The government of Charles von Dalberg, the prince primate and grandduke of Frankfort, was one of the most despicable of those composing the Rhenish confederation. Equally insensible to the duties attached to his high name and station,[9] he flattered the foreign tyrant to an extent unsurpassed by any of the other base sycophants at that time abounding in the empire; with folded hands would he at all times invoke the blessing of the Most High on the head of the almighty ruler of the earth, and celebrate each of his victories with hymns of gratitude and joy, while his ministers misruled and tyrannized over the country,[10] whose freedom they loudly vaunted.[11]--In Würzburg, the French ambassador reigned with the despotism of an Eastern satrap.[12] Saxe-Coburg[13] and Anhalt-Gotha,[14] where the native tyrant was sheltered beneath the wing of Napoleon, were in the most lamentable state.--In Saxony, the government remained unaltered. Frederick Augustus, filled with gratitude for the lenity with which he had been treated after the war and for the grant of the royal dignity, remained steadily faithful to Napoleon, but introduced no internal innovations into the government. The adhesion of Saxe-Weimar to the Rhenish confederation was of deplorable consequence to Germany, the great poets assembled there by the deceased Duchess Amalia also scattering incense around Napoleon. The kingdom of Westphalia was doomed to taste to the dregs the bitter cup of humiliation. The new king, Jerome, who declared, "Je veux qu'on respecte la dignite de l'homme et du citoyen," bestowed, it is true, many and great benefits upon his subjects; the system of flogging, so degrading to the soldier, was abolished, the judicature was improved, the administration simplified, and the German in authority, notwithstanding his traditionary gruffness, became remarkable for urbanity toward the citizens and peasants. But Napoleon's despotic rule ever demanded fresh sacrifices of men and money and increased severity on the part of the police, in order to quell the spirit of revolt. Jerome, conscious of being merely his brother's representative, consoled himself for his want of independence in his gay court at Cassel.[15] He had received but a middling education, and had, at one period, held a situation in the marine at Baltimore in North America. While still extremely young, placed unexpectedly upon a throne, more as a splendid puppet than as an independent sovereign, he gave way to excesses, natural, and, under the circumstances, almost excusable. It would be ungenerous to repeat the sarcasms showered upon him on his expulsion. The execrations heaped, at a later period, upon his head, ought with far greater justice to have fallen upon those of the Germans themselves, and more particularly upon those of that portion of the aristocracy that vied with the French in enriching the chronique scandaleuse of Cassel, and upon those of the citizens who,