CHAP.

VI.

$22. England's Position in

Europe.

religious doctrine might be true, it was not worth the while of half the nation to be cutting the throats of the other half to enforce its universal acceptance.

In this way England came to be morally and intellectually the centre of European civilisation. Whatever tendencies directed the stream of progress in various parts of the Continent were to be found in England. She had originated nothing of her own. Satirists held

that Englishmen fetched their dress and external accomplishments from foreign nations. 'I think,' says Portia in the Merchant of Venice' of her English lover, 'he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.' The words were true in a larger sense. The dominant idea of the Reformers was derived from Germany. The dominant idea of the Puritans was derived from Geneva. The dominant idea of the Catholics was derived from Rome and Spain. Literature looked for its models to Italy. But though here and there factions held to extreme views, the bulk of the nation blended together theories and practices till it had assimilated them in spite of their various origin. In the Church, in the State, in literature, in the habits of daily life, there arose something which was indisputably English, and which nevertheless allowed free scope to the vigorous individualism of life. As year by year passed by, the national unity established itself more firmly, because here there was less repression than anywhere else, less inquisition into opinion, freer permission to unrestrained development. Such a people obtained the preeminence because it deserved it. England was not torn in pieces by internal dissensions like France, nor split into petty states like Germany or Italy, nor given up to intellectual deadness like Spain. Its mariners ransacked the seas for booty, and overwhelmed with disaster the

proudest navy which had ever sailed on the sea. Its statesmen more than held their own against the craftiest heads of France and Spain. Its poets rose to an unequalled eminence, to culminate in the great dramatist whose knowledge of the human heart knows no equal or rival. Before the death of Elizabeth, England possessed in Hooker the most judicious and large-minded of ecclesiastical writers, and in Bacon, the thinker, who, without being himself capable of anticipating the foundation of modern experimental and political science, was endowed beyond all other men with the spirit of the future change which was to renew the world.

CHAP.

VI.

Elizabeth

Of all this varied life Elizabeth made herself the $23. organ. She had sympathies with it all, and if the very and Parvariety of those sympathies made her conduct shifting liament. and uncertain, it also gave her an abiding place in the hearts of every section of her subjects.

She was, in fact, a much better representative of the nation than the House of Commons, especially in the early portion of her reign, could possibly be. We are so accustomed to regard an elective house as constituting the true representation of a people, that it is well to be reminded under what limitations it does so. When a question arises for decision, a representative house decides one way or the other, often by a narrow majority. Very probably, though this is not always the case, the narrow majority in the house corresponds to a more or less narrow majority in the nation itself. Its decision is, therefore, not the decision of the whole nation any more than it is the decision of the whole house. Its weight, therefore, rests on the tacit understanding that it is better and safer to yield to the weight of a few votes than to resist by an appeal to civil war. This constitutional morality will always be widely spread in proportion to the general agreement amongst the population.

СНАР.
VI.

If the changes proposed are very slight in comparison
with the things left unchanged, all of them put together
will seem very endurable even to those who object most
strongly to every one of them. There will exist, too,
a fellow-feeling between parties, an assurance that whilst
they differ on much, they agree on more, which renders
compromise and concession easy. In the early part of
Elizabeth's reign all these conditions were reversed.
Religions as opposite as Catholicism and Calvinism
stood face to face, and the best chosen House of Com-
mons could have done nothing to mediate between
them.
A Catholic majority would have proscribed
Protestantism in every form. A Calvinist majority
would have proscribed not merely the Papal Church, but
every vestige of the ancient creed and ceremonial. Men
felt too deeply on such questions to submit to such
summary dealing, and they would have preferred to fight
out the quarrel to the death. Those who wished that
things should not come to such a pitch would have been
powerless to avert a rupture, because the great middle
party which existed in an incoherent state was as yet
unformed, and as yet unconscious of the principles on
which it could act. It was Elizabeth's work to summon
it into life, and to consolidate it,-a work which often
involved opposition to the House of Commons, all the
more because the house was at that time far from being
a fair mirror of the general feeling. The Catholics were
excluded by the statute which required all members to
take the oath of supremacy, and Elizabeth, therefore,
was only exercising a sound discretion in throwing her
authority in the balance against the attempts of the
Commons to reduce the formularies of the Church to the'
expression of the opinions of a single party.

It was not in the nature of things that such a relation between the crown and the House of Commons should

be permanent. The very success of Elizabeth's efforts was against it. As a new generation grew up, the numbers of those who in the main accepted the Queen's ecclesiastical arrangements increased. But at first the tendency drew men over in the direction of Puritanism. As long as the struggle with Spain lasted, as long as there was danger of an actual invasion of the country, of an assassination of the queen, of the establishment of Mary Stuart on the throne by foreign aid, so long the bent of all who opposed such things led them to approve of a form of worship and doctrine as different as possible from those of the Papal Church. In the later years of the reign, when Spain and the Pope grew less terrible, a certain reaction took place. The papal claims were as unpopular as ever, but there was less zeal for extreme Puritanism. The doctrine preached was strongly tinged with Calvinism, but there was but little opposition to the episcopal government, and most of those who disliked the existing order of things would have been content with some relaxation of the ceremonial rules of the Church, so that those who wished to vary from them by omitting the use of the surplice, of the cross in baptism, and of the ring in marriage, might be at liberty to do so. Bacon, expressing here the highest intellect of his day, advised the concession of these demands, and there can be little doubt that a compact national sentiment was behind him. The prevalent feeling was in favour of substantial unity in Church and State, with a certain liberty to individuals to follow their own courses. Such a change could not be without effect on the position of the Commons. The cause of their weakness in the divisions of the nation was at an end. They were strong in 1603 as the embodiment of a national desire which was not even in existence in 1558. Other causes too had come to give them increased importance. They were

CHAP.
VI.

no longer what they were at the accession of the Tudor dynasty, comparatively poor, accustomed to be ill-treated by the aristocracy, and unversed in public affairs. The Tudor sovereigns had taken chosen members of the middle class into their immediate confidence, and had administered the local affairs of the country by them and with them. Then had come the influx of wealth by commerce and manufacture, and the spirit of adventure by which that wealth was directed to our shores. The Commons had grown independent in prosperity by the hardihood with which they had struggled for pre-eminence in social life. In 1485 they were but a down-trodden portion of the English people looking out for a strong ruler to defend their cause. In 1603 they were almost identical with the nation itself, with aims and ideas of their own, and with firmness and resolution enough to strengthen them to carry out in practice the thoughts which their hearts conceived.