You hear that the handsome boy cares only for music and horseback exercise:  he plays much on the violin, and rides away into the forest attended by only one groom, and is gone for days together.  He has composed an opera, which has not yet been put on the stage.  People, when they speak of him, tap their foreheads with one finger.  But I don’t believe it.  The same liberality that induced him, years ago, to restore “William Tell” to the stage has characterized the government under him ever since.

Formerly no one could engage in any trade or business in Bavaria without previous examination before, and permission from, a magistrate.  If a boy wished to be a baker, for instance, he had first to serve four years of apprenticeship.  If then he wished to set up business for himself, he must get permission, after passing an examination.  This permission could rarely be obtained; for the magistrate usually decided that there were already as many bakers as the town needed.  His only other resource was to buy out an existing business, and this usually costs a good deal.  When he petitioned for the privilege of starting a bakery, all the bakers protested.  And he could not even buy out a stand, and carry it on, without strict examination as to qualifications.  This was the case in every trade.  And to make matters worse, a master workman could not employ a journeyman out of his shop; so that, if a journeyman could not get a regular situation, he had no work.  Then there were endless restrictions upon the manufacture and sale of articles:  one person could make only one article, or one portion of an article; one might manufacture shoes for women, but not for men; he might make an article in the shop and sell it, but could not sell it if any one else made it outside, or vice versa.

Nearly all this mass of useless restriction on trades and business, which palsied all effort in Bavaria, is removed.  Persons are free to enter into any business they like.  The system of apprenticeship continues, but so modified as not to be oppressive; and all trades are left to regulate themselves by natural competition.  Already Munich has felt the benefit of the removal of these restrictions, which for nearly a year has been anticipated, in a growth of population and increased business.

But the social change is still more important.  The restrictions upon marriage were a serious injury to the state.  If Hans wished to marry, and felt himself adequate to the burdens and responsibilities of the double state, and the honest fraulein was quite willing to undertake its trials and risks with him, it was not at all enough that in the moonlighted beergarden, while the band played, and they peeled the stinging radish, and ate the Switzer cheese, and drank from one mug, she allowed his arm to steal around her stout waist.  All this love and fitness went for nothing in the eyes of the magistrate, who referred the application for permission to marry to his associate advisers,