this claim.

Pleyel strenuously recommended this measure. The advantages
he thought attending it were numerous, and it would argue the
utmost folly to neglect them. Contrary to his expectation he
found my brother averse to the scheme. Slight efforts, he, at
first, thought would subdue his reluctance; but he found this
aversion by no means slight. The interest that he took in the
happiness of his friend and his sister, and his own partiality
to the Saxon soil, from which he had likewise sprung, and where
he had spent several years of his youth, made him redouble his
exertions to win Wieland's consent. For this end he employed
every argument that his invention could suggest. He painted, in
attractive colours, the state of manners and government in that
country, the security of civil rights, and the freedom of
religious sentiments. He dwelt on the privileges of wealth and
rank, and drew from the servile condition of one class, an
argument in favor of his scheme, since the revenue and power
annexed to a German principality afford so large a field for
benevolence. The evil flowing from this power, in malignant
hands, was proportioned to the good that would arise from the
virtuous use of it. Hence, Wieland, in forbearing to claim his
own, withheld all the positive felicity that would accrue to his
vassals from his success, and hazarded all the misery that would
redound from a less enlightened proprietor.

It was easy for my brother to repel these arguments, and to
shew that no spot on the globe enjoyed equal security and
liberty to that which he at present inhabited. That if the
Saxons had nothing to fear from mis-government, the external