religious enthusiasm cooperating with the English love of self-government and carrying it under Cromwell to victory.  From this fortunate alliance of religious and political forces has come all the noble and fruitful work of the last two centuries in which men of English speech have been labouring for the political regeneration of mankind.  But for this alliance of forces, it is quite possible that the fateful seventeenth century might have seen despotism triumphant in England as on the continent of Europe, and the progress of civilization indefinitely arrested. [Sidenote:  The moment of Cromwell’s triumph was the most critical moment in history]

In illustration of this possibility, observe what happened in France at the very time when the victorious English tendencies were shaping themselves in the reign of Elizabeth.  In France there was a strong Protestant movement, but it had no such independent middle-class to support it as that which existed in England; nor had it been able to profit by such indispensable preliminary work as that which Wyclif had done; the horrible slaughter of the Albigenses had deprived France of the very people who might have played a part in some way analogous to that of the Lollards.  Consequently the Protestant movement in France failed to become a national movement.  Against the wretched Henry iii who would have temporized with it, and the gallant Henry IV who honestly espoused it, the oppressed peasantry and townsmen made common cause by enlisting under the banner of the ultra-Catholic Guises.  The mass of the people saw nothing in Protestantism but an idea favoured by the aristocracy and which they could not comprehend.  Hence the great king who would have been glad to make France a Protestant country could only obtain his crown by renouncing his religion, while seeking to protect it by his memorable Edict of Nantes.  But what a generous despot could grant, a bigoted despot might revoke; and before another century had elapsed, the good work done by Henry IV. was undone by Louis xiv., the Edict of Nantes was set aside, the process of casting out the most valuable political element in the community was carried to completion, and seven percent of the population of France was driven away and added to the Protestant populations of northern Germany and England and America.  The gain to these countries and the damage to France was far greater than the mere figures would imply; for in determining the character of a community a hundred selected men and women are more potent than a thousand men and women taken at random.  Thus while the Reformation in France reinforced to some extent the noble army of freemen, its triumphs were not to be the triumphs of Frenchmen, but of the race which has known how to enlist under its banner the forces that fight for free thought, free speech, and self-government, and all that these phrases imply. [Sidenote:  Contrast with France; fate of the Huguenots]