“The ill custom prevails among us,” rejoined the King, “that both in town and country the servant-girls make the best rags into tinder to light the fire. We must try to break people of it, and therefore the rag-collectors must be provided with touch-wood, which is just as good as tinder for lighting a fire, to give to the girls in exchange for rags.” A king who took upon his own shoulders so vast a share as did Frederick in regulating the agriculture and industry of his subjects could not avoid concerning himself also with their foreign trade. The general principles of commercial policy which he followed were simple. He was determined to see that Prussian subjects sold as much as possible to foreigners and bought as little as possible from them in return. The latter part of his task could be, and was, accomplished by prohibiting the importation of certain commodities, such as salt, porcelain, and steel, and by appointing a host of customs-officers to make the prohibition effective. But to sell to foreigners goods which were produced in Prussia chiefly because the King willed that his subjects should forego the convenience of buying them from foreigners was a feat which taxed Frederick’s statecraft to the utmost. In general it may be said that Prussian commerce did not thrive. Thanks to the strenuous efforts of King and ministers, who imported foreign artisans, endowed them with implements and homes, compelled natives to learn crafts, bought sheep in Spain, forbade the export of raw material or the import of finished goods, forced the monasteries to support unprofitable industries, vetoed profitable industries that threatened in any way to prejudice their favourites, in short, exhausted the arts of government to foster production,—thanks to all this the Silesian export of cloth and linen rose to between five and six million thalers a year. This result was not achieved by domestic interference only. The King did not shrink from tariff wars with Austria and Saxony, nor from much toil to procure commercial treaties. It often appeared, however, that there were spheres in which statecraft, even when practised by a Frederick, could accomplish little. “When at that time a new republic arose across the ocean,” writes Professor Koser, “King Frederick made haste to enter into commercial relations with it, in order to exchange cloth, woollen stuffs, and linen, iron goods and porcelain, for rice, indigo, and Virginian tobacco. The ‘most favoured nation’ treaty of 10 September, 1785, between Prussia and the United States of America fulfilled, it is true, few of the expectations which both parties formed of it, for the English, who from a seafaring and capitalist point of view were more competent, long continued to be the commercial intermediaries between those renegade colonies and the Old World.”