Reuter, of Mecklenburg, how he would brand their system and their names.
Most of these youths who had been plunged into misery by such rascally
abuse of office and the shameful way in which a king naturally anything
but malignant, was misled and deceived, were either dead and gone, or had
been released from prison as mature men. What hatred must have filled
their souls for that form of government which had dared thus to punish
their pure enthusiasm for a sacred cause--the unity and well-earned
freedom of their native land! Ah, there were dangerous forces to subdue
among those grey-haired martyrs, for it was their fiery spirit and high
hearts which had brought them to ruin.

Those who had been disappointed in the results of the war for liberty,
and those who had suffered in the demagogue period, had ventured to hope
once more when the much-extolled crown-prince, Frederick William IV,
mounted the throne. What disappointment was in store for them; what new
suffering was laid upon them when, instead of the rosy dawn of freedom
which they fancied they had seen, a deeper darkness and a more reckless
oppression set in! What they had taken for larks announcing the breaking
of a brighter day turned out to be bats and similar vermin of the night.
In the state the exercise of a boundless arbitrary power; in the Church,
dark intolerance; and, in its train, slavish submission, favour-seeking,
rolling up of the eyes, and hypocrisy as means to unworthy ends, and
especially to that of speedy promotion--the deepest corruption of all--
that of the soul.

What naturally followed caused the loyalists the keenest pain, for the
injury done to the strong monarchical feeling of the Prussian people in
the person and the conduct of Frederick William IV was not to be
estimated. Only the simple heroic greatness and the paternal dignity
of an Emperor William could have repaired it.