The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

22 THE HOUSE OF INDUSTRY

submerge local fellowships, but the law of fellowship is supreme.

Certain it is, however, that political policy that runs counter to economic necessities is bound to fail. Thus, on the death of Elizabeth, we find the Stuart Kings accepting the hegemony of France, accepting pensions from France, economically favouring France, to the incredible loss of English trade. The predominant influence that sent Charles I. to the scaffold may have been, so to speak, pure Puritanism ; but the City of London was not unduly grieved about it and I do not doubt that the brave prentice boys of London knew the minds of their masters.

Cromwell restored the trade policy of Elizabeth, whom he greatly admired. We find him, to the utter bewilderment of his Puritan supporters, making terms with Catholic Spain and waging war upon Protestant Holland. Gardiner, the great historian of the period, is shocked. Gone are the spiritual and ideal aims of the Civil War; we see a ‘‘ new commercial policy which did not profess to have more than material aims.

The intention of the framers, by the very nature of the case, was not to make England better or nobler, but to make her richer.”

If Gardiner had lived long enough, he might perhaps have understood the case for the separation of the economic from the political functions. Cromwell had more than a gleam of this truth, as is evident not only in his dealings with the Vaudois but when he was finally compelled to