Historical and Political Essays | Page 6

to which existing forces or
tendencies are moving and who, judged by their distant forecasts, will
appear much wiser than their contemporaries. It is the natural bias of
the historian to place them perhaps higher than they deserve. This
power of just speculative foresight is no very rare gift, and in public
affairs it is often as much a hindrance as a help. Forms of government
and other great religious or political institutions, like the products of
nature, have their times of immaturity, of growth, of ripeness and of
decay, and it by no means follows because they at last become
indefensible, that they have not during many generations discharged
useful functions and that those who first assailed and condemned them
are deserving of praise. Not unfrequently, indeed, a public man must
take his choice whether by fully identifying himself with the existing

conditions around him and employing them to the best advantages he
will lead a useful and practical life, or whether as an advanced thinker
he will associate himself with the cause that is one day to conquer,
place himself in the van of progress and at the sacrifice of much present
influence deserve the credit of foresight.
Historians will probably always judge men and policies by their net
results, by their final consequences, and this judgment is on the whole
the most sure that we can attain. It is not, however, altogether infallible.
Apart from the question of the moral character of the methods
employed which a good historian should never omit from his
consideration, success is not always a decisive proof of sagacity.
Chance and the unexpected play a great part in human affairs, and a
judgment founded on a perfectly just estimate of probabilities will often
prove wrong. The result which was the least probable will come true,
some wholly unforeseen and unforeseeable occurrence will scatter
dangers that were very real and give a new complexion to events. The
rise of some pre-eminently great or of some pre-eminently mischievous
personage among the guiding influences of a nation will derange the
most sagacious calculations, and the reckless gambler or the obtuse
obstructionist may prove more right than the most cautious, the most
skilful, the most farseeing statesman.
A fatal and very common error is that of judging the actions of the past
by the moral standard of our own age. This is especially the error of
novices in history and of those who without any wide and general
culture devote themselves exclusively to a single period. While the
primary and essential elements of right and wrong remain unchanged,
nothing is more certain than that the standard or ideal of duty is
continually altering. A very humane man in another age may have done
things which would now be regarded as atrociously barbarous. A very
virtuous man may have done things which would now indicate extreme
profligacy. We seldom indeed make sufficient allowance for the degree
in which the judgments and dispositions of even the best man are
coloured by the moral tone of the time or society in which they live.
And what is true of individuals is equally true of nations. In order to
judge equitably the legislation of any people, we must always consider

corresponding contemporary legislations and ideas. When this is
neglected our judgments of the past become wholly false. How often,
for example, has such a subject as the history of the penal laws against
Irish Catholics been treated without the smallest reference to the
contemporary laws against Protestants that existed in every Catholic
nation and the contemporary laws against Catholics that existed in
almost every Protestant country in Europe. How often have the English
commercial restrictions on the American colonies been treated as if
they were instances of extreme and exceptional tyranny, while a more
extended knowledge would show that they were simply the expression
of ideas of commercial policy and about the relation of dependencies to
the mother-country which then almost universally prevailed.
It is not merely the moral standard that changes. A corresponding
change takes place in the moral type, or, in other words, in the class of
virtues which is especially cultivated and especially valued. To know
an age aright we should above all things seek to understand its ideal,
the direction in which the stream of its self-sacrifice and moral energy
naturally flowed. Few things in history are more interesting and more
valuable than a study of the causes that produced and modified these
successive ideals. Thus in the moral type of pagan antiquity the civic
virtues occupied incomparably the foremost place. The idea of a
supremely good man was essentially that of a man of action, of a man
whose whole life was devoted to the service of his country. The life and
death of Cato were for