Historical and Political Essays

Historical and Political Essays, by William

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Title: Historical and Political Essays
Author: William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Release Date: January 17, 2007 [eBook #20389]
Language: English
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+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original | | document have been preserved. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this | | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this | | document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+

HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
by
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY

Longmans, Green, and Co. 39 Paternoster Row, London New York, Bombay, and Calcutta 1908 All rights reserved

CONTENTS
PAGE THOUGHTS ON HISTORY 1
THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY 21
THE EMPIRE: ITS VALUE AND ITS GROWTH 43
IRELAND IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY 68
FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 90
CARLYLE'S MESSAGE TO HIS AGE 104
ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS 116
MADAME DE STA?L 131
THE PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR ROBERT PEEL 151
THE FIFTEENTH EARL OF DERBY 200
MR. HENRY REEVE 242
DEAN MILMAN 249
QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE 275
OLD-AGE PENSIONS 298
INDEX 319

The Essays 'Thoughts on History,' 'Formative Influences,' 'Madame de Sta?l,' 'Israel among the Nations,' 'Old-age Pensions,' appeared originally in the American Review, the Forum--the first under the title of 'The Art of Writing History'; 'Ireland in the Light of History,' in the North American Review. Those on Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Henry Reeve, and Dean Milman were written for the Edinburgh Review. The Essay on 'Queen Victoria as a Moral Force' appeared first in the Pall Mall Magazine; 'Carlyle's Message to His Age' in the Contemporary Review. 'The Political Value of History' was a presidential address delivered before the Birmingham and Midland Institute; 'The Empire,' an inaugural address delivered at the Imperial Institute; and the 'Memoir of the Fifteenth Earl of Derby' was originally prefixed to the volumes of his speeches and addresses.

HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS

THOUGHTS ON HISTORY
I do not propose in this paper to enter into any general inquiry about the best method of writing history. Such inquiries appear to me to be of no real value, for there are many different kinds of history which should be written in many different ways. A diplomatic, a military, or a parliamentary history, dealing with a short period or a particular episode, must evidently be treated in a very different spirit from an extended history where the object of the historian should be to describe the various aspects of the national life, and to trace through long periods of time the ultimate causes of national progress and decay. The history of religion, of art, of literature, of social and industrial development, of scientific progress, have all their different methods. A writer who treats of some great revolution that has transformed human affairs should deal largely in retrospect, for the most important part of his task is to explain the long course of events that prepared and produced the catastrophe; while a writer who treats of more normal times will do well to plunge rapidly into his theme.
Historians, too, differ widely in their special talents, and these talents are never altogether combined. The power of vividly realising and portraying men, or societies or modes of thought that have long since passed away; the power of arranging and combining great multitudes of various facts; the power of judging with discrimination, accuracy, and impartiality conflicting arguments or evidence; the power of tracing through the long course of events the true chain of cause and effect, selecting the facts that are most valuable and significant and explaining the relation between general causes and particular effects, are all very different and belong to different types of mind. It is idle to expect a writer with the gifts of a Clarendon, a Kinglake, or a Froude to write history in the spirit of a Hallam or a Grote. Writers who are eminently distinguished for wide, patient, and accurate research have sometimes little power either of describing or interpreting the facts which they collect. All that can be said with any profit is that each writer will do best if he follows the natural bent of his genius, and that he should select those kinds or periods of history in which his special gifts have most scope and the qualities in which he is deficient are least needed.
It is the fashion of a modern school of historical writers to deplore what they call the intrusion of literature into history. History,