Napoleon seeking to prevent German unity by crushing Prussia, Stein seeking to promote this unity by strengthening her.

This feeling in Stein was wedded to an idea then new in political economy. Prussia, like the old French monarchy, was divided into provinces, each, as a rule, with its own historic frontiers and its own manifold vexations and discouragements to manufactures and trade.

Against this system Turgot had fought the good fight in France and lost it; the world now sees that the system was absurd, but then it was generally regarded as natural, and, indeed, essential; the government favored it as giving increased revenue; the people favored it as giving protection to their provincial industries. Most of its absurdities Stein swept away, and all of them he undermined. The old complicated ways of collecting the revenues he made simple; and, despite most serious opposition, he developed a new system which proved not only less costly but more fruitful ; and at the same time he steadily unearthed frauds, stopped abuses, and changed various modes of financiering which tended to scoundrelism.

But the war against Napoleon was now in sight, and Stein, as finance minister, was called upon to furnish money for it. In previous wars, Prussia had adopted the policy of having a standing war fund, and this system remains to this day; so that when she mobilizes her army she can immediately have ready means to tide over monetary disturbance, until adequate financial provision is made. This system, which in these days is a subordinate convenience, was then a main reliance. It prevented sudden pressure upon the people. Prussia thus, at the beginning of a war, made business more easy by making money more plentiful. But the unwisdom of Frederick William the Fat had exhausted all such treasure, and more. Various projects were considered. Frederick the Great had accomplished much for a time, though at fearful ultimate cost, by issuing debased coin; this Stein refused to do, and expressed himself to the King regarding his Majesty’s great predecessor in terms more honest than complimentary. Though the decision was in favor of paper money, it was paper money carefully controlled; no “fiat money,” such as not long since won such wide support in our own country, was thought of; the amount of currency was comparatively small, — smaller, indeed, than the King and many of his counselors thought permissible; but Stein utterly refused to go farther than he could go in perfect safety; the fool’s paradise of paper money, in which various ministers in France had disported themselves, only to be tormented by it afterward, Stein refused to enter.

The labor henceforth thrown upon him was overwhelming. With the most inadequate machinery, he must provide funds for fighting France; but finance was the smallest part of his cares, for he saw swift destruction coming unless the system of government was greatly changed, even in some of its foundations.

Still influential in foreign policy was Haugwitz, a poor creature at best, and now absolutely dazzled and dazed by the Napoleonic glory; him Stein opposed bitterly. Close about the King, standing between him and the ministers of state, was a sort of “kitchen cabinet,” its main members being Lombard, a mere trickster belonging to the school which had brought ruin upon France; Beyme, a good sort of man at times, but wrong-headed; Haugwitz, and others like him. On these Stein waged war without ceasing.

Studying the general administration, he finds a medley of favorites, ministers, directors, commissions, boards, bureaus, functionaries, with all sorts of titles and attributes, working largely at cross purposes. Studying the country at large, he finds the population divided into castes: nobles, burghers, serfs ; each tied up by every sort of rusty restriction; all prevented from using their persons or their property according to their needs or the needs of their country. For all this he thinks out reforms.

The Battle of Jena, terrible as were its consequences, did not shake his purpose. Though various other magnates hastened to declare allegiance to Napoleon, Stein was uncompromising; others gave up national property to the conqueror and took office under him; but Stein seized and sent everything possible beyond the conqueror’s reach, refused to submit himself to an enemy of his country, and followed his sovereign into his last refuge, — the most woebegone corner of the kingdom.

The King now urged Stein to take the Department of Foreign Affairs, but this he steadily declined, resisting all flattering promises; partly from a belief that his fellow statesman, Hardenberg, was more fit, and partly from an unwillingness to serve before the “ kitchen cabinet ” had been abolished forever. After various attempts to secure him, and at the same time to hold fast to the old system, his Majesty lost his temper, wrote Stein a bitter letter, referred to one of his remonstrances as a “ bombastic essay,” called him a “ refractory, insolent and disobedient official, proud of his own genius and talents, inattentive to the good of the state, guided purely by caprice, acting from passion, personal hatred and rancor;” and ended by saying, “If you are not disposed to alter your disrespectful and indecorous behavior, the state will not be able to reckon much upon your future services.”

At this, on the 3d of January, 1807, the sturdy patriot resigned his place in the cabinet, returned to his ancestral home in Nassau, and settled there, but not in sloth, for he at once began drawing up plans for various reforms which he saw must come before Germany could throw off the tyranny which had settled down upon her more and more fearfully since the defeat of Austria at Austerlitz, of Prussia at Jena, and of Russia at Friedland, — among these plans being one for a better council of ministers, which should forever replace “ kitchen cabinets ” by known and competent advisers, not only to the King but to the country.

Opportunity to carry out this and other good ideas came sooner than Stein had expected: Hardenberg, driven from office at the command of Napoleon, patriotically besought the King to make Stein his successor, and to this idea support came from another quarter, at first sight surprising, — from Napoleon himself. The great conqueror, planning to draw heavily upon Prussian finances, favored Stein as a man who could develop them. Thus it was that, less than ten months after his ignominious dismissal, Stein was requested by the King to resume his old place, and, in addition, to become Minister-President of the kingdom, with full charge of the civil administration, and with great powers in military and foreign affairs, — thus becoming a legislator for Prussia, with the duty of meeting the terrible exigencies of the present and of promoting a better system for the future.

There were then in being two great commissions, with which he had long been in touch, one on civil, the other on military matters; his ideas had taken possession of their members, and had wrought on them to good purpose. Stein now became the great man in the first of these bodies, and in the second he had by his side another great man, his friend, General Scharnhorst.

When these men now resumed their work, the half of the Prussian kingdom which had been left by Napoleon to its former government was a wreck, — its resources mortgaged to France, its defenders under the command of the conqueror, its people impoverished and benumbed. The spirit of Stein during this period is best described in his own reminiscences: —

“We started,” he says, “ from the fundamental idea of rousing a moral, religious, patriotic spirit in the nation; of inspiring it anew with courage, self-confidence, readiness for every sacrifice in the cause of independence and national honor; and of seizing the first favorable opportunity to begin the bloody and hazardous struggle for both.”

His greatness in character, in thought, and in work, was recognized by his friends from the beginning. But as his task grew upon him and his plans unfolded more and more, his brain was recognized throughout Prussia — nay, throughout Europe — as the real centre of German activity against the Napoleonic tyranny. Towering thus above all contemporary growths of Prussian statesmanship, he did not seek to overshadow or wither them. There have been great statesmen dissatisfied until they have received all royal and popular favor; unhappy until all their colleagues have drooped beneath their shadow. Stein was not of these: determined as he always was, and irritable as he frequently was, his activity called into being other activities, and these he favored and fostered; under his influence other strong and independent men grew and strengthened; and of them were such men as Hardenberg, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Schön.

While taking care of the complicated and vexatious affairs pressing upon him from all sides, Stein and his compeers promoted a twofold revolution. The first was peaceable, favoring the creation of new institutions from which might grow a better spirit in the German people ; the second was warlike, and, for a considerable time, secret and insurrectionary, — a revolution against the Napoleonic tyranny, and as truly an effort for rational liberty as had been the American, and, at its beginning, the French Revolution.

The peaceful revolution naturally comes first in our thoughts, for it was the necessary preliminary of the second. Faithfully Stein and the great men who stood by him thought and wrought; not spasmodically, not by orations to applauding galleries, but quietly and steadily, in the council chamber; and on the 9th of October, 1807, appeared the first of the great edicts of emancipation. These had three main purposes: first, to abolish the serf system; secondly, to sweep away restrictions in buying and selling land ; thirdly, to prevent the great proprietors from using their position and capital to buy up small farms, after the English fashion, and thus rooting out the yeomanry. Underlying, overarching, and permeating all these objects was one great thought and purpose, — the intent to create a new people.

First, as to the serf system. It was essentially the same mass of evil which had done so much to bring on the revolution in France. De Tocqueville has shown how the wrongs which grew out of outworn feudalism had separated the French nation into distinct peoples, hating each other more and more, and at last ready to spring at each other’s throats. This process had not gone so far in Germany as in France. The French mind, with its clearness and its proneness to carry ideas to their logical results, had moved faster and farther than had the thoughts of the lower classes in Germany; but the German peasantry, and, indeed, the whole German people beneath the nobility, had become more and more indifferent to the ties which guaranteed national unity. When we read Arthur Young’s indignant accounts of the French peasantry as he saw them just on the eve of the Revolution, we naturally think that France, as regarded her rural population, had reached a lower point than had any of her sister nations; but there is ample evidence that rural Germany was at that time certainly as wretched as rural France, and possibly more so. Goethe, who went over the French frontier with the German army in 1792, tells us that he found in the cabins of the French peasantry white bread and wine, whereas in those of the German peasantry he had found only black bread and no wine. As to galling oppression, had Arthur Young gone into the Prussian dominions, he would doubtless have given us pictures quite as harrowing as those he brought from France. Take a few of the leading Prussian regions. In Brandenburg, — largely an agricultural region, — out of ninety thousand inhabitants, there were hardly three hundred and fifty who owned land; these held swayin courts, churches, schools, enjoyed police and hunting privileges, and down to 1799 were mainly exempt from tolls, taxes, and service as soldiers. About one-sixth of the Brandenburg peasantry had, under feudal tenure, the use of a little land, but the great body of peasants were virtually day-laborers. In Silesia the peasant was, as a rule, held under strict serfdom: compelled to remain on the land; could only marry by consent of his lord; and his children were obliged to remain on the soil as farm laborers unless graciously permitted by the lord of the land to take up some other occupation. In the principality of Minden, at the death of every peasant onehalf of his little movable property went to his lord. In Polish Prussia, the serf, as a rule, could own absolutely nothing. He and all that was his belonged to his lord; the land owners had managed to evade even the simplest feudal obligation, and could throw out their tenants as they chose.

Various Prussian rulers had striven to diminish the pressure of all this, wrong. Frederick the Great, cynical as he appeared, sought to mitigate the brutalizing influences of this debased feudalism, and Frederick William III had shown a wish to make some beginning of better things; but the adverse influences were too strong. Nobles and clergy were then in Protestant Prussia what they had been in the days of Turgot in Catholic France, and their orators struck their keynote in declaring this existing order of things “a system ordained by God; ” that thereby alone virtue, honor, and property could be secured; that to change it was to give up their beautiful, patriarchal heritage. Hearing this utterance, one would suppose that under this system the rule was kind treatment from the upper, and love from the lower classes; but the fact was that while the feudal lord’s idea of his right had become grossly magnified his idea of his duty had mainly disappeared; the system had become fearfully oppressive and was enveloped in a cloud of distrust, faultfinding, and hate.⁶

And not only were the people who cultivated the land thus bound, but the very soil itself was in fetters — tied up by feudal restrictions as to sale and cultivation which had become absurd. Under the old system, the three castes — the nobility, the burghers, the peasants — had been carefully kept each to itself. The rule, resulting from the theory underlying the whole, was that the nobility must not engage in the occupations of the burgher class; that burghers must be kept well separated from the peasant class; and that to this end, all three classes should be hampered by a network of restrictions upon their power to hold land. Barriers of every sort had been built between these three classes. Broad tracts of land were lying waste because their noble proprietors had not the capital with which to till them, and yet were forbidden to sell them ; great amounts of capital were lying idle because burghers who had accumulated it were by the laws and customs hindered in various ways from applying it to land owned by nobles; trade was stagnant and multitudes of young nobles idle because they must not engage in trade. All this, with many kindred masses of evil which had been developed in the same spirit, were now largely swept away, yet not without opposition; political philosophers and declaimers filled the air with arguments to prove these reforms wicked and perilous; nobles of the court, high officers of the army, and landed proprietors, in great numbers, caballed against the reformer; General Yorck, one of the best and strongest men of the time, declared the new measures monstrous; but Stein persevered and forced through the edict which, three years later, on St. Martin’s Day, 1810, struck feudal fetters from two-thirds of the Prussian people, and extinguished serfdom under Prussian rule forever.⁷

It is only just to say that for this great edict of 1807 and for the later legislation which supplemented it, - transforming serfs into freemen throughout Prussia, — various colleagues and assistants of Stein, and especially Hardenberg, Altenstein, and Schön, deserve also to be forever held in remembrance. They too had given long and trying labor to it all; they had taken the better thought of their time and brought it into effective form; but the credit of giving life to what they thus produced, and of forcing their main ideas upon the conservatism of the nation, — beginning with the King himself, — belongs, first of all, to Stein. Others saw, as he did, the causes of the Prussian downfall; others contributed precious thought in devising this great restoration; but his was the eye which saw most clearly the goal which must be reached; his the courage which withstood all threats and broke through all obstacles; his the mental strength which, out of vague beliefs and aspirations, developed fundamental, constitutional laws; his the moral strength which, more than that of any other German statesman, uplifted three-fourths of the whole population, gave them a new interest in the kingdom, and a feeling for its welfare such as had never before been known in Prussia, and thus did most to create that national spirit which was destined to sweep everything before it in the Freedom War of 1813, in the War for German Unity in 1866, and in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

It may be objected to these claims for Stein that the fundamental thought in his reforms was derived from Adam Smith. That statement is true. It cannot be denied that Adam Smith,⁸ penetrating thinker that he was, set in motion the trains of thought which largely resulted in Prussian emancipation; yet this detracts not at all from the glory of Stein and the statesmen who wrought with him. All the more glory to them for recognizing, developing, and, finally, for enforcing the great Englishman’s thought, in a way which has proved a blessing, not merely to Germany, but to humanity.

Another great work now begun by Stein was the reform of the city governments. The enfranchisement of the serfs had been due, largely, to the spirit of reform aroused in general thought by Voltaire, Rousseau, and their compeers, and in economic science by Adam Smith ; but this city reform was peculiarly his own; the need of it had doubtless been felt by many; good methods of promoting it had been seen by few; the practical measure for carrying it into effect was the work of Stein alone.

This system, which has been fruitful in blessings ever since his time, though in principle somewhat like that of England, differed from it widely. It was the very opposite of the system fastened upon France by the French Revolution and by Napoleon. As Seeley very justly says, “The French Revolution began at the top, creating a central national legislature and giving all the power to that, leaving town and local organizations generally deprived of all life, making the prefects of departments and the mayors of communities mere functionaries appointed from the central government at Paris and representing the ideas of the capital.” The reform of Stein began at the base, giving selfgovernment to the towns, schooling them in managing their own affairs, in cheeking their own functionaries, in taking their own responsibilities. While keeping the central monarchy strong, his great exertion was to restore fitness for public life in the country at large: by his first reform he had converted the rural serfs into beings who could feel that they had an interest in the country; by this new reform he sought to exercise the city populations in public affairs.

The old city system of Europe had, many centuries before, been a main agency in developing civilization : Guizot declares it the main legacy from Rome to the Middle Ages; Maurer asserts that it saved the Reformation. The Roman Empire was made up of cities. When all else save the Church was swept away and the country districts desolated, these cities remained, and in them was a continuity of much that was best in the old civilization, and a potency of vast good in the new. During the Middle Ages their vigor increased. The cities wrested from the feudal lords right after right; the city magnates leagued with the distant emperor or king against the petty feudal oppressors immediately above them; when the feudal lords wanted money to join the Crusades the cities brought it, and bought with it rights and immunities. The commerce of the Middle Ages developed many of these towns nobly, especially throughout Italy and Germany; but Vasco da Gama’s passage around the Cape of Good Hope having largely withdrawn trade with the East Indies from the Mediterranean, the commercial cities, not only in Italy, but even in Germany, lost for a time a very large share of their prosperity.

During the Reformation period, many of the German cities having recovered strength and shown hospitality to the new thought, various leading reformers in Northern and Middle Germany took refuge in them, and there found protection against Pope and Emperor. In the League of Schmalkald, sturdily defying all efforts to crush out civil and religious liberty, we find territorial princes associated in a widespread confederation with warlike cities; but in the seventeenth century the Thirty Years’ War ruined many of these city centres, and diminished the power of them all; so that after the Treaty of Westphalia the sway of the princes was greatly extended, and only a few of the greater cities could withstand them.

Especially did political liberty, that is, the right of citizens to take part in public affairs, die out in Prussia. The strong race of the Hohenzollerns might at times make use of a local self-government, but as a rule they overrode it, and everything tended more and more to centralization; until finally the genius and absolute power of Frederick the Great seemed to remove from men’s minds the last remaining ideas essential to city independence. The individual citizen was comparatively of no account; he became essentially a parasite, living upon a state whose real life was centred in the brain of the monarch. As a result of all this, whatever authorities there were in the German towns wrought at cross purposes: there was a medley of various sorts of municipalities, and in them, royal tax administrators, municipal figureheads, guilds, privileges, customs, usages, exemptions, ceremonies, benumbing the whole organization, save when some genius like the Great Elector or Frederick the Great broke through them. The mass of dwellers in cities came more and more to consider public affairs as no concern of theirs.⁹

So far had this obliteration of city activities gone in Prussian towns that although various guilds, corporations, and privileged persons were the nominal authorities, the paid offices were filled largely with old invalids of the army. And what, in a general national emergency, was to be expected from a nation made up of a city class like this, and of a rural class like the serfs in the fields ? No wonder that Prussians seemed to look on the downfall of Prussia and Germany with stupid indifference, and applauded Napoleon at the Brandenburg Gate.

On this mass of unreason in the city organizations Stein had thought for years. Other patriotic public servants had also thought upon it, and at last, at Königsberg, afar off in the northeast corner of the Prussian state, in this its time of dire trouble, some of them prepared a tentative plan of self-government for their own city. This plan, largely under the influence of Stein, now grew into a provisional system covering sundry neighboring towns, and this, under quiet suggestions from him, was finally sent to the King. His Majesty naturally referred the whole matter back to his great minister, who now began work upon it directly and energetically, and developed out of it a system applicable not only to the cities which had asked for it, but to all the towns in the Prussian kingdom. Thus, mainly under Stein’s hands, came into being the great statutes for municipal reform.

By these statutes the municipal medley of Prussia was swept away, and the cities were divided into three classes: “great towns,” with ten thousand residents and upward; “middle towns,” with thirty-five hundred residents and upward; “small towns,” all the others. Every town now took part in the election of its own authorities, and in all towns of above eight hundred inhabitants there was a division into wards, each with its own local powers.

As a rule, all were recognized as burghers who owned real estate or other property which insured a direct, tangible interest in the city; but soldiers, Jews, Mennonites, and criminals were excluded. Magistrates and town representatives were, as a rule, selected by the assembly of citizens, the number of councilors varying from twenty-four in the smaller to a hundred in the larger towns. Every elector must appear at the polls and vote, under penalty of losing his citizenship by continued neglect of this duty. Two-thirds of the town councilors must be resident householders; they received no pay, and, as to the theory of their relations with their constituents, it is well worth noting that each represented, not his guild, not his ward, not any subordinate interest, but the whole city. At the head of the city was a paid burgomaster, and about him a small body of councilors, paid and unpaid; only those officials being paid who were really obliged to devote themselves to their official duties as a profession.

The burgomaster was elected by the representatives of the people and confirmed by an authority representing the nation; but the chief burgomaster in sundry great towns was selected by the king out of three named by the city representatives. Various features in the development of this system are worthy of note. Take as a concrete example the recent history of Berlin. Again and again, when the chief burgomastership of that city, perhaps the best governed in the world, has become vacant, those elected and submitted to the king for approval have been men who have distinguished themselves in the administration of other cities, some of these far from the capital. It has been my good fortune to know two of the chief burgomasters of Berlin thus selected; both were eminent, and one of them, who became and remained a very influential member of the Imperial Parliament, especially so. The tenure of the chief burgomaster is virtually during good behavior, with a good salary, a suitable residence, a high position, and a retiring pension, — the man thus chosen, first by the electors and finally by the emperor, being expected to give himself entirely to the welfare of the city; this is his whole business, into which he is to put the expectations and ambitions of his life. The result of this system is seen to-day in the magnificent development of that great capital: everything carefully thought out; everything managed on business principles; and all the affairs of the city conducted, with the aid of the burgher councils, quietly and with an efficiency and economy such as in American cities is rarely, if ever, seen.

The official terms of citizen functionaries under the legislation of Stein were generally long, varying from six years to twelve, the rule being continuance in office during good behavior. Generally speaking, every citizen was liable to serve in unpaid offices for six years, though he might, for sufficient reason, secure permission to retire after a service of three years. State officials, ecclesiastics, university professors, schoolmasters, and practicing physicians were largely excused from active state duties; but any other citizens refusing to serve might be punished by loss of citizenship and by fine.

On the 19th of November, 1808, Stein’s plan became a law. One feature in it which strikes us in these days as absurd, and which has in the main disappeared, is that by which Jews, Mennonites, and soldiers were classed with criminals as unfit for citizenship; but there is another feature which, while it may seem surprising, is well worth close study, especially by any one taking an interest in American politics.

To be a burgher in Prussia, one must, as a rule, have a definite and tangible interest in the community. Here was a principle running through the whole theory and practice of city government in Europe, ancient, mediæval and modern: a city was considered a corporation, — a corporation which had business to conduct and property to administer. This theory is widespread among civilized nations to-day, a distinction being made between what may be called the civil right to enjoy protection in the natural rights of man and the political right to take part in general public affairs, on one side, and, on the other, what may be called municipal right, — the right to take active part in administering city property and determining city policy. As to the latter right, it was generally felt that the people exercising it should have some evident “ stake” in the corporation whose affairs they were called upon to control or administer. We in America have tried the opposite system fully. We have applied universal suffrage to the whole administration of our city corporations, and the result, in most of our cities, has been, not merely disheartening, but debasing. Least of all can we be satisfied with its results in our large seaport towns, with their great influx of people whose whole life has unfitted them to exercise public duties, and who have had no training or even experience of a kind calculated to fit them. The distinction recognized in Stein’s system, between men having a direct tangible interest in the town, and the proletariat, has deep roots in human history; and a better system than that which now exists in the majority of our American cities seems never likely to come in until some account is taken of this distinction, founded in the history of liberty-loving peoples and based on an idea of justice; the idea that while civil liberty, which implies protection in natural rights, must be guaranteed to every citizen, and political liberty, the right to take part in the general political government, shall be as widely diffused as possible, municipal liberty, the right to exercise some effective initiative and control in municipal affairs, which are principally practical business affairs, shall be in the hands of those who have a direct, tangible interest or valuable experience in such affairs. A perfectly just and even liberal compromise between political and civil liberties on the one hand and municipal liberties on the other, would seem to be given by a fundamental law requiring in all our cities above a certain size that a mayor and board of aldermen, each of them representing the whole city, be chosen by universal suffrage, but that a board of control, whose affirmative vote shall be necessary in all financial appropriations, all questions relating to the management of public property, and all grants of franchises, be elected by the direct taxpayers.

The system proposed by Stein was met as we should expect. The nobles and the old school of officials denounced it as radical, and even as savoring of Jacobinism. Moreover, there was considerable disappointment in its first workings. People of the towns showed at first no desire to go into it; they had become listless and indifferent, and preferred to go on in the old way; the new system, also, at first increased expenditure. But Stein carried it through, and, as time went on, it began to produce the effects which he had expected: the town populations began to take an interest in national affairs; began to think upon them; began, a generation later, to take efficient part in a Prussian parliament; and, a generation later still, in a parliament of the German Empire. The municipal system of Prussia and of Germany has, indeed, been largely developed to meet new needs since Stein’s time, but its cornerstone, then as now, is the right of the people to think and act upon their own local interests.

It is worthy of note that, while this idea was thus taking shape in reformatory statutes thought out by the great German statesman, one of the greatest of American statesmen was dwelling upon it and urging it in our own country. For it had deeply impressed Thomas Jefferson. In his latter days he often dwelt upon the popular vigor of New England in dealing with questions internal and external as compared with the apparent indifference of the Southern States, and he attributed this vigor to the New England town meetings, declaring that in the struggles between Democrats and Federalists he had felt the ground shake beneath his feet when the town meetings of New England had opposed him, and that the county assemblies of Virginia gave no compensating strength.¹⁰

It has been urged that a part, always large and sometimes controlling, in the great reforms which began the regeneration of Prussia and, indeed, of Germany, was taken by Stein’s sometime friend, sometime enemy, Hardenberg. This is certainly true. Hardenberg, with his longer service and his diplomatic nature, had opportunities which Stein, with his uncompromising zeal, had not. While Hardenberg had, perhaps, a stronger belief in freedom of trade and manufactures, it was Stein’s energy, fearlessness, and skill, and, above all, the weight of his character, which embodied the fundamental reforms in laws and forced them upon an unwilling sovereign and an indifferent people.

While pressing forward these great reforms needed to start Prussia upon a better career, Stein dealt no less thoughtfully with a vast multitude of petty abuses. These were largely feudal survivals, of the sort which had driven the French peasantry mad twenty years before; but instead of proceeding against them with fire and sword, after the Celtic manner, he studied each carefully and dealt with it rationally. There was no wild plunge into chaos and night, but each evil survival was dealt with upon its demerits.¹¹

But Stein and his compeers saw that something vastly more general and powerful was needed than reforms in detail, and hence it was that there now began a better era in Prussian, and indeed in German education. Into the whole system of national instruction a new spirit now entered; slowly, at first, but doubtless all the more powerfully. Occupied though Stein was in a different field, one feels his influence in all this movement. In the great spoliation at Tilsit, the old Prussian Uversity of Halle, founded a hundred years before by Thomasius, which had given so many strong men to the Prussian state, was lost. But this calamity was the harbinger of a great gain. Thoughtful men began to plan a university for Berlin. Strong men began to be secured for its professorships. The rule that a university is made, not by bricks and mortar, but by teachers, was fully recognized. Stein had, indeed, the instinct, so strong in America, against sending undergraduates into large cities for their education; but he recognized the importance of a new educational centre to send fresh and vigorous life through the renewed educational system, and his activity did much to inspire this great movement, which was destined to work miracles, not only throughout Prussia, but throughout Europe.¹²

It will presently be seen that to carry out all these great reformatory efforts Stein had but little more than a year in office. Could he have had more time, he would doubtless have created a national parliament. But, as we shall see, fate was against him; the struggle with Napoleon and the reaction after the Napoleonic downfall caused the creation of representative bodies to be long deferred. Still, when at last they were created, they had a basis of political experience for which they were mainly indebted to him. It has been my fortune to be present during discussions in the principal parliaments now existing: the British, the French, the Italian, the German, as well as our own ; and as regards quiet, thorough, sober discussion, free from the trickery of partisans and the oratory of demagogues, the parliaments of the Prussian kingdom and of the German empire have seemed to me among the very foremost; my belief is that they have before them a great future, and all the more so because their roots draw vigorous life from principles of self-government which were called into action by Stein.

(To be continued.)