[...] I compliment you very heartily on the three articles in the Oberfränkische Zeitung which you were so good as to send me, and am confirmed anew in an opinion of you which prompts the wish to see you take a larger share in our political administration.—I could almost have wished for more, although the very precision and brevity of your arguments throws a great deal of light on certain very difficult subjects. [...]
I still disagree with your estimate of French affairs. It seems to me that for the present all the Radicalism there aims simply at the suppression, the total suppression, if possible, of Jesuit ultramontanism. For the rest, it seems to me that the so-called "Blues," the bourgeois Republicans, are the only ones who have a chance there. Accordingly, I believe that Jesuits and—Jews are more to be feared than the Radicals, who will never meditate "revanche." This would only be entertained by a dynastic "Pretender," but such an one has few prospects if my estimate of the tendencies of the present-day French Republican is correct.
—It interested me to learn that the Germans spend as much on tobacco as on their Army!—How extraordinary! [...]
Source: Letters of Richard Wagner, Vol. 2, selected and ed. Wilhelm Altmann, trans. M. M. Bozman (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), No. 674