Enough, perhaps, has been said to suggest that where classes were so sharply divided there was little likelihood of any national resistance to the Crown and that the Prussian military system gave Frederick a peculiar authority over two great sections of his people. A further source of power consisted in his enormous wealth. In every province the Crown possessed vast domains amounting in all to nearly one-third of the soil of Prussia. The result was that Frederick was lord of innumerable peasants and by far the greatest capitalist in his dominions. To him the nobles looked for help in time of dearth, while the townsmen expected him to bear the initial loss of new industrial enterprises. His domestic policy was directed towards the maintenance of this position. For him the notion of taxes fructifying in the pockets of the people had no charm. His ideal was that of subjects paying the greatest possible amount of taxes to be administered by the head of the State. Under his father’s rule the limit of profitable taxation had already been reached, but Frederick was able to make the collectors stricter than before. Though no spot in the Mark or Pomerania or Magdeburg was more than twenty miles from a border, the frontiers of his straggling dominions were watched with a vigilance which became proverbial. An Italian priest, whom he begged to smuggle him through the gate of heaven under his cassock, professed that he would be charmed to do so, provided that the search for contraband were not so keen as in Prussia. Liberty of commerce and remission of taxes were not among the ideals of a King who claimed to direct all the economic activities of his people. The Prussian clergy had less power than the moneyed interest, and less desire than the landed interest, to oppose or influence the will of the King. His absolutism was favoured by the fact that in his dominions several jealous churches existed side by side, and that he alone could be the umpire in their disputes. His own point of view was perfectly clear. He valued pastors because they taught their people to obey their superiors and not to rob and murder, as, in the King’s opinion, they would do if unrestrained. If the pastors accomplished this duty with reasonable success they might, without fear of his displeasure use any ritual or proclaim any doctrine of which their congregations approved.