French as well as German is commonly spoken in Berlin, and I am glad to see that the prejudice against the French is wearing off. If the French and Prussians could understand one another, and knew their own interests, or if the French had a liberal national Government, I mean, one more identified with the interests of the people than the present one is, what advantage might not rise therefrom? They are natural allies, and united they might be able effectually to humble the overbearing insolence and political coxcombry of the Czar, shake to its centre the systematic despotism and light-fearing leader of Austria, and keep in check the commercial greediness, monopolizing spirit and Tory arrogance of England. The German political writers duly appreciate the illiberal policy of England towards the continental nations, by which she invariably helps to crush liberty on the Continent in the hopes of paralysing their energies and industry, in order to compel them to buy English manufactures, and in fine to make them dependent on England for every article of consumption. England, ever since the beginning of the reign of George III to the present day, has been always ready to lend a hand to crush liberty, to perpetuate abuses and to rivet the fetters of monarchial, feudal and ecclesiastical tyranny.
These are facts and cannot be denied. The English people have been taxed to the last farthing to support a war of privileges against Freedom; and Europe is in consequence prostrate at the feet of an unprincipled coalition, thro’ England’s arms and England’s gold; and then an English minister, and his vile hireling journals, tell you that the continental nations are not ripe for and do not deserve liberty. Even the Pope and Grand Turk, both so much dreaded by our pious ancestors, have been supported, caressed and subsidized, in order to help to put down all efforts made to obtain rational liberty, which the courtiers always affect to stigmatize with the name of “Jacobinism,” while a number of needy individual have enriched themselves by the public plunder and byaiding and abetting the system, all novi homines, men who, had there been more to gain on the other side than by espousing Toryism, would not have been backward; men who are Jacobins in the real sense of the word, however they cloak themselves under the specious names of Church and King men; upholders of Pitt and his system, for which they affect a veneration they are far from really feeling; men, in fact, whose political scruples of whatever nature they be, would soon melt away.
DRESDEN, 5th October.


