England, Holland, the Navarre party in France, and a considerable part of
Germany were contending for national unity and independence, for vested
and recorded rights. Much farther than they themselves or their
chieftains dreamed those millions of men were fighting for a system
of temperate human freedom; for that emancipation under just laws from
arbitrary human control, which is the right--however frequently trampled
upon--of all classes, conditions, and races of men; and for which it is
the instinct of the human race to continue to struggle under every
disadvantage, and often against all hope, throughout the ages, so long
as the very principle of humanity shall not be extinguished in those
who have been created after their Maker's image.

It may safely be doubted whether the great Queen, the Bearnese, Alexander
Farnese, or his master, with many of their respective adherents, differed
very essentially from each other in their notions of the right divine and
the right of the people. But history has shown us which of them best
understood the spirit of the age, and had the keenest instinct to keep
themselves in the advance by moving fastest in the direction whither it
was marshalling all men. There were many, earnest, hard-toiling men in
those days, men who believed in the work to which they devoted their
lives. Perhaps, too, the devil-worshippers did their master's work as
strenuously and heartily as any, and got fame and pelf for their pains.
Fortunately, a good portion of what they so laboriously wrought for has
vanished into air; while humanity has at least gained something from
those who deliberately or instinctively conformed themselves to her
eternal laws.