and Protestantism was well calculated to exaggerate to a very alarming
extent. The coquetry and affectation of the Queen, which have been held
to detract largely from her claim to be considered a woman of sense and
capacity, become natural in her and intelligible to us when we consider
them in connection with the succession question. She could not
positively declare that she would under no circumstances become a
wife, but at the same time she was firm in her heart never to have a
husband. So she followed the politician's common plan: she compromised.
She allowed her hand to be sought by every empty-handed and
empty-headed and hollow-hearted prince or noble in Europe, determined
that each in his turn should go empty away; and so she played off
princes against her own people, until the course of years had left no
doubt that she had become, and must ever remain, indeed "a barren
stock." Her conduct, which is generally regarded as having been
ridiculous, and which may have been so in its details, and looked upon
only from its feminine side, throws considerable light upon the entire
field of English politics under the Tudor dynasty.

If it could be established that the conduct of Henry VIII. toward his
people, his church, his nobles, and his wives was regulated solely with
reference to the succession question, and by his desire to preserve
the peace of his kingdom, we believe that few men would be disposed to
condemn most of those of his acts that have been long admitted to
blacken his memory, and which have placed him almost at the very head
of the long roll of heartless tyrants. That the end justifies the
means is a doctrine which everybody condemns by word of mouth, but the
practice founded upon which almost all men approve in their hearts,
whenever it applies to their own schemes, or to schemes the success of
which promises to benefit them, either individually or in the mass. As
the apologists of the French Jacobins have argued that their favorites