for all, and was above local or social influences. The estates lost their ancient authority, and one supreme will governed everything, through a body of trained administrators such as up to that time existed nowhere else.
The next elector obtained the royal crown. Prince Eugene said that the emperor's ministers, who had advised the grant, deserved to be hanged. But in fact they were not less prescient than he, for they warned Leopold that Prussia would deprive his family of the empire. The King of Prussia became the head of the Protestant interest in Germany. That prerogative had been forfeited by the Elector of Saxony when he received the crown of Poland and became a Catholic. Rome alone protested against the Protestant king, and spoke only of a margrave of Brandenburg until after the death of Frederic II. All the Catholic Powers acknowledged the new title and disregarded the protest. For the first time there was a kingdom within the empire, a kingdom, moreover, which was Protestant. It was a step towards the break-up of that irrational body.
The second king succeeded in 1713 and died in 1740. He is the Peter the Great of Prussia. For him, the whole secret of government is the increase of power at home. His idea was that monarchy cannot be too absolute. It requires to be wisely administered; but it does not require to be limited. Concentration cannot be too intense. No enemy outside is so dangerous as public opinion within. He announced that he would establish his power on a rock—"un rocher de bronze." He meant that the power of the State must be independent of the changing motives of the hour, that it must be directed by a will superior alike to majority and minority, to interests and classes. He spent his reign in very deliberately contriving such a machine. The king, he said, must do his work himself, and not shrink from trouble. He was perpetually in harness. He was like a madman in his vehemence and his crudity of speech. But there was method in his fury, and calculating design and even practical wisdom. He gave an impetus as powerful as that of the Tsar Peter;
