he pope as chief tyrant and Philip under-lord--he must obey
the pope; the people must obey him. To Philip these conclusions were
axiomatic, and therefore not subjects for debate. That all his
subjects did not readily concede to him the right to be the director of
their conscience was looked upon as unreasoning stubbornness, to be
punished with block and rack, and prison and stake.

Philip is anomalous. We can not get into a mind like his. Statesman
he was not; for the nurture of national wealth, such as Cromwell and
Caesar planned for, he was incapable of. His idea of statesmanship was
that his kingdom was a cask, into which he should insert a spigot and
draw. This was government of an ideal order, Philip being judge. The
divine right of kings was a foregone conclusion, antagonism to which
was heresy. Here let us not blame Philip; for this was the temper of
his era, and to have anticipated in him larger views than those of his
contemporaries is not just. To this notion was his whole nature keyed.
He commanded the Netherlands to be faithful Catholics. What more was
needed? Let this be the end. So reasoned the Spanish autocrat; and
fealty to religious convictions on his subjects' part seemed to him
nothing but settled obstinacy, to be burned out with martyrs' fires or
cut out with swords swung by Alva's cruel hands.

Philip was the ideal bigot. How far bigotry is native to the soul may
well be a question for grave discussion, demanding possibly more
attention than has been accorded it hitherto. And how far is bigotry
to be looked on as a vice? Though this question will be laughed down,
as if to ask it were to stultify the asker; but not so fast, since
bigotry is not all bad. To hold an opinion is considered a virtue. To
hold an opinion of righteousness against all odds for conscience' sake,
we rightly account heroism. Is not a lover or a patriot a bigot? Or
if not, where does he miss of being? We are to hold opinion and not
become opinionated, a thing discovered to be difficult in an extreme
degree.

Bigotry is an excess of a virtue, and to pass from conscientiousness to
bigotry is not a long nor difficult journey. All views are not equally
true. This every sane mind holds as self-evident. There is a
liberalism at this point which would run, if let go its logical course,
to the sophist fallacy that truth did not exist, and therefore one view
was as just as another--an attitude repugnant to all fin