"The new spirit which had been called to life on the other side of the Atlantic, and the universal fermentation it caused, happened at a period in which the most excessive laxity reigned predominant on the old continent. The political existence of the people was for the most part extinguished; their active industry had been directed abroad, and the governments finding no opposition or dangerous collisions internally, followed with the stream. Commerce, exportations, colonial systems, every means of acquiring money, were cherished and protected,--riches presenting the only possibility of investing the low with consideration and influence, and the high with power and inordinate dominion. The maxims by which the nations were governed, lay less in the ground pillars of an existing constitution, than in the changeable systems of the cabinets, and the character of their rulers; there remained, for the most part, nothing for the great body of the people, but to be spectators. "Germany, the grand heart of Europe, presented now nothing more than the shadow of a political body united in one common confederacy; the imperial governments, as also the administration of the federal laws, were without energy, and united efforts to repel invasions from abroad, had not been witnessed since the fear of Turkish power had ceased to operate. The larger states had outgrown their obedience, and often ranged themselves in opposition to the head, which was scarcely able to protect either itself or the weaker states against injuries. "The internal affairs of the individual vassal states, were exclusively conducted according to the will of their regents; the energy and importance of the representative popular states, were become dormant, and the standing armies which had been introduced by degrees even into the smallest principalities, since the peace of Westphalia, being perfectly foreign to the hearts and dispositions of the people, threw an astonishing weight into the scale of unlimited sovereignty. Being mercenary soldiers recruited from every nation, modelled upon a system of subordination, and raised by Frederick of Prussia to the highest pitch of perfection, they had been accomplices in diffusing this system of despotism over all the relations of the state, _and in leaving the people who were freed from military services, nothing but the acquisition of gain_.