It was no better along the Rhine,--the great ecclesiastical street of the Empire,--there lay, down the stream, the residences of three ecclesiastical Electors in succession. In the Electorate of Mainz, which, from olden times, had frequently maintained a great independence within the church, two intellectual rulers had undoubtedly given an enlightened aspect to a part of their clergy, and to the new portions of their city; but in the old city and trades, little of the new time was to be perceived, and the prebendaries who read Voltaire and Rousseau were by no means an unqualified gain, at least for the morality of the citizen. But the great Cologne was in the worst repute; the dung-heaps lay all day in the streets, which were not lighted, the pavement was miserable, and on dark evenings the necks and limbs of passengers were in great danger, the roads also were insecure, filled with idling ragamuffins. The beggars formed a great guild, counting 5000 heads; till noon they sat and lay at the church doors in rows, many on chairs, the possession of one of which was considered as a secure rent, and assigned as dowry to the beggar's children; when they left their places, they went to the houses to demand food for dinner; they were a coarse, wicked set.[32] On the whole, it is known that the ecclesiastical rulers treated the citizens and peasants with comparative mildness, and the military compulsion was less burdensome, but they did little for the industry or cultivation of the people. After them, in this respect, Bavaria was in worst repute, and no other people since that has made such great progress; but about 1790 it was said to be most behindhand in wealth and morals; the cities, with the exception of Munich, looked decayed, and were poorly populated: idleness and beggary spread everywhere; except brewers, bakers, and innkeepers, there were no wealthy people. Even in Munich, countless beggars loitered about, mixed with numbers of modish, dandified officials; there was no national industry, only some manufactures of articles of luxury favoured by the government. Not long ago it was maintained by a Bavarian monthly journal, that manufacturing activity and the like were not very practicable for Bavarians, because the great river of the country flowed to Austria, and a competition with the Imperial hereditary States was not possible. The most flourishing countries in Germany, next to the small territories on the North Sea, were then Electoral Saxony and the country of the Lower Rhine, up to the Westphalian county of Mark; and this is little altered. To those who dwelt in the Empire the inhabitants of the North were a remote people, but they were in the habit of considering Prussia and Austria also as foreign powers.