Divers questions which were not connected either with belief as a whole or with the principle of belief combined to make the Protestant minority by far more moral than the Catholic majority. Perhaps the social disadvantage attached to Protestantism was the strongest reason for its superiority. When a practically powerless minority is surrounded and kept under surveillance by a powerful majority, unless pride and vanity have blinded its prudence the minority keeps careful watch of its actions. By a natural process minorities of agitators cast cowardly and selfish members out of their ranks; in other words, they weed out the useless, the feeble, the derogatory elements, and the elements which, being dependent upon the favour of the public, or susceptible to public criticism, flinch if subjected to unfavourable judgment. The Protestant minority eliminated all who, fearing the ridicule or the animosity of the Court, shrank from standing shoulder to shoulder with the men in the fighting ranks of Protestantism. Impelled by personal interest, the converts to the reform movement went back to the Catholic majority. There were so many advantages attendant upon the profession of Catholicism that with few exceptions the great lords declared their faith in the religion powerful to endow them with military commands and with governmental and other lucrative positions. The Protestant ranks were thinned, but the few who stood their ground were the picked men of the reform movement. The ranks of the Catholics were swelled by the hypocrites and the turncoats who had deserted from the army of the Protestants. The Protestants gained morally by the defection of their converts, and the Catholics lost; the few who sustained Protestantism were sincere; the fact of their profession proved it.