of the court preventing him from employing able men from among the people, even had there been any such qualified for his purpose, he had judiciously resolved to employ foreign talent in the difficult work of reforming his dominions. The capacity, therefore, in which Sir Benjamin Thompson took up his residence in Munich was that of a man who, unconnected by ties of blood or interest with the people of Bavaria, and furnished only with general ideas applicable to all times and places, was to make it his business, under the auspices of the elector, to take a general survey of the condition of Bavaria, with a view to rectify as much as possible of what was wrong in it. A more noble or responsible situation can scarcely be conceived; and the dignity and responsibility will appear all the greater, when we reflect that the government of Bavaria, being, in its nature despotic, the powers of a man in Thompson's position—that, namely, of virtual though not ostensible prime minister—were almost unlimited, seeing that there were no constitutional forms, and nothing but the absolute will of the elector, to check or thwart his proceedings.
Another circumstance which rendered the situation of Sir Benjamin Thompson a peculiarly interesting one, was the position of Bavaria at the time. 'Most of those,' says Cuvier, 'who are called to power by adventitious circumstances, are led astray by the opinion of the vulgar. They know that they will infallibly be called men of genius, and be celebrated in prose and verse, if they succeed in changing the forms of government, or in extending the territory of their sovereign but a few additional leagues. Happily for Count Rumford, Bavaria at this period had no such temptations for her ministers. Her constitution was fixed by the laws of the empire, and her frontiers defined by the more powerful states who were her neighbors. She was, in short, reduced to that condition which most states consider so hard a one—namely, to have her whole attention confined to the sole object of ameliorating the fortune of her people. The whole attention of Sir Benjamin Thompson, therefore, was necessarily to be concentrated on the internal condition of Bavaria—a country about the size of Scotland, but considerably more populous.
The first subject which occupied the attention of the American-born prime minister of Bavaria was the condition of the army. There were three reasons for this early consideration of the state of the army. In the first place, the condition of the continent of Europe at the time rendered the state of the defensive force a matter of extreme importance to so critically situated a state as Bavaria; in the second place, Thompson's own tastes inclined him to take an interest in military matters; and lastly, in a despotic state, where a little physical force might be necessary to compel the people to adopt good sanitary or other regulations, the army was the natural instrument to be employed in all such reforms, and to render this instrument efficient was but to begin at the right end.
Omitting all the miscellaneous improvements of a minor or mechanical nature which were effected by Thompson in matters connected with military service—as, for instance, in the construction of cannon, in the uniform of the soldiers, their drill, &c.—let us attend to the moral principle which ruled all his proceedings with regard to the organization of the army. 'I have endeavored,' he says, 'in all my operations, to unite the interest of the soldier with the interest of civil society, and to render the military force even in time of peace, subservient to the public good. To facilitate and
