The mines of Mexico, with some small supplies from South America, furnished the sinews of those religious wars that desolated Europe after the Reformation, and enabled Spain to maintain her vast armaments in the Spanish peninsula, and in her Italian kingdoms and principalities, and in her Belgian provinces. Spain was able to subsidize the armies of the Catholic League in France, and the forces of the Catholic Princes of Germany, and to turn back the tide of the Protestant Reformation after it had entered Italy, overrun Navarre, and reached her own frontier. The gold of California and Australia has furnished England the sinews by which she has set on foot armies, and subsidized nations in the present crusade against Russia.
At the time of the Reformation, all the precious metals were poured into the lap of a fanatical Catholic government; now they are in Protestant hands, and all, at last, find their resting-place, even those of Mexico, in the London market; while out of English Protestantism has our republic arisen, which is still united to her by a common language, a common religion, and commercial relations, so that the London market regulates the value of our stocks and the price of the food we eat. But our common Protestantism is not the Protestantism of the Reformation: that was the Protestantism of princes, and every where rested for support upon state patronage, the people, in that epoch, having no political existence. Protestantism was then a state institution, and soon lost its vitality in such an unnatural alliance. The Protestantism of our day is the Protestantism of dissent, which rejects state support, yet has shown itself more powerful than governments. It has restored peace to Ireland, and made its proselytes there by tens of thousands after the last British regiment was withdrawn. It has rent in twain the Church of Scotland, and is fast revolutionizing