d with an abundant
supply of the precious metals. The mines of Mexico, with some small
supplies from South America, furnished the sinews of those religious
wars that desolated Europe after the Reformation, and enabled Spain to
maintain her vast armaments in the Spanish peninsula, and in her
Italian kingdoms and principalities, and in her Belgian provinces.
Spain was able to subsidize the armies of the Catholic League in
France, and the forces of the Catholic Princes of Germany, and to turn
back the tide of the Protestant Reformation after it had entered Italy,
overrun Navarre, and reached her own frontier. The gold of California
and Australia has furnished England the sinews by which she has set on
foot armies, and subsidized nations in the present crusade against
Russia.

At the time of the Reformation, all the precious metals were poured
into the lap of a fanatical Catholic government; now they are in
Protestant hands, and all, at last, find their resting-place, even
those of Mexico, in the London market; while out of English
Protestantism has our republic arisen, which is still united to her by
a common language, a common religion, and commercial relations, so that
the London market regulates the value of our stocks and the price of
the food we eat. But our common Protestantism is not the Protestantism
of the Reformation: that was the Protestantism of princes, and every
where rested for support upon state patronage, the people, in that
epoch, having no political existence. Protestantism was then a state
institution, and soon lost its vitality in such an unnatural alliance.
The Protestantism of our day is the Protestantism of dissent, which
rejects state support, yet has shown itself more powerful than
governments. It has restored peace to Ireland, and made its proselytes
there by tens of thousands after the last British regiment was
withdrawn. It has rent in twain the Church of Scotland, and is fast
revolutionizing the Church of England, by driving to Rome those who
prefer superstition to democracy, while it draws the remainder of the
nation to itself. In the United States it is the ruling power, though
it has here no political authority. It has penetrated the most obscure
hamlets of France and Spain, and made thousands of converts in Italy
itself. And where its preachers could not penetrate, there the written
Word has found its way.

MEXICO TWO CENTURIES AGO.

The letters of Cortez show that he, like his maste