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OF THE REFORMATION. 85beyond the limits of We this treatise. proceed, then,, to theexamination of our second question; viz. In what mannerdid it acquire an influence upon the mutual relations of thestates of Europe ; or, in other words, upon the system of apolitical balance of power?As this influence, however, was not always of the sameimportance, nor of the same kind, it is requisite to a clearview of the subject, that we should divide it into severalperiods.And we shall hereafter see, that, in almost everycase, the middle and the end of the century afford data forour division ;not merely in point of time, but according todistinctions in the subjectitself. We shall thus have jiveperiods, of which the first will embrace the times of CharlesV. and Francis L, or the first half of the sixteenth century ;the second, those of PhilipII. and Elizabeth, or the latterhalf of the same century ;the third, those of Richelieu andGustavus Adolphus, being that of the thirty years' war, orthe first half of the seventeenth ;the fourth, those of LewisXIV. and William III., or the second half of that century;while the last, in which there is no need of accurate division, will take in the eighteenth century generally.FIRST PERIOD, 15171556.After the commencement of the sixteenth century, thestates of Europe, by interweaving their interests, and by thealliances and counter-alliances which were thus caused,formed a political system in a much higher sense of the wordthan had been the case during the middle ages. The increase of civilization, by creating so many new sources ofexcitement, necessarily causes a greater complication of relationsamong the states which it affects, and is of itself sufficient to produce that character of unity, which gives aninterest to the history of modern Europe. In an aggregateof states, too, such as the European, the principle of abalance of power became the more speedily developed, onaccount of the greatdifferences of strength which existedamongst them. It was the immediate interest of all to prevent any single state from acquiring such a pre-eminenceas would enable it to prescribe laws to the rest; and in sucha case, the more unequal the power of the individual memhers,the more frequent are the alliances ; and, consequently,