The treasury showed an annual surplus instead of a
deficit. Torture was abolished. The judiciary system was
improved. Good roads and good schools and good universities,
together with a scrupulously honest administration, made the
people feel that whatever services were demanded of them,
they (to speak the vernacular) got their money's worth.
After having been for several centuries the battle field of
the French and the Austrians and the Swedes and the Danes
and the Poles, Germany, encouraged by the example of Prussia,
began to regain self-confidence. And this was the work of
the little old man, with his hook-nose and his old uniforms covered
with snuff, who said very funny but very unpleasant things
about his neighbours, and who played the scandalous game of
eighteenth century diplomacy without any regard for the truth,
provided he could gain something by his lies. This in spite of
his book, ``Anti-Macchiavelli.'' In the year 1786 the end
came. His friends were all gone. Children he had never had.
He died alone, tended by a single servant and his faithful
dogs, whom he loved better than human beings because, as he
said, they were never ungrateful and remained true to their
friends.
THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM
HOW THE NEWLY FOUNDED NATIONAL OR
DYNASTIC STATES OF EUROPE TRIED TO
MAKE THEMSELVES RICH AND WHAT WAS
MEANT BY THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM
WE have seen how, during the sixteenth and the seventeenth
centuries, the states of our modern world began to take shape.
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