He granted paid curates to
the Presbyterians as well as the public exercise of their worship, he
showed the Episcopalians a large tolerance and gave them the right to
worship in private; he maintained the two great Anglican universities
and allowed the Jews to erect a synagogue. - Frederick II. drafted
into his army every able-bodied peasant that he could feed; he kept
every man twenty years in the service, under a discipline worse than
slavery, with almost certain prospect of death; and in his last war,
he sacrificed about one sixth of his male subjects;[19] but they were
serfs, and his conscription did not touch the bourgeois class. He put
his hands in the pockets of the bourgeois and of every other man, and
took every crown they had; when driven to it, he adulterated coin and
stopped paying his functionaries; but, under the scrutiny of his eyes,
always open, the administration was honest, the police effective,
justice exact, toleration unlimited, and the freedom of the press
complete; the king allowed the publication of the most cutting
pamphlets against himself, and their public sale, even at Berlin. - A
little earlier, in the great empire of the east, Peter the Great,[20]
with whip in hand, lashed his Muscovite bears and made them drill and
dance in European fashion; but were bears accustomed from father to
son to the whip and chain; moreover, he stood as the orthodox head of
their faith, and left their mir (the village commune) untouched.
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