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470 SWEDENBORG IN THE HOUSE OF NOBLES.
liberty, was opposed alike to despotism and to anarchy. As
the son of a distinguished and universally beloved bishop,
he was ennobled by Queen Ulrica Eleonora in 1719, together
with his brothers and sisters. His entrance into the House
of Nobles was consequently contemporaneous with the re
establishment of freedom in Sweden. During his childhood
and youth he had witnessed the misfortunes into which an
unlimited monarchy had precipitated his country. He himself
had seen the misery and distress, which a war of eighteen
years’ duration, with dearly bought victories and bloody de
feats, with decimated armies and bankrupt finances, attended
by pestilence and famine, had entailed on his oppressed
country. He could not be convinced that a few conquered
standards and trophies, exhibited in the armoury at Ulriksdal,
or in the Church on Riddarholm , could compensate the
people for the sweat, the toil, and the lives that had been
wasted. Need we wonder, then, that Swedenborg was in
favour of a constitution, which set bounds to the arbitrary
power and whims of a hitherto unlimited monarchy ; which
prevented the dissolution of the country, and gradually changed
discontent into satisfaction, at least among the majority of
its citizens. Swedenborg enjoyed the good fortune, envied by
many, of having been able during half a century to influence
by his vote the resolutions passed for the welfare of his
country, and of not giving up his place in the House of
Nobles before the year 1772, when death closed his eyes to the
darkened prospects with which a change in the administration
threatened Sweden’s independence. Swedenborg thus belonged
to the whole of that period of freedom , which is valued so
highly by many, and is made light of by others. With that period
his political career began and ended. The reader will pro
bably desire to know the position which the seer took as a
member of the Diet, and what resolutions he had to propose
on various questions. We shall, therefore, communicate some
of the papers which he laid before the Diet. They furnish
the clearest proofs of his statesmanship, and explain, moreover,
his political standpoint.”
The author here communicates several of the political
papers which are preserved among the Swedenborg MSS. in
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