Finance is naturally a heavy part of Friedrich's Problem; the part
which looks especially impossible, from our point of vision!
In Friedrich's Country, the War Budget does not differ from the
Peace one. Neither is any borrowing possible; that sublime Art, of
rolling over on you know not whom the expenditure, needful or
needless, of your heavy-laden self, had not yet--though England is
busy at it--been invented among Nations. Once, or perhaps twice,
from the STANDE of some willing Province, Friedrich negotiated some
small Loan; which was punctually repaid when Peace came, and was
always gratefully remembered. But these are as nothing, in face of
such expenses; and the thought how he did contrive on the Finance
side, is and was not a little wonderful. An ingenious Predecessor,
whom I sometimes quote, has expressed himself in these words:--

"Such modicum of Subsidy [he is speaking of the English Subsidy in
1758], how useful will it prove in a Country bred everywhere to
Spartan thrift, accustomed to regard waste as sin, and which will
lay out no penny except to purpose! I guess the Prussian Exchequer
is, by this time, much on the ebb; idle precious metals tending
everywhere towards the melting-pot. At what precise date the
Friedrich-Wilhelm balustrades, and enormous silver furnitures, were
first gone into, Dryasdust has not informed me: but we know they
all went; as they well might. To me nothing is so wonderful as
Friedrich's Budget during this War. One day it will be carefully
investigated, elucidated and made conceivable and certain to
mankind: but that as yet is far from being the case. We walk about
in it with astonishment; almost, were it possible, with
incredulity. Expenditure on this side, work done on that:
human nature, especially British human nature, refuses to conceive
it. Never in this world, before or since, was the like.