Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/247

 be broken without hesitation unless a flaw can be found. Whether it be true that Charles V justified the imprisonment of Philip the Magnanimous by the misreading of a single letter in the word which had induced him to surrender, I do not know; the story may be false, but the moral is true; men were loth to own themselves actuated by simple greed. And as diplomacy was in its beginnings, so it lasted for a long time; the ambassador was the man who was sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. Rights, pleas, grudges, were registered against the time when strength would accrue to make them real weapons of argument and instruments of aggression.

But as the old influence of right lingered on, the new influence of idea was from time to time giving distinct warnings of a further change. There was an idea of religion, there was an idea of liberty, struggles for the vindication of historical nationalities, although, as ideas, they were overborne or absorbed by the mightier forces which played around them. It could scarcely be but that strong government should force up premature longings for liberty, or that religious repression should compel a desire for tolerance. Yet we must not make too much of the first glimmerings of the changes that were coming. The revolt of the Netherlands was perhaps the most resolute attempt at liberty that had been seen since the middle ages opened; the idea of nationality was strong in the Spanish provinces of the Hapsburg inheritance and in the Bohemia of the Thirty Years War. But they never became ruling principles; nor were they likely to do so until they were emancipated from the mere selfish and localised interests with which they were bound up. Class liberties, isolated nationalities, local privileges, may keep up the memory, the tradition of liberty, nationality, and privilege, but they do not become leading ideas until they have been accepted as universally just and desireable, until they can command assent and inspire sympathy. The religions that demanded toleration but meant tyranny were no true exponents of religious liberty: the classes that would limit royal prerogative to lay their hand heavier on their own vassals, were no true