mill in regard to which his father had the celebrated lawsuit with Friedrich the Great. The present King, however, had paid to the needy man a large sum of money, so that the celebrated windmill might remain in its old condition as a monument of Prussian love of justice. That is all very fine and praiseworthy; but where is the promised constitution, to which the Prussian people have the most decided right according to every principle of divine and human justice? So long as the King of Prussia does not fulfil this most sacred obligatio, so long as he withholds from the people their well-earned free constitution, I cannot call him just, and the windmill of Potsdam does not remind me of Prussian love of justice, but of Prussian wind.[1]
I know well enough that literary hirelings maintain that the King of Prussia promised this constitution of his own accord and free will, which promise is quite independent of all circumstances of the time. Fools without soul or sense that they are, not to know that men when we keep from
- ↑ This word requires no explanation in English, but it is thus made clear in a note in the French version:—"Le mot wind en allemand ne signifie pas seulement vent, mais aussi au figuré, charlatanisme, vanterie et mensonge." But in French dictionaries one of its synonyms is emptiness, and of windy, "vain, futile." The French version here adds the sentence:—"Je parle de sa Majesté Frédéric Guillaume, troisième du nom, roi de Prusse."—Translator.
