cure toleration for their own nationals and the converts of their
Churches in heathen countries where the people could not be coerced or
lectured with impunity. In the next place they had to achieve toleration
among themselves.

Toleration among the Christian Churches--the so-called peace of
Christendom--became necessary owing to the struggle between the
Reformation and the Counter-Reformation; but it took the Thirty Years'
War to prove its necessity. The proof is embodied for all time in the
Peace of Westphalia--chiefly in the Treaty of Osnabruck, which was
signed in 1648, at the same time as the famous Treaty of Muenster. The
ostensible effect of the Peace of Westphalia was to place Roman
Catholicism and Protestantism on an equal legal footing throughout
Europe. A secondary effect was to give a very marked stimulus to the
cause of Religious Liberty generally. We may recognise its first fruits
in, among other things, the campaign for unrestricted religious
toleration during the Commonwealth in England, and its application to
the Jews.[2]

It was not until 1814 that this principle was extended by Treaty beyond
the pale of Christendom. This was in the Protocol of the four allied
Powers--Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria--by which the union
of Belgium with Holland was recognised. The return of the House of
Orange to the Netherlands after the fall of Napoleon had entailed the
promulgation of a new Constitution, which, in view of the democratic
traditions of the French occupation, was necessarily of a liberal type.
Among its concessions was an article granting the fullest religious
liberty. When the Powers were called upon to sanction the union with
Belgium, they did so on condition that the new Constitution should be
applied to the whole country, and, in view of the religious differences
prevailing, emphasised the article on Religious Liberty. This is the
form in which it appears in the Protocol:--

* * * * *

Art. I.--Cette reunion devra etre entiere et complete, de facon que les
2 Pays ne forment qu'un seul et meme Etat regi par la Constitution deja
etablie en Hollande, et qui sera modifiee, d'un commun accord, d'apres
les nouvelles circonstances.

Art. II.--Il ne sera rien innove aux Articles de cette Constitution qui
assurent a tous les Cultes une protection et une faveur egales, et
garantissent l'admission de tous les Citoyens, quelle que soit leur
croyance religieuse, au