The writer then enters upon an exposition of all the persecutions, all the acts of injustice, all the evils of every kind that the reformers have to suffer. He lays the blame of them, as he has just said, upon the whole French community, the noblesse, the commons, the magistracy, as well as the Catholic priests and monks; he enumerates a multitude of special facts in support of his plaints. “Good God!” he cries, “that there should be no class, no estate in France, from which we can hope for any relief! None from which we may not fear lest ruin come upon us!” And he ends by saying, “Stem, then, sir, with your good will and your authority, the tide of our troubles. Direct your counsels towards giving us some security. Accustom your kingdom to at least endure us, if it will not love us. We demand of your Majesty an edict which may give us enjoyment of that which is common to all your subjects, that is to say, of far less than you have granted to your enemies, your rebels of the League.” We will not stop to inquire whether the matters stated in these plaints are authentic or disputable, accurate or exaggerated; it is probable that they contain a great deal of truth, and that, even under Henry IV., the Protestants had many sufferings to endure and disregarded rights to recover. The mistake they made and the injustice they showed consisted in not taking into, account all the good that Henry IV. had done them and was daily doing them, and in calling upon him, at a moment’s notice, to secure to them by an edict all the good that it was not in his power to do them. We purpose just to give a brief summary of the ameliorations introduced into their position under him, even before the edict of Nantes, and to transfer the responsibility for all they still lacked to the cause indicated by themselves in their plaints, when they take to task all the French on the Catholic side, who, in the sixteenth century, disregarded in France the rights of creed and of religious life, just as the Protestants themselves disregarded them in England so far as the Catholics were concerned.