or to guard against its attacks. The weaker the hand that held the sceptre,
and the more the Protestants and Roman Catholics felt they were left
to themselves, the more vigilant necessarily became their watchfulness,
and the greater their distrust of each other. It was enough that the Emperor
was ruled by Jesuits, and was guided by Spanish counsels, to excite
the apprehension of the Protestants, and to afford a pretext for hostility.
The rash zeal of the Jesuits, which in the pulpit and by the press
disputed the validity of the religious peace, increased this distrust,
and caused their adversaries to see a dangerous design
in the most indifferent measures of the Roman Catholics.
Every step taken in the hereditary dominions of the Emperor,
for the repression of the reformed religion, was sure to draw the attention
of all the Protestants of Germany; and this powerful support
which the reformed subjects of Austria met, or expected to meet with
from their religious confederates in the rest of Germany,
was no small cause of their confidence, and of the rapid success of Matthias.
It was the general belief of the Empire, that they owed
the long enjoyment of the religious peace merely to the difficulties
in which the Emperor was placed by the internal troubles in his dominions,
and consequently they were in no haste to relieve him from them.

Almost all the affairs of the Diet were neglected,
either through the procrastination of the Emperor, or through the fault
of the Protestant Estates, who had determined to make no provision
for the common wants of the Empire till their own grievances were removed.
These grievances related principally to the misgovernment of the Emperor;
the violation of the religious treaty, and the presumptuous usurpations
of the Aulic Council, which in the present reign had begun to extend
its jurisdiction at the expense of the Imperial Chamber. Formerly,
in all disputes between the Estates, which could not be settled by club law,