lounger should patronise all that is evil in them, while ignoring all that
is good. He is not Catholic, he is not Orthodox, he is not Mahomedan. He
is merely an old gentleman who wishes to share the crime though he cannot
share the creed. He desires to be a persecutor by the pang without the
palm. So strongly do all the instincts of the Prussian drive against
liberty, that he would rather oppress other people's subjects than think
of anybody going without the benefits of oppression. He is a sort of
disinterested despot. He is as disinterested as the devil who is ready to
do anyone's dirty work.

This would seem obviously fantastic were it not supported by solid facts
which cannot be explained otherwise. Indeed it would be inconceivable
if we were thinking of a whole people, consisting of free and varied
individuals. But in Prussia the governing class is really a governing
class: and a very few people are needed to think along these lines to make
all the other people act along them. And the paradox of Prussia is this:
that while its princes and nobles have no other aim on this earth but to
destroy democracy wherever it shows itself, they have contrived to get
themselves trusted, not as wardens of the past but as forerunners of the
future. Even they cannot believe that their theory is popular, but they
do believe that it is progressive. Here again we find the spiritual chasm
between the two monarchies in question. The Russian institutions are, in
many cases, really left in the rear of the Russian people, and many of the
Russian people know it. But the Prussian institutions are supposed to be
in advance of the Prussian people, and most of the Prussian people believe
it. It is thus much easier for the war-lords to go everywhere and impose
a hopeless slavery upon everyone, for they have already imposed a sort of
hopeful slavery on their own simple race.

And when men shall speak to us of the hoary iniquities of Russia and of