Frederick the Great, in his Memoirs, has said: ‘Your great men, such as Fontenelle, Voltaire, Hobbes, Collins, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, have struck a mortal blow at religion. Men began to look into that which they had blindly adored; reason overthrew superstition; disgust for all the fables they had believed succeeded. Deism acquired many followers. As Epicureanism became fatal to the idolatrous worship of the heathen, so did Deism in our days to the Judaical visions adopted by our forefathers. The freedom of opinion prevalent in England contributed greatly to the progress of philosophy.’ It may be seen by the above passage that Frederick the Great, at the time he wrote those lines, that is to say, in the middle of the eighteenth century, still at that time looked upon England as the seat of irreligious doctrines. But a still more striking fact may be gathered from it, namely, that one of the sovereigns, the most experienced in the knowledge of man, and of affairs in general, does not appear to have the slightest idea of the political utility of religion. The errors of judgment in the mind of his instructors had evidently disordered the natural qualities of his own. Note (LXVI.)--Page 150, line 1. The spirit of progress which showed itself in France at the end of the eighteenth century appeared at the same time throughout all Germany, and was everywhere accompanied by the same desire to change the institutions of the time. A German historian gives the following picture of what was then going on in his own country:-- ‘In the second half of the eighteenth century the new spirit of the age gradually introduced itself even into the ecclesiastical territories. Reforms were begun in them; industry and tolerance made their way in them on every side; and that enlightened absolutism, which had already taken possession of the large states, penetrated even there. It must be said at the same time, that at no period of the eighteenth century had these ecclesiastical territories possessed such remarkable and estimable Princes as during the last ten years preceding the French Revolution.’ The resemblance of this picture to that which France then offered is remarkable. In France, the movement in favour of amelioration and progress began at the same epoch; and the men the most able to govern appeared on the stage just at the time when the Revolution was about to swallow up everything. It must be observed also how much all that portion of Germany was visibly hurried on by the movement of civilisation and political progress in France. Note (LXVII.)--Page 151, line 1. THE LAWS OF ENGLAND PROVE THAT IT IS POSSIBLE FOR INSTITUTIONS TO BE FULL OF DEFECTS AND YET NOT PREVENT THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PRINCIPAL END AND AIM FOR WHICH THEY WERE ESTABLISHED.