164 Life of Count Rumford. 



a military man, he might have been prompted to excite 

 and guide in his sovereign any ambitious schemes for 

 extending his domains or securing a fuller indepen- 

 dence of control by the great powers, he would have 

 been precluded from everything of this sort by the then 

 established order of affairs, which left Bavaria only a 

 chance to lose, with no prospect of gain from any con- 

 ceivable change. Sir Benjamin very soon learned that 

 the development of resources and the reform of abuses 

 were the emergent needs of the Electorate, and would 

 furnish an abundant and rewarding field for his special 

 abilities. The Bavarian princes ever since the Refor- 

 mation had found their apparent security and prosperity 

 to be identified with allegiance and devotion to the 

 Roman Church and Catholicism. The Electorate was 

 under the oppressive influence of a priesthood, and 

 the people, submitting to their dictation, acquiesced in 

 the thriftlessness and the burdens thus imposed upon 

 them. The very name of Munich or Munchen, derived 

 from Monks, carries with it an historical fact which had 

 made a mark deep and permanent in the capital of the 

 Electorate. As Cuvier says, " Its sovereigns had en- 

 couraged devotion and made no stipulation in favor of 

 industry. There were more convents than manufac- 

 tories in their States; their army was almost a shadow, 

 while ignorance and idleness were conspicuous in every 

 class of society." There was no State in Christendom 

 at the time which offered a fairer field for the economi- 

 cal and reformatory enterprise of a man with the genius 

 and proclivities of Sir Benjamin Thompson, with a 

 training in the frugal and thrifty ways of New England 

 during the second stage of its own development. 



He never seems to have become involved, either in 



