freedom with foreign princes, must be diffusing the spirit of liberty abroad and at home; and Elizabeth was fighting such a battle, not the less because she fought with peaceful weapons. During the greater part of her reign she was regarded all over Europe as the great defender of liberty; as such she was regarded, too, by the mighty princes, her cotemporaries, and, therefore, there was a desire felt through all the courts of Europe, that her power might be broken, and her kingdom given to another.

Rome was earnestly bent upon the destruction of protestantism in Europe. A mighty league was formed for the defence of the Catholic Church. The brave people of the Netherlands, Holland, and Belgium, suffered the most amazing persecution which any people, in any era of the world's history, were ever called to undergo. Spain, ever true to her creed of Romanism and blood, sent forth her knights, and poured forth her treasure to waste and destroy those noble people. Meantime, the Jesuits, who had been looked upon by the Church of Rome generally, with an eye of exceeding jealousy, spread over the whole of the continent, and began their course of perverting and mischievous teaching in England. Ignatius Loyala, the founder of the Order of St. Jesus,

commenced his career some years before. From attentively perusing the life of this most extraordinary man, it does not appear that he intended to found a society so closely entwined as this has been with the mere temporal politics of the Romish Church; certainly he intended the establishment of an institution which should rapidly, and by any means judged best, by the fountain of Romish authority and power, convert to the Romish faith. Obedience, implicit and unhesitating obedience, was the great central doctrine of the society; commissioned by the heads of the order, the members were traversing the continent in silence and obscurity, labouring indefatigably to bring back the backsliders to the faith, and sworn to the prosecution of measures the most horrid and unnatural, for the purpose of destroying the growing opinion against Rome; and when the persecution of the Jesuits, during the reign of Elizabeth, is insisted on, let it be remembered, that they came to the country specially com-, missioned to conspire against the prosperity and life both of the Queen, and her people, and the realm.

The independence of England was the main spring of Elizabeth's foreign policy; this she pursued fearlessly and consistently. To defend all

her actions now, is impossible, many are quite indefensible and in the maintainance of the settled principle of her government, very much transpires with which no good man can have a moment's sympathy. That was a very doubtful morality which impelled her to seize upon five sail of richly laden Spanishmen, carrying stores and money for the payment of King Philip's men in the Low Countries. The ships had sought shelter on her coast, from a Protestant fleet; she hesitated, the money on board those ships was to pay the cruel and merciless men who were crushing the life out of a brave Protestant people; finally, she resolved on seizing the ships. The Spanish Ambassador entreated, remonstrated, but in vain; she was also in want of money, and covering her action with some subterfuges which it is needless to say, were not very honest or truthful, she appropriated the gold of Spain to her purposes, Drake also humbled the Spanish power by his privateering expeditions, both on the coasts of Europe and America; and when he returned home, Queen Elizabeth paid a considerable sum out of the treasure brought home by the great navigator, to certain merchants who sent to her court to demand satisfaction for having been "unjustly robbed." The rest of the booty

rewarded the privateers. If most of the English, with their queen, gloried in the advantages that unquestionably resulted from these naval exploits, there were some few at least who had regard to the rights that had been violated; for, according to Camden, nothing troubled Drake more than the refusal of some of the chief men at court to accept the gold which he offered them, because it was "gotten by piracy." The names of those chief men would have been worth preserving. On the other hand, it does not seem to have been piracy that the Spaniards complained of most. They of course saw, and with most excited passions, that their most exclusive naval dominion was about to be wrested from them. Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, complained with arrogant violence, of Drake's having so much as dared to sail in the Indian Elizabeth's spirited reply is the first instance of the absolute assertion of England's right of navigating the ocean in all its parts, a right none has since that time been able to take from us. She told Mendoza plainly, that a title to the ocean could not belong to any people, or private persons, "forasmuch as neither nature, nor public use and custom, permitteth any possession thereof."-This was indeed one of the occasions when Elizabeth's clearness of intellect

sea.

and determined will achieved advantages of priceless value to the empire.

Of course these actions are not to be commended in these days, when a system so much nobler and more generous rules both the transactions of the land, and the sea. But these events taught useful lessons especially to Spain; strange spectacle enough truly, a little land, a dot upon the waters, with its insignificant population of about four millions, thus defying the most princely and magnificent nation of the world; the nation claiming the sovereignty of the seas, and exercising more influence than any other over the various courts of Europe. Spain, around whose palaces the gold of the Indies flowed like water; Spain beheld the sceptre of Power falling from her grasp, her arm paralysed and powerless, before the superior tact and policy of the rising power of Liberty and Commerce. Clearly then to be seen and understood, the reign of Elizabeth must be studied. first, externally; studied with especial reference to the elements at work in Europe generally. Now, England starts before the old time-worn monarchies; a new power struggling for new things; all that she had struggled for hitherto, had been in union with the ambitions of monarchies, and the golden chains the princes