In England, Cromwell stood for religious toleration, so far as he was able. Fanatics who thought themselves incarnations of the Saviour, or prophets of a new dispensation, or who indulged in indecent or seditious conduct, or who disturbed the public peace by breaking into regular churches, of course had to be suppressed. Nowadays, most offenders of this type would be ignored, and, if not, they would simply be arrested by the police, in the course of the ordinary exercise of the police power, just as any other disturbers of the peace are arrested. In those days, however, such offenders would have been punished with death in Spain, Italy, or Austria; and, indeed, in most continental countries. In the England of Cromwell, they were merely temporarily imprisoned. The attitude of mind, both of the public generally and of the best and most religious people, toward Unitarians, Socinians, and those who would nowadays be called Free-Thinkers, was purely mediæval; and even Cromwell could only moderate the persecution to which they were subjected. But these were minor exceptions. For the majority of the people in England, there was religious liberty; and for the bulk of the minority, though there was not complete religious liberty, there was a nearer approach to it than obtained in Continental Europe. In Ireland, on the other hand, the public exercise of the faith of the enormous majority was prohibited, and their religious teachers expelled. There is a popular belief that under Cromwell all Irishmen were expelled from three-fourths of the island, and driven into Connaught, their places being taken by English and Scotch immigrants. While exceedingly cruel, this would have been an understandable policy, and would have resulted in the substitution of one race and one creed for another race and another creed throughout the major part of the island. What was actually done, however, combined cruelty with ultimate inefficiency; it caused great immediate suffering, while perpetuating exactly the conditions against which it was supposed to provide. The Catholic landholders were, speaking generally, driven into Connaught, and the priests expelled, while the peasants, laborers, and artisans were left as they were, but of course deprived of all the leadership which could give them a lift upward. In Ulster there had been a considerable substitution of one race for the other, among the actual tillers and occupiers of the soil. Under Cromwell, the change elsewhere consisted in the bringing in of alien landlords. In other words, to the already existing antagonism of race, creed, and speech, was added the antagonism of caste. The property-holder, the landlord, the man of means, was an Englishman by race and speech, and a Protestant by faith; while the mass of the laborers roundabout him were Catholic Celts who spoke Erse. Ultra admirers of Cromwell and the Puritans have actually spoken as if this plan, provided only that it had been allowed to work long enough, would