Spain appeared axiomatic, final, and ordained as by a law of nature. Yet during the Middle Ages we were on very friendly terms with the Spaniards, even up to the early years of the reign of Henry VIII. The alienation between us began somewhat suddenly in 1528. It lasted up till 1656, at any rate, for in that year Cromwell still could say to the House of Commons that "the Spaniard is your enemy, naturally and providentially." This antagonism, however, tended to decline in 1660, and, in the next year, Pepys noted in his Diary that now "we do naturally all love the Spanish." For certain reasons, however, the sense of antipathy revived in the eighteenth century, though the course of the nineteenth, since Trafalgar, has seen us resume our mediæval disposition of amity towards Spain, happily sealed in our time by a royal marriage.
In a word, history altogether belies the view that nations are fundamentally hostile. Nor can democracy be charged with any such impulse, if our improved relationship with Spain and Russia, since the introduction of democratic ideas into both those countries, be borne in mind.
Another argument employed to establish the warlike disposition of democracy is drawn from economics. European democracy may, in its economic aspect, be defined as, in the first place, an attempt upon the part of the masses to procure a fair equality of fortune with the privileged or propertied classes. For instance, Taine said that the real French Revolution consisted in this that,
