judges can do nothing. Not the police only,
but all persons who receive government pay,
the judges themselves—nay, the very clergy—
are put to a degrading use as spies upon the
people.

Against a man suspected of small
contentment with the government, no treachery
is too base to be employed by the police
in Prussia. His friendship and familiar
intercourse will be courted assiduously, for
purposes of betrayal. Agents of the police
will even be instructed to pay their addresses
to his cook or housekeeper, for the sake of
arriving at the secrets of his home. His
letters will be opened secretly; if by chance
any difficulty should arise in the reclosing
of any one of them, it will be sent on to him
with the effrontery which only irresponsible
authorities can venture to display, sealed
with a great official seal.

The Prussian clergy, too, do not receive
the king's money without being required to
do their duty on behalf of absolutism; wherefore
they are distrusted by large masses of
the people, and are known disrespectfully as
Black Police. They are bound to keep lists
of all persons in their respective parishes, and
to observe how often each attends the state
church or sacrament. Defaulters will be
warned once and again; after which, if they
be government functionaries, they will be
dismissed; if they be private persons, they
will suffer social blight from the displeasure
of the police. Well-affected subjects will be
counselled to avoid them, and they will be—
in a quiet, mean way, and without open
accusation—forced to choose for themselves
between the alternatives of banishment or ruin.

The political use of the police was brought
to its most complete state, and to its point
of utmost oppression, by the chief president
of police, the Herr von Hinckeldey, who was
shot, not very long ago, in a duel. He was
a very clever man, well versed in many
sciences, and was personally amiable; but, in
the carrying out of his political theory, he was
thorough-going and remorseless. His object
was to recover for the king every shred of
that robe of irresponsible supremacy that
had been torn in the struggle of the wild
year 'forty-eight. He bribed whatever
writers would receive a bribe; issued
commands to journalists; and threatened what
was virtually ruin to those who were
independent. He established, even in London,
an office for procuring letters that miserable
scribblers could be got to forward—in the
name of English opinion, favourable to the
cause he had at heart—to the German
newspapers. This office was an establishment
distinct from the spy office established here to
watch the emigration; being so purely one of
Hinckeldey's own private speculations, that
it tumbled to the ground when he was shot.
But the organisation of the police force in
Prussia, as a pillar of the royal state
perfected by him, remains. This, of which we
are now speaking, is his monument;—but, as
to the durability of it, it is not well to
prophesy with any confidence.

At present it is strong, and is supported
also by stout buttresses. The Prussian
police system connects itself more or less
with the police of all North Germany.
Strong governments are persuaded; weak
ones intimidated—as in the case of
Hamburgh, which may be a free city in name, but
is the vassal of Prussia whenever questions
arise of throwing back into the jaws of the
Prussian terriers, any small head of the game
they have been trained to worry.

Now let me illustrate what I have been
saying, by help of a few facts that happen
either to lie within my own private experience,
or to have been witnessed by trustworthy
friends. I do not tell real names;
but I do tell what I know to be the literal
and simple truth. Let me begin with a
passport case.

M. Henry, an old gentleman, who lived for
more than twenty-five years in Prussia, fell
ill, and his wife wrote to their son—who was
established in the United States of America,
—to come over and see his old father once
more, before his end. The dutiful son threw
all his business aside, went on board the first
steamer bound to Hamburgh; where he
arrived in due time. By the first train he
set off for Berlin. Here, he was stopped
by the police; who asked for his passport.
Young Mr. Henry, little versed in police
matters, had not even thought of a passport.
When he left home he had none. A republican
without a passport, what a horror!
Of course he was arrested on the spot as a
vagabond, put into prison, and compelled to
spin wool. In this agreeable situation he
remained for ten days; after which time he
became free, by the interposition of the
American consul in Hamburgh; to whom he
wrote immediately after his arrest. The
Prussian police did not even apologise to
him. They simply told him, "All right;
you have told us the truth, and may go." The
misused gentleman was almost killed by this
vexation, and took the product of his labours
in the spinning-house (a large clew of worsted)
home with him, to show it to his children
and to keep it in his family as a token of
Prussian liberty.

Another gentleman I know well, remained
in prison a whole year for having irreverently
observed, upon one occasion, that the king
was tipsy.

I was intimately acquainted with a
literary man who conducted a weekly
newspaper: the cheapness of which (three shillings
a-year) was thought more dangerous even
than its contents. It was written under
censure; that is to say, the proof-sheets were sent
to the censor, who struck out everything which
he considered disloyal. Having thus received
the sanction of the government, the paper
was published, and common sense would