Acton on the Edict of Nantes

Henry IV closed the era of religious wars by granting liberty to Protestants on terms intended to ensure permanence. All offices, civil and military, were thrown open; they retained their cities of refuge, and acquired the machinery of equal justice, by the expedient of mixed tribunals. . . .

The Edict of Nantes forms an epoch in the progress of toleration, that is, in the history of liberty, which is the marrow of all modern History. . . . It pacified France and afforded to the minority sufficient strength and safety, not on the basis of religious equality, but in the shape of circumscribed and definite privilege. . . . The government made concessions of a purely practical kind, which might be revoked thereafter, if the Huguenots became less formidable and the crown more powerful. . . . The power of the Protestants was acknowledged, not the prerogative of conscience. . . . It was a settlement, not a development.