Frederick's Law Reform.

171

minimum of time, the land was valued, and an equal tax put upon it; every Circle received its Landrath, Law-court, Post-office, and Sanitary Police. New parishes, each with its church and parson, were called into existence as by miracle; a company of 187 schoolmasters were sent into the country; multitudes of German mechanics, too, from brick-makers up to machine-builders. Everywhere there began a digging, a hammering, a building; cities were peopled anew; street after street rose out of the heaps of ruins; new villages of colonists were laid out, new modes of agriculture ordered. In the first year after taking possession, the great canal was dug, which, in a length of fifteen miles, connects, by the Netze river, the Weichsel with the Oder and the Elbe: within one year after giving the order, the King saw loaded vessels from the Oder, 120 feet in length of keel, enter the Weichsel. The vast breadths of land, gained from the state of swamp by drainage into this canal, were immediately peopled by German colonists.

We saw that, immediately on his accession, Frederick proclaimed toleration to all religions, and freedom of the Press. He at once put a stop also to the use of torture in the legal system of Prussia. But his enthusiasm for Law Reform was by no means content with these memorable improvements. The sword once in the sheath, after the second Silesian war, he summoned to his help, as his manner was, the most effective men whom he could find to undertake the reform of the law. It is notable of Frederick-and one of the proofs of his consummate practical talent-that he never undertook work for which he was unfitted, seldom forced his own views upon men whose mastery in their department was clear. As his Chief Law-Minister he named Samuel Von Cocceji, whom Mr. Carlyle describes as "one of the most learned of lawyers, and a very Hercules in cleansing law stables;" and, a fortnight after the peace was signed, an express order was written by Frederick directing Cocceji to begin. The Law-Minister had a Commission of Six appointed to assist him," riddled together" out of Prussia, the best men producible for the work. "To sweep out pettifogging attorneys, cancel improper advocates, to regulate fees; to war, in a calm but deadly manner, against pedantries,

circumlocutions, and the multiplied forms of stupidity, cupidity, and human owlery in this department;" such, in Mr. Carlyle's picturesque language, was their duty. They took up the provinces successively, beginning with Pomerania and ending with Prussia proper.

Their method was bold, and involved one change which, to our friends of Westminster Hall and Lincoln's Inn, may seem appalling and incredible. They actually swept away the attorney species. The advocate was himself to take charge of the suit, no middleman permitted. In the next place they sifted out and dismissed incompetent advocates, retaining in each Court a fixed number of qualified men. Inefficient judges were shelved, and those who remained were better paid. The standard of fees was accurately fixed-another of those things which, with freedom granted to solicitors and clients to make personal bargains, and with taxation of costs left very much a sham from not being enforced in all cases, has been found a practical impossibility in England. They made it imperative—this seems to have been Frederick's own suggestion-that every suit, even if twice carried by appeal to higher Courts, should terminate within a year of its inception. Cocceji crowned his general Law Reform with the project of a code, which, in due time, was realised. "Friedrich's fame," says Mr. Carlyle, "as as a beneficent Justinian, rose high in all countries."

CHAPTER XX.

FREDERICK THE POOR MAN'S LAWYERLINZENBARTH.

N every case occurring within the Prussian dominions.

IN

there was an appeal to the King direct. Frederick proclaimed himself the advocate of the poor man and of the common soldier. The opinion of educated Prussia, both during Frederick's life and in our own time, has been that, in one instance, at least, his desire to do justice to a poor man, and his suspicion of legal pedantry, led him to a wrong decision. Miller Arnold, who claimed compensation for the water which, as he alleged, had been drawn from his mill-stream by a landed proprietor, and whose cause was so vehemently espoused by Frederick that he actually imprisoned his Berlin judges for refusing to decide in Arnold's favour, is commonly believed to have befooled His Majesty. Mr. Carlyle, indeed, thinks differently, but the evidence on the other side appears to be overwhelming. In the wellknown case of the Sans Souci miller, a Prussian Naboth who would on no account give up to the King his bit of ground and mill, Frederick showed himself a wiser as well as a more magnanimous ruler than Ahab, and left the mill to be a picturesque ornament in his garden. Generally speaking, the right of appeal to Frederick worked well, checking the blunders of mechanical routine, and tending greatly to endear him to his subjects. One instance in

which the crowned advocate of the poor man served his client well, deserves to be more fully detailed.

Linzenbarth was a "rugged poverty-stricken old licentiate of theology," tall, awkward, rawboned, a kind of German Dominie Sampson, who had failed in the pulpit, and managed to keep body and soul together by school-mastering among the hill-villages of Thuringia. When he was about sixty years of age, Cannabich, pastor of the "thrice-obscure village of Hemmleben," died, and the landed proprietor, who had the living in his gift, sent a messenger announcing to Linzenbarth that he might have the place. The offer which, at the first moment, filled the poor old hungry soul with gladness, was, at the second, on his learning that the condition annexed was marriage to a cast-off dependent of the great house, peremptorily rejected. The mean wretch

who took the living and the wife, was worried to death by the latter in three years' time; but Linzenbarth found that his poor prospects in his native district were ruined, and set out for Berlin, where he arrived on the 20th of June, 1750.

Hard as his life had been, he had contrived, by more than Spartan frugality, to save some £60, which he carried with him in Nürnberg silver money of very bad quality. By a decree made some six years before, this Nürnberg money had been excluded from Prussia, and the Custom-house officials no sooner caught sight of Linzenbarth's "batzen," than they seized and sealed up the whole. He exclaimed and gesticulated, vowed that he was ignorant of the decree, asked how he was to live in a strange place upon nothing. With calm professional cruelty the officials told him it was his duty to have informed himself, theirs to put the law in force. Not a stiver of his hoard could circulate in Prussia. One advocate, who took up his case on the chance of being paid in the event of success, was sharply rebuked by the magistrate for countenancing a breach of the King's laws, and told that, if he went on so, he would land in the com

mon gaol. At last some simple persons advised Linzenbarth to appeal direct to the King. "Write out your case," said Linzenbarth's advisers, "with extreme brevity; nothing but the essential points, and those clear." Linzenbarth did so, and one August morning at the opening of the gates of Berlin, went off "without one farthing in my pocket, in God's name, to Potsdam." We shall now take his own narrative, with Carlyle's intercalated remarks, abridging but not altering.

LINZENBARTH AND FREDErick.

At Potsdam I was lucky enough to see the King; my first sight of him. He was in the palace esplanade there, drilling his troops. When the drill was over, His Majesty went into the garden, and the soldiers dispersed; only four officers remained lounging upon the esplanade, and walked up and down. For fright I knew not what to do; I pulled the papers out of my pocket. These were my memorial, two certificates of character, and a Thüringen pass. The officers noticed this; came straight to me and said, "What letters has he there, then?" I thankfully and gladly imparted the whole; and when the officers had read them, they said, "We will give you a good advice. The King is extra-gracious to-day, and is gone alone into the garden. Follow him straight. Thou wilt have luck." This I would not do; my awe was too great. They thereupon laid hands on me (the mischievous dogs, not ill-humoured, either): one took me by the right arm, another by the left, "Off, off; to the garden!" Having got me thither, they looked out for the King. He was among the gardeners, examining some rare plant; stooping over it, and had his back to us. Here I had to halt; and the officers began, in underhand tone (the dogs!), to put me through my drill: "Hat under left arm!-Right foot foremost!-Breast well forward!-Head up!Papers from pouch! Papers aloft in right hand!-Steady! steady!" And went their ways, looking always round, to see if I kept my posture. I perceived well enough they were pleased to make game of me; but I stood, all the same, like a wall, being full of fear. The officers were hardly out of the garden, when the King turned round, and saw this extraordinary machine-telegraph figure, or whatever we may call it, with papers pointing to the sky. He gave such a look at me, like a flash of sunbeams glancing through you; and sent one of the gardeners to bring my papers. Which having got, he struck into another walk with them, and was out of sight. In a few minutes he appeared again at the place where the rare plant was, with my papers open in his left hand; and gave me a wave with them to come nearer. I plucked up a heart, and went straight towards him. Oh, how thrice and four-times graciously this great monarch deigned to speak to me!