Thus the military system of Germany presents to our view this remarkable phenomenon, that at the same time in which increased intellectual development produced in the middle classes greater pretensions, together with higher culture and morals, the despotism of the rulers gradually effected another great political advance in the life of the people--the beginning of our common feeling of the duty of self-defence. And it is equally remarkable that this innovation did not begin in the form of a great and wise measure, but in conjunction with circumstances which would appear to be more especially adverse to it. The greatest severity and unscrupulousness of a despotic state showed itself precisely in that by which it prepared, though it did not carry out, the greatest step in political progress. Too brutal and unscrupulous was the conduct of the officers who had to raise the levies, and too violent was the opposition and aversion of the people. The young men left the country in masses; no threatening of the gallows, of cutting off ears, or of confiscation of their property, could stop the fugitives. More than once the fanatical soldier-zealot Frederic William I. of Prussia was counteracted by the necessity of sparing his kingdom, which threatened to be depopulated. Never could more than half the number required be filled up by this conscription; the other half of the deficiency had to be raised by enlistment. The enlisting, also, in the first half of the eighteenth century, was rougher work than it had been. The Sovereigns themselves were more dangerous recruiting officers than the captains of the old Landsknechte. And although the evils of this system were notorious, no one knew how to remedy it. The rulers, it is true, were not so much disquieted by the immorality attending it, as they were by the insecurity, costliness, and unceasing disputes which it involved, as well as by the reclamations of foreign governments. The recruiting officers were themselves often bad and untrustworthy men, whose proceedings and disbursements could with difficulty be controlled. Not a few lived for years a life of dissipation, with their accomplices, in foreign countries at the cost of their monarchs; charged exorbitant bounties, only succeeded in ensnaring a few, and could scarcely get these into the country. It soon followed that not half of those so enlisted ever became available to the army; for the greater part were the worst rabble, into whom military qualities could not always be flogged, whose diseased bodies and vicious habits filled the hospitals and prisons, and who ran away on the first opportunity.