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198 RIESBECK’S TRAVELS THROUGH GERMANY.
Silefia is the province of moft confequence a‘ter the kingdom of Pruffia. It is only
half as big as this, but has nearly the fame number of inhabitants, and yields very near
as much. ‘The Silefian linens are famous all over the world; and the King has juft
opened a trade with Spain for them, which was formerly in the harids of the Ham-
burghers. ‘They have likewife a large trade for handkerchiefs. The Silefian forefts
alfo afford a great deal of wood for fhip-building. The Ville de Paris, which was taken
the 12th of April of this year, was intirely built of Silefian wood.
Having made feveral excurfions into different parts of the Pruffian dominions, I have
obferved that there is no where fo much poverty as in the two towns of Berlin and Potf-
dam. This probably it is, which has contributed to bring the country into difcredit
with foreigners. The high price of the neceflaries of life in thefe two cities, the great
number of idle people, the finall pay of many civil and military fervants, the pinching
way in which many of the fmaller nobility, who muft have their fervants (and often
their debts) live, and the great luxury of dréfs, may be the caufes of this. Upon the
whole, the country appears to me, though not rich, yet ina {tate fufficiently profperous.
The equal diftribution of the coin among{t many people, makes the fum not fo firiking
as it is in other places, in which a nobleman covers the poverty of a hundred of his poor
countrymen by his diffipation. This is not the cafe here; there are no perfons in the
Pruffian dominions, fome of the large feudal nobles in Silefia only excepted, who pof-
fefs above thirty thoufand guilders income in landed eftates. Indeed you cannot find
more than three houfes which have twenty thoufand florins; but {till the inhabitants
are upon the whole as remote from extreme poverty as from exceilive riches, and you
meet with as few beggars here as in any other country in Europe. There is no ground
for the affertion of fome travellers, that manufactures do not thrive in this country, for
I did not fee one city, though ever fo fmall, in which there were not fome flourifhing
manufactures. It has indeed been objected to the King, that his fyitem of finance has
ruined the fair of Franckfort on the Oder; but the trade carried on there was a kind of
Jewifh bufinefs, which might perhaps be profitable to the merchants of the place, but
was rather. hurtful than uleful to the reft of the country. The fame objection, upon
the fame narrow grounds, is made to the Emperor, with regard to the fair of Biffen, in
the Tyrol.
With regard to the fciences, and literature of all kinds, Berlin is, without a doubt,
one of the firft cities in the world. It is obliged to the King for this pre-eminence.
His father was as orthodox and ftiff as the late Emprefs of Germany ; and the Mufes,
who without liberty do not live at their eafe, fled from him of courfe. This filly prince
banifhed the celebrated Wolfe, who certainly was no infidel; but the King had no
liberal ideas; he confidered every ftudy, except thofe of divinity and finance, as non-
fenfe and delufions ef the devil, and his treafurer was a greater man in his eyes, than
Wolfe, Leibnitz, or Newton. The prefent King, who is a true friend of the arts and
fciences, has eftablifhed a freedom of thinking in his country, which is not to be met
with any where out of England. Neither orthodox nor politics reftrain philofophy in
this country ; but whilft every profeflor at Vienna is teaching that land and people are
the private property of the monarch, they publith here, without the leaft fear of danger,
that the King is nothing more than ‘a fad. holder, or the firft amongit his fellows. As
to religion, the Jews openly declare that the Meffiah i is not yet come; the Catholics,
that they eat him every day, and that the Pope is the head of all princes; the Protel
tants, that the Pope is the wild-bea{t in the Apocalypfe, and the Whore of Babylon ;
the Greeks, that there is no Trinity ; the Turks, that Mahomet was a greater prophet
than either Telus or Mofes; and the whole race of Infidels, that there never has been
7 auy:
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