Note 39 — Chapter XI · THE REFORMATION, POLITICALLY CONSIDERED

In fine, the Reformation failed in Italy because of the economic and political conditions, as it failed in Spain; as it failed in a large part of Germany; as it would have failed in Holland had Philip II made his capital there (in which case Spain might very well have become Protestant); and as it would have failed in England had Elizabeth been a Catholic, like her sister. During the sixty years from 1520 to 1580, thousands of Italian Protestants left Italy, as thousands of Spanish Protestants fled from Spain, and thousands of English Protestants from England in the reign of Mary.39 To make the outcome in Italy and Spain a basis for a theory of racial tendency in religion, or racial defect of “public spirit,” is to explain history in a fashion which, in physical science, has long been discredited as an argument in a circle.