In England alone the absence of internal revolution and foreign pressure has preserved a class whom a life spent in toil leaves as bare and dependent as when it began, and to whom the only boon which their country can offer is the education which may lead them to quit it. [Reform of Prussian Army.] [Short service.] Besides the commission which had drafted the Edict of Emancipation, Stein found a military commission engaged on a plan for the reorganisation of the Prussian army. The existing system forced the peasant to serve in the ranks for twenty years, and drew the officers from the nobility, leaving the inhabitants of towns without either the duty or the right to enter the army at all. Since the battle of Jena, no one doubted that the principle of universal liability to military service must be introduced into Prussia; on the other hand, the very disasters of the State rendered it impossible to maintain an army on anything approaching to its former scale. With half its territory torn from it, and the remainder devastated by war, Prussia could barely afford to keep 40,000 soldiers in arms. Such were the conditions laid before the men who were charged with the construction of a new Prussian military system. Their conclusions, imperfect in themselves, and but partially carried out in the succeeding years, have nevertheless been the basis of the latest military organisation of Prussia and of Europe generally. The problem was solved by the adoption of a short period of service and the rapid drafting of the trained conscript into a reserve-force. Scharnhorst, President of the Military Commission, to whom more than to any one man Prussia owed its military revival, proposed to maintain an Active Army of 40,000 men; a Reserve, into which soldiers should pass after short service in the active army; a Landwehr, to be employed only for the internal defence of the country; and a Landsturm, or general arming of the population, for a species of guerilla warfare. Scharnhorst's project was warmly supported by Stein, who held a seat and a vote on the Military Commission; and the system of short service, with a Reserve, was immediately brought into action, though on a very limited scale. The remainder of the scheme had to wait for the assistance of events. The principle of universal military obligation was first proclaimed in the war of 1813, when also the Landwehr was first enrolled. [Stein's plans of political reform.] [Design for a Parliament, for Municipalities, and District boards.]