f was a compromise
between Roman doctrine and ethics the reverse of Roman. The delicate
negotiation was carried to a satisfactory end by Cardinal D'Ossat,
whose despatches were long received, and perhaps still are, as the
best in the language, and the model of all diplomacy. Spain followed
Rome, and a conference was held under the presidency of the Pope,
which concluded peace in the Treaty of Vervins. Then Philip II died,
a defeated and disappointed man, whose schemes were wrecked by an
inflexible intolerance; but with his military power undiminished,
still the master of incomparable legions, still the ruler of the
greatest empire in History.

Henry IV closed the era of religious wars by granting liberty to
Protestants on terms intended to ensure permanence. All offices,
civil and military, were thrown open; they retained their cities of
refuge, and acquired the machinery of equal justice, by the expedient
of mixed tribunals. The Catholics gained even more; for whereas
Protestant churches were excluded from Paris, and from certain towns
which had capitulated on that condition, the mass was restored
everywhere, and particularly in two hundred and fifty towns from which
the Huguenots, who predominated in the west and south, had banished
it.

The Edict of Nantes forms an epoch in the progress of toleration,
that is, in the history of liberty, which is the marrow of all modern
History. It is a more liberal scheme than the Peace of Religion,
which satisfied the previous generation of Germans. It pacified
France and afforded to the minority sufficient strength and safety,
not on the basis of religious equality, but in the shape of
circumscribed and definite privilege. Some of the Acts of
Pacification which failed had been more ample. Socinians went much
deeper in the sixteenth century, and Independents in the seventeenth.
The edict involved no declaration of new principles, and no surrender
of ancient claims. The government made concessions of a purely
practical kind, which might be revoked thereafter, if the Huguenots
became less formidable and the crown more powerful. There was no
recognition that they were concessions of the moral order, which it
would be usurpation to refuse, or to which the subject had a right
under a higher law. The action of the crown was restricted, without
detriment to its authority. No other religious body was admitted but
that which had made its power felt by arms in eight outbreaks