Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/355

 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 343 Characteristics of the Age. The age recorded in Book VI, might be described as the era of zeal, and especially of religious zeal. The strife of Protestantism and Romanism was to a large extent one of passionate beliefs, in which each side honestly held that it was fighting for God against the Devil. With a slight difference the contest between Royalists and Puritans in England and Scotland was also a conflict of ideals. But the next age dealt with in the book just concluded was a critical age, which discouraged zeal for the most part, and was wanting in ideals. It subordinated emotion and sentiment to reason and practical convenience. Its typical intellectual product was the Frenchman Voltaire. And just as the age was one of reaction against the emotional age which preceded it, so it led up to the counter-reaction, which was finding expression before the era closed in the French Swiss Rousseau, and took material shape in the French Revolution. War and Religion. In our last period the root-cause of most of the wars which occurred is to be found in the antagonism of religions. But in the wars of Louis xiv. we find Protestant and Catholic powers ranged side by side in resistance to the aggression of Louis xiv., whose motive presents itself as that of aggrandising himself and his dynasty. Religion, as a motive, occupies only a very minor place, but it is still revealed as present chiefly in the relations between France, England, and Holland. The security of a Protes- tant succession at all costs drove England to make common cause with Holland, both when William ill. was king and in the war of the Spanish succession. Yet the Treaty of Utrecht shows that colonial rivalry is already taking the first place as the subject of con- tention between Britain and France ; and in the war of the Austrian succession, and the Seven Years' War, as well as in the war of American Independence, colonial questions entirely overshadow all others, so far as concerns Britain. North American Races. The 'Red Indians 5 of North America never reached a stage of civilisation in which they could be said to have formed states ; they had no towns. They seem to have been developing agricultural settlements when English colonisation began, but resumed migratory habits. Their tribes formed leagues or federations, and made fierce onslaughts on the European settlers from time to time ; a northern group known as the ' Five Nations ' were particularly active and dangerous. Wars with them, however, were always in the nature of raids and counter-raids ; they never adapted themselves to civilised life, but remained nomads and hunters.