he had learned to look at the world with his own eyes, and to him, defending his country against the intrigues of weaker and the pressure of more powerful States, the world was a different place from what it was to those who passed their time in the shadow of the Court.  He remembered that it was not by strict obedience to general principles that Prussia had grown great.  Frederick the Second had not allowed himself to be stopped by these narrow searchings of heart; his successor had not scrupled to ally himself with revolutionary France.  This rigid insistence on a rule of right, this nice determining of questions of conscience, seemed better suited to the confessor’s chair than to the advisers of a great monarch.  And the principle to which he was asked to sacrifice the future of his country,—­was it after all a true principle?  Why should Prussia trouble herself about the internal constitution of other States, what did it concern her whether France was ruled by a Bourbon or an Orleans or a Bonaparte?  How could Prussia continue the policy of the Holy Alliance when the close union of the three Eastern monarchies no longer existed?  If France were to attack Germany, Prussia could not expect the support of Russia, she could not even be sure of that of Austria.  An understanding with France was required, not by ambition, but by the simplest grounds of self-preservation.

These and other considerations he advanced in a long and elaborate memorandum addressed to Manteuffel, which was supplemented by letters to the Minister and Gerlach.  For closeness of reasoning, for clearness of expression, for the wealth of knowledge and cogency of argument these are the most remarkable of his political writings.  In them he sums up the results of his apprenticeship to political life, he lays down the principles on which the policy of the State ought to be conducted, the principles on which in future years he was himself to act.

“What,” he asks, “are the reasons against an alliance with France?  The chief ground is the belief that the Emperor is the chief representative of the Revolution and identical with it, and that a compromise with the Revolution is as inadmissible in internal as in external policy.”  Both statements he triumphantly overthrows.  “Why should we look at Napoleon as the representative of the Revolution? there is scarcely a government in Europe which has not a revolutionary origin.”

“What is there now existing in the world of politics which has a complete legal basis?  Spain, Portugal, Brazil, all the American Republics, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, England, which State with full consciousness is based on the Revolution of 1688, are all unable to trace back their legal systems to a legitimate origin.  Even as to the German princes we cannot find any completely legitimate title for the ground which they have won partly from the Emperor and the Empire, partly from their fellow-princes, partly from the Estates.”

He goes farther:  the Revolution is not peculiar to France; it did not even originate there: