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shaped the international relations of the great states of Europe. The isolation into which stern circumstances had forced England, was regarded at the time as a position of extreme weakness internationally, and caused the gravest apprehension on the part of English statesmen. Elizabeth herself, certainly neither planned, nor desired such a result. She simply waited, and refused to act, because she knew not what to do. And, as often happens at such crises, inaction was the supremest wisdom.
A second stage in the development of British policy Mr. Seeley finds in the administration of the Protector. Cromwell, like Elizabeth, had no foreign family interests to further. He could not hope to make the succession of his son more secure by a brilliant foreign alliance. But, unlike Elizabeth, he saw himself at the head of the greatest military state of Europe. He was incapable of forming and carrying out any vast and consistent plan of international combination, such as that of William of Orange, but he had a firm grasp upon the funda- mental principles upon which the Protestant states of Europe rested. Hence, when he found himself at last in a position to affect the inter- national relations of Europe, he at once put an end to the fratricidal Dutch war on the one hand, and, on the other, sought to combine in a league against Spain, the Protestant states with France, who then, strange as it may seem to us today, stood for the principle of tolera- tion and equal Protestant rights. It is admitted that this scheme of Cromwell's was shortsighted. From the point of view of the modern statesman, it was a stupendous blunder. It so crippled Spain, that it left France without the wholesome check of her old rival, and laid the foundation of the future power of Louis XIV. What Cromwell would have done after the success of his great league against Spain had been assured, we do not know. He died soon after the first stage had been reached. Dunkirk passed into the hands of the French. The advant- ages to England were allowed to slip from the witless hands of the restored Stuarts. But looking out upon the field of European politics when the name of Gustavus Adolphus was still green, and the ink was scarcely dry upon the treaties of Osnabriick and Miinster, when the services of Henry IV and of Richelieu in the interests of toleration were still fresh in the mind of Europe, such a league, in such com- pany and under such a leadership, was altogether natural. It stands out, moreover, in such noble contrast with the contemptible policy followed by the two Stuarts who preceded Cromwell, or the two Stuarts
