In foreign policy Frederick was successful, and in economic practice his failure was qualified. But his lack of true insight into the functions of government was fraught with terrible consequences for Prussia. Judged by the standard of the age, it is true, Frederick’s administration was a pattern to the world. The State, as the fashion then was, interfered everywhere and with irresistible strength. Its machinery, though cumbrous, ran smooth and true, and the actual expense was small. “If Prussia perishes,” wrote Mirabeau, “the art of government will return to its infancy.” From the same pen, however, came a verdict, damning, indeed, yet unshaken by appeal to reason or to the event. “If ever a foolish prince ascends this throne we shall see the formidable giant suddenly collapse, and Prussia will fall like Sweden.” Frederick secured his own triumph by making it impossible to succeed him. Against this department of his statecraft a double indictment must be brought. He was not profound enough to see that the machine which he laboured to render indissoluble was such that only an unbroken series of monarchs as gifted as he could guide it. Nor was he wise enough, though he knew that the next steersman of the State would be a fool, to alter the machine so as to give it some power of self-direction. The folly of tacitly assuming that successors like himself would be forthcoming was shared by Frederick with many of the great autocrats of history. Men abhor the thought of a vacuum created by their own disappearance. The self-abnegation of a Washington is as much rarer as it is wiser than the augmented industry of an aged Louis XIV. Yet the sketch that has been given in this book of the all-embracing activity of the King, who nominated even the sergeants and corporals in an army of 200,000 men, and allowed no branch of his civil hierarchy the least real independence, suffices to show how improbable it was that an ordinary prince could put himself in Frederick’s place, and how fatal it would be to the Government if he did not.