EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
dependent member, supporting whatever he saw to be worthy of his own position and to be right and generally useful, without allowing himself to be influenced by the right or the left side. Like every true friend of liberty, he was opposed alike to despotism and to anarchy. His entrance into the House of Nobles was contemporaneous with the reëstablishment 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 defeats, with decimated armies and bankrupt finances, attended by pestilence and famine, had brought upon it. Need we wonder, then, that Swedenborg was in favor 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
216
