He established the
most rigorous censorship of the press, and would allow no foreign work,
unexamined, to enter the realm. He established in Bohemia the fanatic
order of the Jesuits, and intrusted to them the education of the young.
It is often impossible to reconcile the inconsistencies of the human
heart. Ferdinand, while guilty of such atrocities, affected, on some
points, the most scrupulous punctilios of honor. The clearly-defined
privileges which had been promised the Protestants, he would not
infringe in the least. They were permitted to give their children
Protestant teachers, and to conduct worship in their own way. He
effected his object of changing Bohemia from an elective to a hereditary
monarchy, and thus there was established in Bohemia the renowned
doctrine of regal legitimacy; of the _divine right_ of kings to govern.
With such a bloody hand was the doctrine of the sovereignty, not of the
_people_, but of the _nobles_, overthrown in Bohemia. The nobles are not
much to be commiserated, for they trampled upon the people as
mercilessly as the king did upon them. It is merely another illustration
of the old and melancholy story of the strong devouring the weak: the
owl takes the wren; the eagle the owl.
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