DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

( 12 ) ‘we are of the nature of the lion, and cannot descend to the destruction of mice and such small beasts.’ With the same generosity, though a Pro- testant she sentenced Catholics to death only when they were implicated in plots against her person, and, unlike her predecessor, devoted her energies to the maintenance of peace, to the defence of the country, and to the establishment of order. The severe training she had received from adversity, and the melancholy spectacle of the then degraded state of England, taught her to recognise that peace was essential to the prosperity of the country, and that the interests of the monarch and of the people were identical. Thus we must look back to her reion for the dawn of those reforms which led to the religious and political independence of the people of England. On the one hand she assisted the people in discovering and using their strength, and stimulated those commercial undertakings which from private became national enterprises, bringing prosperity, fame, and glory to the country ; on the other, she took effective measures to guard against the ageres- sion of the most potent enemies of England — Spain and France, both burning with centuries of Jealousy and hatred. Spain had possession of Holland and Belgium—then the biggest marts in the world—the West Indies, the greater portion