religions, and that thus a man could be a good citizen—the only thing
which the State was entitled to demand—whatever faith he might profess,
led to the logical consequence of complete religious liberty. Catholics

[121] were placed on an equality with Protestants, and the Treaty of
Westphalia was violated by the extension of full toleration to all the
forbidden sects. Frederick even conceived the idea of introducing
Mohammedan settlers into some parts of his realm. Contrast England under
George III, France under Louis XV, Italy under the shadow of the Popes.
It is an important fact in history, which has hardly been duly
emphasized, that full religious liberty was for the first time, in any
country in modern Europe, realized under a free-thinking ruler, the
friend of the great “blasphemer” Voltaire.

The policy and principles of Frederick were formulated in the Prussian
Territorial Code of 1794, by which unrestricted liberty of conscience
was guaranteed, and the three chief religions, the Lutheran, the
Reformed, and the Catholic, were placed on the same footing and enjoyed
the same privileges. The system is “jurisdictional”; only, three
Churches here occupy the position which the Anglican Church alone
occupies in England. The rest of Germany did not begin to move in the
direction pointed out by Prussia until, by one of the last acts of the
Holy Roman Empire (1803), the Westphalian settlement had been modified.
Before the foundation of the new Empire (1870), freedom was established
throughout Germany.

[122]

In Austria, the Emperor Joseph II issued an Edict of Toleration in 1781,
which may be considered a broad measure for a Catholic State at that