Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/16

 2 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [01-52. statesman of the nineteenth century, with the conditions before him which presented themselves to the council of Elizabeth, would have left religion to the individual conscience would have insisted only on general sub- mission to the laws, and within that limit would have permitted Catholic and Protestant the free use of their own chapels and services. But this solution of the problem has been made possible only by a gradual change of sentiment. Before a government can act on princi- ples of toleration, the people to be governed must have become themselves at least outwardly tolerant. The at- tempt was made in France without this necessary pre- paration, and the result was universal disorder, inter- minable outbursts of civil war, and, when circumstances were specially unfavourable, those monstrous massacres, which have made the names of Catherine de Medici and her sons so infamous in history. The En glish Act of Uni- formity, though intolerant in appearance and language, was adapted to protect the principles which it seemed to deny. Congregations of Ultramontanes and Genevans, if allowed each the free right of meeting, with their priests and ministers fulminating from rival pulpits, would have become organized bands of uncontrollable fanatics ; the war of words would have become a war of blows, and every town in England would have been a scene of perpetual bloodshed. A middle course was therefore chosen a course which at the time pleased no one but the Queen and the half dozen or dozen intelligent persons who surrounded her ; but it was the same which her father had marked