These early years were invaluable, not only as giving him experience of practical affairs but as affording him an insight into the strength and weakness of the Prussian system. The immediate result was to confirm his Liberalism. The Prussian principle of propagating enlightenment with a stick did not appeal to him; he recognized the confusion and want of clear ideas in the highest circles, the tendency to make agreement with the views of the government the test of loyalty to the state; and he noted in his journal (25 June 1844) four years before the revolution of 1848, "a slight cause and we shall have a rising." "The free press," he notes on another occasion, "is a necessity, progress the condition of the existence of a state." If he was an ardent advocate of German unity, and saw in Prussia the instrument for its attainment, he was throughout opposed to the "Prussification" of Germany.