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FINANCES.] PRUSSIA 19 tion and becomes a Refer endarius. He then spends at least four years in the practical work of his profession, after which lie passes a second examination, and, if he has chosen the bench instead of the bar, becomes an Assessor and is eligible for the position of judge. A lawyer who has passed the necessary examinations may at any time quit the bar for the bench, and a judge is also at liberty to resign his position and enter upon private practice. In all criminal cases the prosecution is undertaken by Government, which acts through Staatsanwaltc, or directors of prosecutions, in the pay of the state. lances. Finances. The finances of the Prussian Government are well managed, and a deficit is now a rare occurrence. The expenditure has been considerably relieved by the transference of the cost of the army and navy to the imperial treasury, while on the other hand the customs-dues and several excise duties have been relinquished to the empire and an annual "matricular" contribution paid towards its expenses. The budget is voted annually by the abgeordneten- haus ; the following table is an abstract of that for 1884-85 : Expenditure. Expenses of collection and management 28,234,532 Revenue. Direct taxes 7,296,286 Indirect taxes 4,586,510 State lottery 201,700 Marine institute and mint 128,225 Domains and forests 3,805,857 Mines and salt-works .. 6,120,752 State railways 28,798,867 General financial adminis- tration 5,582,368 Administrative revenues 1,160,253 Total.... 56,680,818 Civil list 225,000 Interest and management of public debt Houses of parliament.. .. Apanages, annuities, and indemnities 3.262,017 Matricular contribution to the German empire 2,038,460 Administrative expenditure 12,632,930 Justice - 2,017,020 Education 1,644,670 Religion 590,333 Ministry of the interior 2,077,510 Occasional and extra- ordinary expenses 2,341,881 Total.... 56,680,818 Perhaps the only item requiring explanation in the above sum niary is the general financial administration under the head of revenue ; this includes advances from the surplus in the treasury, Prussia's proportion of the profits of the imperial customs and excises, repayments, interest, and other miscellaneous sources of revenue. The extraordinary expenses included upwards of 450, 000 for railways and 750,000 for public works. The total expenditure is rather more than 2 per head of population, while in the United Kingdom it is about 2, 10s. Between 1821 and 1844 the rate in Prussia was 11s. 6d. per head, and even in 1858 it was only 21s. 8d. The incidence of direct taxation in Prussia is also less than in Great Britain, the respective figures being 5s. 3d. and 7s. per head. The principal direct imposts are the income-tax, which brings in 40 per cent, of the whole, the land-tax producing 37 per cent., and the house-tax producing 19 per cent. The proceeds of the income- tax amount to about Is. 2d. per head, as compared with 6s. per head in Great Britain (in 1881). The comparative insignificance of the sum raised by indirect taxation is mainly due to the above- noted fact that the customs-dues and the most important excise duties have been made over to the imperial exchequer. In the preliminary estimates for 1885-86 the receipts and expenditure are balanced at 62,886,250. Local taxation in Prussia is often very high. The state income- tax is limited to 3 per cent, of the assessed income, but the com- munes and towns are allowed to make an arbitrary addition for local purposes, sometimes amounting to twice or thrice the sum paid to the state. This is chiefly owing to the fact that the state reserved for itself all taxation on real property, while imposing on the com- munes the principal share in maintaining the expensive system of public schools. Incomes below 45 (900 marks) are not now taxed, but this exemption is of very recent origin. A few facts from the statistics of taxation and allied subjects may be of interest as affording some slight index to Prussia's growth in prosperity. Between 1864 and 1878 the entire capital subject to income-tax increased from 24 to 48 marks per head of population, while the proportionate number of those liable to the tax had increased by about 76 per cent. It has also been computed that the average income per head increased between 1872 and 1881 by 15 marks, equivalent to a rise of 5 per cent. ; that of Great Britain increased in the same period by 88s., or 15 per cent. Of all the payers of income-tax in 1872-81 only O'lO per cent, had incomes of or above 1000, while 43 per cent, had not more than 25 and 52 per cent, between 25 and 100. Between 1867 and 1880 the proceeds of the house-tax increased by over 100 per cent. It now averages Is. per head, varying from 6d. in country districts up to 5s. or 5s. 6d. m Berlin, Frankfort -on -the -Main, and Cologne. In 1875 the number of depositors in savings banks was 86 per 1000 inhabitants, and by 1880 the number had risen to 107. The sum deposited amounted to 79, 643, 400, equivalent to 58s. per head of population. At the same date Austria alone of European powers had a higher proportion (67s.), while in Great Britain the sum was 44s. and in France 27s. The public debt of Prussia in 1884 amounted to 3,345,097,438 marks, or 167,254,872. This is equivalent to about 6 per head of population, as compared with three and a half times as much in England. The annual charge for interest on the debt is 5s. Sd. per head in Prussia and 16s. 2d. in England. Between the end of the struggle with Napoleon and 1848 the debt was considerably reduced ; since 1848 it has steadily increased. It is, however, admirably secured, and a great part of it was incurred in the con- struction and acquisition of railways, the clear income from which covers the annual charges on the entire debt. The various branches of the debt are being gradually united in a consolidated fund, bearing interest at the rate of 4 per cent. Army and Navy. The Prussian army now forms about 75 per Array cent, of that of the German empire, of which it also furnished the and model. (See GERMANY.) The first attempt at the foundation of a navy. Prussian navy was made by the Great Elector, who established a small fleet of eight or ten vessels. This, however, was completely neglected by his successors, and the present marine establishment is of quite recent origin. The present imperial navy is simply the Prussian navy under a different name. (See GERMANY. ) Bibliography. The statistical facts in the foregoing article have been mainly drawn from the Jahrbuch fur die amtliche Statistik des preiissischen Staats, the Statistisches Jahrbuch fur das deutsche lleich, and other publications of the statistical offices of Prussia and Germany. Good general accounts of the natural, social, and political features of the country are given in Eiselen's Der preussische Staat (Berlin, 1862) and in Daniel's Handbuch der Geographie (5th ed., 1881 sq.). The Prussian constitution and administrative system are concisely described in the Handbuch der Ver/assung und Vencaltung in Preussen, by Graf Hue de Grais, and are treated at length in Von Ronne's Staatsrecht der preussischen Monarchie (4th ed., 1881-84), For English readers the most interesting introduction to Prussian history is perhaps still to be found in the first part of Carlyle's Frederick the Great, the not invariably unprejudiced views of which may be corrected by Professor Tuttle's History of Prussia to the Accession of Frederick the Great (Boston, 1884). The latter admirable little work is, indeed, almost indispensable to every English student of Prussian constitutional history. Professor Seeley's Life of Stein (London, 1879) contains an excellent account of Prussia in the Napoleonic period, especially with regard to the important in- ternal reforms carried out at the beginning of the present century. Among the numerous German histories of Prussia two of the best are Droysen s Geschichte der preussischen Politik and Ranke's Zwolf Bucher preussischer Geschichte ; the former is authoritative from the writer's copious use of the Prussian archives, but the latter is less diffuse and more interesting. Other standard works are those of Stenzel, Pauli, Riedel, and Lancizolle, while among shorter histories may be mentioned the manual of F. Voigt. Fix's Territorial-Geschichte des brandenburgisch-preussischen Staates, with ten historical maps, is a convenient sketch of the territorial growth of Prussia. The period since the death of Frederick the Great is treated in Forster's Neuere und neueste preussische Gesch- ichte and in Reimann's Neuere Geschichte des preussischen Staats (1882 sq.). The history of the present century is perhaps most fully given in Treitschke's Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (1S79 sq.). Until recently the standard work on the history of Prussia proper was that of Johannes Voigt, but this is now being superseded by Lohmeyer's Geschichte von Ost u. West Preussen (1881 sq.). The latter forms one of an admirable series of provincial histories in course of publication by Perthes of Gotha. The development of the Prussian bureaucracy is traced in Isaacsohn's Geschichte des preussischen Beamtenthums (1870-84). Several points are most satisfactorily handled in the numerous monographs on special periods, the lives of kings and statesmen, and the like. (J. F. M.) PRUSSIA, in the original and narrower sense of the word, is a district in the north-eastern corner of the modern kingdom of the same name, stretching along the Baltic coast for about 220 miles, and occupying an area of up- wards of 24,000 square miles. The eastern part of this territory formed the duchy of Prussia, which was acquired by the electors of Brandenburg in 1618, and furnished them with their regal title. The western part, which had been severed from the eastern half and assigned to Poland in 1466, was not annexed to Prussia until the partition of Poland in 1772, while the towns of Dantsic and Thorn remained Polish down to 1793. In spite of the contrast between the political and social conditions of the two districts, arising from the difference of their history, they were united in 1824 to form a single province. But, as might have been expected, the union did not work well, and it was dissolved in 1878, giving place to the modern provinces of East and West Prussia. The early history of the whole district is related under the kingdom of PRUSSIA (above) and TEUTONIC ORDER, while the former article also gives (p. 14) some statistics as to the produce of the two provinces. 1 EAST PRUSSIA (Ostpreussen), the larger of the two provinces, has an area of 14,280 square miles, and is bounded by the Baltic Sea, Russia, and West Prussia. It shares in the general characteristics of the great north German plain, but, though low, its surface is by no means absolutely flat, as the southern half is traversed by a low ridge or plateau (comp. GERMANY), which attains a height of 1025 feet at a point near the western boundary of the province. This plateau, here named the Prussian Seenplatte, is thickly sprinkled with small lakes, among which is the Spirding See, 46 square miles in extent and the largest inland lake in the Prussian monarchy. 1 Compare Lohmeyer's Geschichte von Ost u. West Preussen (1881, sq.).