Such were the main principles of his political economy. Incessantly did he endeavour to increase the number of morgens of arable land, and to procure new places for settlers. Swamps were drained, lakes drawn off, and dykes thrown up; canals were dug, and advances made for the establishment of new manufactories; cities and villages rebuilt more solid and convenient than before, under the active encouragement of government; the provincial credit system, the fire-insurance society, and the royal bank were established; popular schools everywhere founded, well-informed people encouraged to come, and the education and discipline of the ruling official class promoted by examinations and strict control. It is the business of historians to enumerate and extol all this, and also to recount some vain attempts of the King which failed from his endeavour to guide everything himself. The King looked after all his dominions, and not least after that child of sorrow, the newly won Silesia. When he conquered this large province it had little more than a million of inhabitants.[20] Greatly was the contrast felt between the easy-going Austrian government and the strict, restless, stirring rule of Prussia. At Vienna the catalogue of forbidden books was greater than at Rome; now ceaseless bales of books found their way into the province from Germany: all were free to buy and read, even the attacks upon their own ruler. In Austria it was the privilege of the nobility to wear foreign cloth; in Prussia, when the father of Frederic the Great had forbidden the import of foreign cloth, he first dressed himself and his princesses in home-made manufacture. At Vienna no office was considered distinguished for which anything more was required than representation: all the work was the affair of the subalterns; the lord of the bedchamber was more considered than a deserving General or minister. In Prussia even the highest in rank was little esteemed if he was not useful to the State; and the King himself was the most precise official, for he looked after every thousand thalers that were saved or disbursed. He who in Austria left the Roman Catholic faith was punished with confiscation and banishment; in Prussia every one could change his religion as he chose, that was his affair. In the Imperial dominions the government felt it burdensome to look after anything; the Prussian officials thrust their noses into everything. In spite of the three Silesian wars, the country was far more flourishing than in the Imperial time; a century had not been sufficient to efface the traces of the Thirty Years' War; the people remembered well how in the cities heaps of ruins had remained from the Swedish time, and everywhere near the newly-built houses, the dismal wastes caused by fire. Many little cities had still blockhouses in the old Sclavonian style, with straw and shingle roofs, which had long been scantily patched. Under the Prussians, not only the traces of the old