Tales and Novels — Volume 01: Moral TalesEdgeworth, Maria
General
Tales and Novels — Volume 01: Moral Tales
Edgeworth, Maria
Fiction
"Gentlemen, I also appear in this court as counsel, disinterested
counsel for a friend. Yes, gentlemen, I am permitted to call Frederick
the Great _my friend_. He is not, as other great monarchs have been,
ambitious to raise himself above the sphere of humanity; he does not
desire to be addressed in the fulsome strains either of courtly or of
poetical adulation: he wishes not to be worshipped as a god, but to be
respected as a man{4}. It is his desire to have friends that shall
be faithful, or subjects that shall be obedient. Happy his obedient
subjects--they are secure of his protection: happy, thrice happy, his
faithful friends--they are honoured with his favour and his confidence.
It was in the power of the prisoner now before you to have been in
this enviable class. You all of you know that the Countess Laniska, his
mother, has for years been honoured by the friendship of her sovereign;
even the conduct of her son has not been able to shake his confidence in
her. A Pole by birth, Augustus Laniska was educated amongst the first of
the Prussian nobility, at the military academy at Potzdam, that
nursery of heroes. From such an education--from the son of such
a mother--honourable sentiments and honourable conduct were to
be expected. Most confidently were they expected by his king, who
distinguished the young count, as you all know, even in his boyish days.
The count is said to be of a temper naturally impetuous: the errors
into which such a temper too publicly betrayed him were pardoned by the
indulgence of his king. I am compelled to recall one recent instance of
the truth of these assertions, as it is immediately connected with the
present cause."
{Footnote 4: Æschylus.}
Here Mr. Warendorff related all that had passed at the porcelain
manufactory at Berlin, and the king's subsequent conduct towards
Count Laniska. On the magnanimity of his majesty, the eloquent counsel
expatiated for a considerable time; but the applauses with which this
part of his oration was received by a party in the gallery, who were
seated near the king, were so loud, as almost to drown the voice of the
orator, and effectually to distract the attention of those employed to
take down his words. When he could again be heard distinctly, he resumed
as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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