According to the budget estimate for 1877-78, the receipts and expenditure for that year were calculated at 651,638,414 marks, or £32,581,920; while the funded national debt in, April, 1877, in addition to debts for railways, etc., amounted to marks, or £52.927,523.
Popalation, Races.—About seven-eights of the population of Prussia are Germans. Of the Slavonic tribes, the most numerous are Poles, numbering 21 millions. In Bran denburg and Silesia: there are about 83,000 Wends; in East Prussia, upward of 146,000 Lithuanians; Western Prussia has rather more than 10,000 Walloons, using the French language; intermixed in its generally German population, Silesia has 50,000 Czechs, or Bohemians; Sleswick-Holstein, 150,000 Danes—making in all about 3,000,000 who do not use the German language, or who employ it only as secondary to their native tongues.
Ranks, Classes.—Three distinct hereditary classes are recognized in Prussia, viz., nobles, burghers, and peasants. To the first belong nearly 200,000 persons, including thy higher officials of the state, although that number does not comprise the various media tized houses, of which 16 are Prussian, and others belonging to 'different states, but, connected with Prussia by still existing, or former territorial possessions. The burgher class includes, in its higher branches, all public office-bearers, professional men. artists, and merchants; while the peasantry—to which belong all persons engaged in agricultural pursuits—are divided into classes, depending on the number of horses employed on the land, etc.
History.—The lands bounded by the Baltic, which now form part of Prussia, were early occupied by Slavonic tribes, nearly allied to the Letts and Lithuanians. It is con jectured that they were visited by Phenician navigators in the 4th c. B.C. ; but beyond the fact of their having come into temporary conflict with the Goths and other Teutonic hordes, prior to the great exodus of the latter from their northern homes, little is known of the people till the 10th c., when they first appear in history under the name of Borussi or Prussians. In 997 bishop Adalbert of Prague snffered martyrdom at their hands, while endeavoring to convert the people to Christianity. Boleslas duke of Poland sue ceeded, however, about 1018, in compelling them to submit to haptism'and subjection. After many futile attempts on the part of the people to throw off the yoke of Christian ity and foreign domination, they finally made a successful stand against Boleslas IV. of .Poland in 1161, and for a time maintained a rude and savage kind of independence, which the disturbed condition of Poland prevented its rulers from breaking down. The fear of losing their freedom if they adopted Christianity, made the Prussians obstinately -resist every effort for their conversion; and it was not till the middle of the 13the., when the knights of the Teutonic order entered upon their "famous" crusade against them, that the Christian faith was formally established among them. The -aggressive inroads of the pagan Prussians on the territories of their Christian neighbors, and their advance into Pomerania, were the exciting causes of this important movement. The .knights of the order, when appealed to by Conrad duke of Masovia to aid in the
subjection of the heathen, gladly, promised their services, on condition of being per mitted to retain possession of the lands which they might conquer; and having entered the Prussian territories in considerable numbers, they intrenched themselves at Vogel sangand Nessau in 1230, and at once entered upon the conquest of Prussia. For half a etaituryl the belligerent brotherhood were engaged in war with the people—winning lands and souls by bard fighting—until at length, in 1283, they found themselves undis puted masters of the country, which they had both civilized and Christianized after a fashiononamely, by almost exterminating the pagan popnlation. During this period of struggle, the knights founded the cities of Thorn, Marienwerder, Memel, and Klinigsberg, repeopled the country with German colonists, encouraged agriculture and brads, and laid the foundation of a well-ordered, prosperous state. The unhappy wars between the knights and the Poles and Lithuanians, together with the moral degeneracy led, in the 14th and 15th centuries, to the gradual decline of their suprem acy. the municipal and noble classes, with The co-operation of Poland, rose in open against the knights, who were finally compelled to seek peace at any cost, and obliged, in 1466, to accept the terms offered to them by the treaty of Thorn. by which West Prussia and Erinlaud were ceded by them unconditionally to Poland, and the remainder of their territories declared to be fiefs of that kingdom. In 1511 the knights elected as their grand-master the markgraf Albert of Anspatli and Baireuth, a kinsman of the king of Poland, and a cion of the Frankish line of the Hohenzollern family. Although his election did not immediately result, as the knights had hoped, in securing them allies powerful enough to aid them in emancipating themselves from Polish domination, it was fraught with important consequences to Germany at large, no less than to the order itself. In 1125 the grand-master was acknowledged duke of Prussia, which was converted into a secuhir duchy (afterward known as East Prussia). and renounced the Roman Catholic religion for Lutheranism, his example being followed by many of the knights. The country made rapid advances under the rule of Albert, who improved the mode of administering the law, restored some order to the finances of the state, established schools, founded the university of KOnigsberg (1544), and caused the Bible to be translated into Polish, and several books of instruction to be printed in German, Polish, and Lithuanian, His son and successor, Albert Frederick, having become insane, a regency was appointed. Several of his kinsmen in turn enjoyed the dignity of regent, and finally his son-in-law, Johann Sigismund, elector of Branden burg, after having held the administration of affairs in his hands for some years, was, on the death of the duke in 1618, recognized as his successor, both by the people and by the king of Poland, from whom he received the investiture of the duchy of Prussia; which, since that period, has been governed by the Hohenzollern-Brandenburg house.