A
few leading spirits on either side had been animated by larger
aspirations after Christian unity. But self-defence against aggressive
Romanism had been the main support of all projects of combination. In
the eighteenth century there was plenty of the monotonous indifferentism
which bears a dreary superficial resemblance to unity, but there was
very little in the prevalent tone of thought which was adapted to
encourage its genuine growth. And even if it had been otherwise--if the
National Church had ever so much widened and deepened its hold in
England, and a sound, substantial unity had gained ground, such as gains
strength out of the very differences which it contains--insular feeling
would still, in all probability, have been too exclusive or uninformed
to care much, when outward pressure was removed, for ties of sympathy
which should extend beyond the Channel and include Frenchmen or Germans
within their hold. Quite early in the century we find Fleetwood[338] and
Calamy[339] complaining of a growing indifference towards Protestants
abroad. A generation later this indifference had become more general.
Parliamentary grants to 'poor French Protestant refugee clergy' and
'poor French Protestant laity' were made in the annual votes of supply
almost up to the present reign,[340] but these were only items in the
public charity; they no longer bore any significance.

In 1751 an Act was brought forward for the general naturalisation of
foreign Protestants resident in England. Much interest had been felt in
a similar Bill which had come before the House in 1709. But the
promoters of the earlier measure had been chiefly animated by the sense
of close religious affinity in those to whom the privilege was offered;
and those who resisted it did so from a fear that it might tend to
changes in the English Church of which they disapproved. At the later
period these sympathies and these fears, so far as they existed at all,
were wholly subordinate to other influences. The Bill was supported on
the ground of the drain upon the population which had resulted from the
late war; it was vehemently resisted from a fear that it would unduly
encourage emigration, and have an unfavourable effect upon English
labour.[341] Considerations less secular than these had little weight.
Religious life was circulating but feebly in the Church and country
generally; it had no surplus energy to spare for sisterly interest in
other communions outside the