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ing continually less numerous; though the agricultural regions were still much more populous than the towns, and so remained until the end of the eighteenth century. On every side commerce was the one prevailing object, and to that all was subordinated. Religion naturally adapted itself to the tone of the time; and the Protestantism of England became what it has ever since remained—essentially a creed for the successful trafficker in wares or in souls.
All through Europe the system of to-day in credit, competition, and national rivalry was practically established, and the era of foreign conquest and colonial empire began. But still the conflict of the middle-class against the king and the landed aristocracy loomed ahead. Wise sovereigns had shown true policy in yielding to and even in fostering the growing power. Others, perhaps more upright but certainly less dexterous, precipitated the struggle. In England it first took shape in serious organised warfare. The bloody civil war of the seventeenth century was clearly a struggle between the ideas of divine right and landowner supremacy on the one side, against the sanctity of profit and freedom for the middle-class on the other. The economical victory already gained in the counting-house was but confirmed in the field; and the reign of Cromwell served as an introduction to the thorough middle-class rule of William III.
From this time forward the question was merely how long it would take for the middle-class to establish in outward seeming that supremacy which, in regard to production, they had already to a large extent secured. Their power was still somewhat
