Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

EMPEROR of GERMANY.

As many of our readers may be unacquainted with the character of the EMPEROR of GERMANY, we take the liberty of presenting the following characteristic Sketches of him, viz.

Joseph Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, hereditary Arch-duke of the circle of Austria, King of Hungary and Bohemia, Lord Paramount of Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, Duke of Swabia, Silesia, and Tyrol, and Earl of Flanders, is the son of Francis Stephen, late Emperor, and Mary Theresa, eldest daughter of the Emperor Charles VI. who died at Vienna, the 14th October, 1740; he is now in the prime of life, and if we may be allowed to judge of his future, by his past conduct, and the expectations that must naturally arise from the descendant of two illustrious houses, who have furnished the cabinet with wise, just, and magnanimous counsellors, and the field with accomplished generals, every age, for more than 800 years, there can be no difficulty in pronouncing his Imperial Majesty an honour to the very exalted rank he fills, at the head of above 200 Christian Sovereign States. In his general behaviour as a private man, he is rather too formal for what is called polite life, having a good deal of the ancient Teutonic stateliness and gravity, which a stranger might mistake for pride.—Though he lives on the best footing with every branch of his family, he never visits any of the Archduchesses, his sisters, without announcing his intention some hours before; he rises early, spends some time in his closet, and goes into an apartment where about a dozen counsellors, at times, or privy counsellors, wait his arrival: these consist of his Minister Count de Kaunitz, the Prince of Saxe-Teschin, post-master general and several other state officers, to whom he communicates such letters, advices or dispatches, from his ambassadors at foreign courts, as he thinks proper to divulge; here he receives the morning report of the lieutenant of police, touching any fire, murder, robbery, or other accidents that may have occurred in the city or its liberties, for the last twenty-four hours, on which he makes such orders and regulations as the nature of the account shall require. Once in every month he visits the gaols and houses of correction, where he often soothes the broken heart of the wretched malefactor, by lessening his punishment or abridging the time of its continuance, or giving absolute liberty and free pardon as the case may deserve. Nor is this all; for he frequently orders an exact list to be laid before him of every person confined either for crime or debt, in the whole compass of his wide dominions with the nature and circumstances of their cases, and he has been known to have locked himself up, with a few of his council, for several days, deliberating in what manner those miserable creatures might be punished with the least rigour, consistent with justice, or relieved without injury to the public, or his own honour as a sovereign.

Soon after his accession to the Imperial crown, he had the intrepid curiosity to descend into a salt-petre mine, in the county of Glatz, 1200 toises below the surface of the earth, by means of a chain, composed of ropes crossing each other; when arrived in these gloomy mansions, he was surprised at the sight of so many wretched figures, who resembled the demons or Genii, thought by the vulgar to inhabit the subterranean caverns of the earth, than living mortal men.—He enquired into the crimes which occasioned so dreadful a catastrophe as that of being thus buried alive, in the flower of youth and health, and condemned to incessant toil in the bowels of nature, without the cheerful beam of day to comfort, the fresh air to invigorate, or the possibility of alleviation or escape. My God, exclaimed the gentle Prince, am I seated on a throne, surrounded with greatness, charmed with pleasures and glutted with honours, whilst so many of my fellow-creatures thus languish out a frightful existence in the regions of the damned, in the abyss of misery, and the depths of despair; No, continued he, this day shall see an end of sufferings, which none but an offended Deity could with justice inflict; he immediately spoke to the overseer of the mine, and the officer of the guard, and commanded that the whole tribe of slaves should be set at liberty; for, said he, let their crimes be what they will, I am sure that a few years, nay weeks residence and labour in such a hell as this, is or ought to be full satisfaction either to an angry monarch or an offended community.

It would wrong the utmost power of language to describe the confusion of joy that animated 400 unhappy convicts, on so unexpected a deliverance from punishment more dreadful than a thousand deaths; some fainted, others screamed like wild beasts, while a third sort leaped and danced as if seized with madness.