where, almost invisible himself, he had so long
played a leading part. It may not be entirely useless, however, to throw
a parting glance at a character which it has been one of the main objects
of this work, throughout its whole course, to portray. My theme has been
the reign of Philip II., because, as the less is included in the greater,
the whole of that reign, with the exception of a few episodes, is
included in the vast movement out of which the Republic of the United
Netherlands was born and the assailed independence of France and England
consolidated. The result of Philip's efforts to establish a universal
monarchy was to hasten the decline of the empire which he had inherited,
by aggravating the evils which had long made that downfall inevitable.

It is from no abstract hatred to monarchy that I have dwelt with emphasis
upon the crimes of this king, and upon the vices of the despotic system,
as illustrated during his lifetime. It is not probable that the military,
monarchical system--founded upon conquests achieved by barbarians and
pirates of a distant epoch over an effete civilization and over antique
institutions of intolerable profligacy--will soon come to an end in the
older world. And it is the business of Europeans so to deal with the
institutions of their inheritance or their choice as to ensure their
steady melioration and to provide for the highest interests of the
people. It matters comparatively little by what name a government is
called, so long as the intellectual and moral development of mankind, and
the maintenance of justice among individuals, are its leading principles.
A government, like an individual, may remain far below its ideal; but,
without an ideal, governments and individuals are alike contemptible. It
is tyranny only--whether individual or popular--that utters its feeble
sneers at the ideologists, as if mankind were brutes to whom instincts
were all in all and ideas nothing. Where intellect and justice are
enslaved by that unholy trinity--Force; Dogma, and Ignorance--the
tendency of governments, and of those subjected to them, must of
necessity be retrograde and downward.

There can be little doubt to those who observe the movements of mankind
during the course of the fourteen centuries since the fall of the Roman
Empire--a mere fragment of human history--that its progress, however
concealed or impeded, and whether for weal or woe, is towards democracy;
for it is the tendency of scien