It is the duty of the historian to enumerate and praise
all this, if also to mention some unsuccessful attempts of the King,
which were inevitable owing to his endeavor to control everything
himself.
The King cared for all his lands, and by no means least for his child
of sorrow, the newly won Silesia. When he conquered this great
district it had a few more than a million inhabitants. They realized
vividly the contrast between the easy-going Austrian management and
the precise, restless, stirring rule of Prussia. In Vienna the
catalogue of prohibited books had been larger than at Rome; now bales
of books came incessantly from Germany into the province, reading and
buying were astonishingly free, even printed attacks upon the
sovereign himself. In Austria it was the privilege of the aristocracy
to wear foreign cloth. When the father of Frederick the Great of
Prussia had forbidden the importation of cloth, he had first of all
dressed himself and his princes in domestic goods. In Vienna no office
had been considered aristocratic if it implied anything but a nominal
function; all the actual work was a matter for subordinates. A
chamberlain stood higher than a veteran general or minister. In
Prussia even the highest born was little esteemed if he was not useful
to the State, and the King himself was a most exact official, who
watched and scolded over every thousand thalers saved or spent. Any
one in Austria who left the Catholic Church was punished with
confiscation of property and banishment; under the Prussians anybody
could leave or join any church--that was his own affair.
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