He is not
Catholic, he is not Orthodox, he is not Mahomedan. He is merely an old
gentleman who wishes to share the crime though he cannot share the creed.
He desires to be a persecutor by the pang without the palm. So strongly do
all the instincts of the Prussian drive against liberty, that he would
rather oppress other people's subjects than think of anybody going without
the benefits of oppression. He is a sort of disinterested despot. He is as
disinterested as the devil who is ready to do any one's dirty work.
This would seem obviously fantastic were it not supported by solid facts
which cannot be explained otherwise. Indeed it would be inconceivable if we
were thinking of a whole people, consisting of free and varied individuals.
But in Prussia the governing class is really a governing class: and a very
few people are needed to think along these lines to make all the other
people act along them. And the paradox of Prussia is this: that while its
princes and nobles have no other aim on this earth but to destroy democracy
wherever it shows itself, they have contrived to get themselves trusted,
not as wardens of the past but as forerunners of the future.
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