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OF THE REFORMATION.be directed to subjectsin immediate connexion with, it, andreligion thus became the favourite topicof debate. But aswith activity a feelingof independence and a fondness forinquiry were also produced, the powers which had beencalled into existence were soon engaged upon other pursuits ;the horizon had been expanded in every direction; andamidst the freedom of opinionthus created, whatever boreupon civil society, its constitution, and perfection, becamethe subject of universal attention. In this, Protestantismwas undeniably far advanced beyond Catholicism.The great question,as to the relations in which the government and the people should stand to each other, received its first practical answer in the Protestant countriesof Europe and amidst all the modifications which the forms;of their constitutions assumed,it was in them for the firsttime plainly perceivedthat the interests of the rulers andthe subjectsare one and the same. Upto the Reformationthese had been formally distinct in all the greatstates ofEurope the ; people appeared to exist only that they mightfurnish taxes ;the government,that it itsmight indulge caprices; even the internal policy of Lewis XII., althoughjustly appreciated, was directed rather byhis heart than hishead, and remained in those times without imitators. Butthe Reformation, by restoring the freedom of men's minds,imparted to them a loftier character and laid the found;ations of that nobler political freedom, which may be as perfectly coexistent with the most absolute monarchy as with arepublic because itdepends not upon the form of the con;stitution, but upon the spirit of the government and of thenation. The rejectionof the maxim, that the people wereto be considered merely as instruments, and the open acknowledgment on the part of the chief Protestant princes,that they enjoyedtheir dignity solelyfor the advantage ofthe people, gaverise to that more perfect system of politicaleconomy, by which, as a general feature, the majorityof theProtestant states have been distinguished above the Catholic,However absurd it would be to attempt to point out inthe Protestant religion,the causes of the erection of suchgovernments as those of Great Britian and of Prussia, it isequally certain that, without Protestantism, such constitutionsand such modes of administration could never have been