Dutch Republic, gathered up the reins of power that these self-sufficient Phaethons proved incompetent to hold, and the blazing chariot of civil and religious liberty wheeled once more to its beneficent path. A Bill of Rights, that completely renovated the abused constitution of the realm, was enacted. Toleration was promulgated. A bill was framed to keep the legislature pure, by incapacitating its members from holding any office as a bribe from the crown. Slightly modified, it passed in the reign of his successor. Venal parliaments had been able to sit interminably. Hence a new triennial bill returned them to the people every three years. Treason was defined. No man could be indicted but on the oath of at least two witnesses. A copy of the indictment must be furnished the accused, also a list of his jury, counsel for his defense, and power to summon witnesses. No wonder Vattel, looking from his land over the channel, exclaimed, (Law of Nations, p. 63,) "Happy constitution! which they did not suddenly obtain It has cost rivers of blood, but they have not purchased it too dear!"

Thus England went to war, not for chimerical ideas and Utopian schemes, but for rights guaranteed to all her subjects. In her crown glittered all the stars that had been symbols of hope; in her hand gleamed the judicial sword, wielded by all the strength justice and hope could give. She took her place beside the Dutch Republic, an old enemy of tyranny that for a hundred and fifty years had waged the dubious fight. Weak and alone, she had not stopped to measure the strength of the empire of Philip II.; she opposed it. Girt with the strength of right, and fired with the impulses of freedom, the unknown province became the first power of Europe, and the shattered empire was content to receive peace at her dictation.

The Dutch Republic was an organized protest against ecclesiastical tyranny and universal dominion. It took its very beginning when the empire of Charles V. had swallowed up every vestige of human freedom. It was man's only champion in the sixteenth century. England stood by her in the seventeenth. Descendants from both took the championship in America in the eighteenth. Good cause had Holland to oppose Louis XIV. Provinces, states, fortresses, and cities had been seized by his resistless hand. She battled for existence, and in

contending for her own secured the well-being of man. She gave England one of her wisest kings; and united in blood, fortune, and interest, both went forth to battle. Thus the two systems of government were opposed, every interest of man against his every peril.

Let us turn a moment to view the position of

PHILOSOPHY.

All ideas properly belong to the province of philosophy; but having taken out the departments of government and religion for separate treatment, all else relative to the subject remains for present consideration. We cannot minutely follow all the systems of metaphysical speculation. Being as often results as causes, as often growing out of popular tendencies as creating them, in the one case indices of what national thought has been, and in the other of what it will be, in either case their general principles will clearly indicate national tendencies.

ence.

At the mention of philosophy who does not think of Bacon, who uttered the first protest against the fetters of the Aristotelian philosophy. Men turned at his bidding from hypotheses to facts, from trimming things to theories, to conforming theories to actual verities. His whole work means independHe sounded a trumpet for a charge on the realms of darkness. Thousands in every land sprang up armed with his weapons, and according to his methods made wide conquests in the realm of ignorance and old night. Well says Burke: "Who is there that upon hearing the name of Lord Bacon does not instantly think of everything of genius the most profound, everything in literature the most extensive, everything in discovery the most penetrating, everything of observation on human life the most distinguished and refined!" Whom does France offer as his equal? Even La Place, a hundred and fifty years later, could only follow Newton, and say his Principia held pre-eminence over all other productions of the human mind. With Bacon and Newton, England scarce need fear superiority in physical science. Turning to psychology, we are confronted by Locke. His philosophy was imperfect rather than wrong. The wrong has been in the carrying out, which it received at the hands of others. Conclusions drawn, by the sensual school, from his not properly defined premises, were

distinctly repudiated by him. The remark of Cousin is significant: "It was necessary that the philosophy of Locke should pass the channel in order to meet with success." What harm there was in Locke took little root in England. The soil was not congenial. It blew over the channel and sprang into luxuriant growth. The whole sensual school, led by Condillac, Cabanis, De Tracy, Volney, and last, Broussais, the reviver of the first, caught its inspiration from Locke. To resolve everything into mere sensation was the object of Condillac's later and most finished work, Le Traité des Sensations. The whole contest in France, from the time of Louis XIV., when the Cartesian philosophy rapidly gave way, till the appearance of Kant, was to get the worst out of the prevailing Lockian philosophy. The whole contest in England was to get the best. Scotland put in a protest against materialism, and in seeking to defend Locke against the imputation of it, only showed him to be inconsistent. On the one hand, the good of the system was adhered to and its errors ignored; on the other, the errors only adopted and greatly increased.

Though France had taken the universal doubt, that is, the alpha of Des Cartes' system, she followed not his "method" for the discovery of truth, was much more in sympathy with the development of his errors in the subtile pantheism of Malebranche, or the open fatalism of Spinoza. The tendencies of the French mind culminated in the atheism of Voltaire, the encyclopedic writers, and in revolution. Those of the English in common sense and reformation.

Freedom of the press deserves consideration. Intelligence and liberty spread or dwindle as this is allowed or restricted. The first step is to appoint a licenser; the next to allow perfect freedom of publishing, a general law declaring what is prejudicial to the morals of the state. The system is perfected when conviction is put in the hands of a jury, the amount of punishment in the hands of the judges. England early advanced near this ultimatum. France never yet got beyond the first step, which means freedom of the press to the extent of the caprice of the licenser, or the option of the tyrant appointing him.

A glance at the literature produced by the two countries. shows the enormous potency of this single principle. It shall be sufficient to mention names previous to 1704. Shakspeare,

Bacon, the Johnsons, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, Bunyan, Locke, Swift, Addison, Newton. Who shall be named on the other side their equals? Both national taste and government patronage encouraged dramatic productions. Is there a French Shakspeare? Shut out from politics, the mind rushes more eagerly into literature. Has France an Addison? The whole animus of government and religion was against the highest mental culture. Yet the age of Louis XIV. is called the Augustan age. The comparison is truer than it seems. In the age of Augustus, Horace, Ovid, Catullus, all contemptibly sycophantic and sensual, some beastial and infamous, were in highest favor at court. Such elegant triflers were most welcome at the court of Louis XIV. In the Augustan age Cicero was banished and assassinated. So, in the parallel, Pascal was persecuted, Madame Guyon arrested, Fenelon and Quesnel exiled. The religion of the state had thoroughly established its modern system of crushing out human thought. From being the preserver of letters in the dark ages, the Romish Church since the time of Galilleo, in 1633, has bent its every energy to dwarf and crush the intellect of man. Having subserviency for its central point of doctrine, taught by Luther the terrible results of free inquiry, every possible appliance must be made use of to crush free and enlarged thought. The character of the Church may be best understood, its history best read from this stand-point. Its fearful success in this respect is the darkest page of history.

It is usual to speak much of the darkness and ignorance of England in the seventeenth century. This appears excessive, partly by a just view of the real darkness of the time, and partly by contrast with the glorious light of religious reformation that followed. But dark as England was, it was very different from the darkness it opposed. There were lights in its darkness. Stars flashing in its sky. The lights in the darkness it opposed might be compared to these same stars reflected in the bosom of a putrid pool. England had real stars; morning stars; heralds of a dawn that tarried not. And when the day burst and the sun appeared, those pools that had seemed to burn with holy light were clearly seen, loathsome, miasmatic, deadly.

Holland, the opposer of Louis XIV. and ally of England,

also had a most noticeable development of mind. The Republic, preserving inviolable the liberty of the press, the right of assembly and petition, and engaging every citizen in the conduct of public affairs, had done a republic's work in quickening, freeing, and enlarging mind. The words and sufferings of Grotius did not vindicate toleration in vain. Arminianism, which has always been allied with liberty, was defined by Episcopius at the Synod of Dort, 1618. The tenet of free-will does as much to dignify and free the human mind as that of necessity degrades and enslaves it.

With such achievements and tendencies for good and ill, philosophy saw with anxiety that contest that was to determine the prowess and reign of its different supporters.

RELIGION.

To comprehend the religious interests that were at stake in this battle, it will be necessary to glance at the history and define the actual position of the Romish and Protestant Churches. The beginning of the seventeenth century is distinguished for a remarkable outspread and triumph of the Romish Church. By vast colonies and conquests by Romish countries, by unusually successful missions, and a quiet strengthening of the central power, it seemed about to grasp the universal supremacy it sought. But the growth of intelligence, the spirit of liberty, and the wane of religious impulse, resulting in a successful thirty-years war for Protestantism in Germany, brought a check on its success.

Just at this point, Pope Urban VIII.,sought to stay the decline of the Church by perfecting its temporal policy, and adding new political states to the papal crown. But fierce political wrangling for spoils brought little strength or unity of purpose to the Church. Popes succeeded each other with a rapidity that suggests those temporal sovereignties that are tempered by assassination. These shepherds wore ovine names-Clement, Innocent, etc.-but they covered lupine natures. Pasquin might have said of such shepherds, "Sometimes they feed the sheep, often they shear them, always make mutton of them." Contrary to Scripture, they warred with principalities and powers, and not against wickedness in high places. And if their weapons were spiritual, they were of the