Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/290

274 also a polished gentleman; for a man of such extensive learning, who by his books, his travels, and his knowledge of languages had acquired distinction both at home and abroad could not fail to possess the manners and everything else which, in these so-called serious and sober times, caused a man to be honored and made him agreeable in society."

The times were serious. No doubt the disastrous state of Swedish finances continued to be discussed by him, for late in 1760 he presented two memorials to the Diet, in which he dealt again with the cause of the bad rate of foreign exchange, the consequent debasement of the currency, and the terrible results for everybody. His language was simple and clear; even those ignorant of financial problems could understand his explanation and the remedies he suggested. Swedenborg knew about metals; he knew them, so to speak, from their cradle in the mine to their obituary in paper currency.9

These memorials were the ones characterized by Count von Höpken as the most solid and best penned of that Diet. Höpken said, "In one of these he refuted a large work in quarto on the same subject, quoted all the corresponding passages of it, and all this in less than one sheet."

This was a reference to a book by one Nordencrantz, in which the form of government of Sweden, at least partly representative, was attacked through the assertion that government by many led to the formation of cliques and to corrupt practices. It was really a plea for the restoration of absolute monarchy, and it did not deceive Emanuel Swedenborg. "One absolute monarch," he wrote, "is able to do more mischief in one year than a clique or combination of many at a session of the Diet could accomplish in a hundred years. . . . Corrupt practices in free governments are like small ripples, compared with large waves in absolute monarchies;" in the latter, he said, "favorites and the favorites of favorites, yea the unlimited monarch himself, are corrupted by men who study and appeal to their passions . . ." He threw in a timely reminder about Baron Görtz and Charles XII.

He admitted faults in representative governments; still there was freedom. "Should I undertake to make known all the mistakes of which I have heard and which I know from my own experience