134 THE PROPER STUDY OF HISTORY ANTICIPATES EXPERIENCE.

mon interest? What could be more foolish; you will think that I soften the term too much, and you will be in the right to think so: what could be more foolish, than the attempt of a party in Britain to protract a war so ruinous to their country, without any reason that they durst avow, except that of wreaking the resentments of Europe on France, and that of uniting the imperial and Spanish crowns on an Austrian head? one of which was to purchase revenge at a price too dear, and the other was to expose the liberties of Europe to new dangers, by the conclusion of a war which had been made to assert and secure them?

I have dwelt the longer on the conduct of those who promoted, and of those who opposed, the negotiations of the peace made at Utrecht, and on the comparison of the measure pursued by the queen with that which she might have pursued, because the great benefit we ought to reap from the study of history, cannot be reaped unless we accustom ourselves to compare the conduct of different governments and different parties, in the same conjunctures, and to observe the measures they did pursue, and the measures they might have pursued, with the actual consequences that followed one, and the possible or probable consequences, that might have followed the other. By this exercise of the mind, the study of history anticipates, as it were, experience, as I have observed in one of the first of these letters, and prepares us for action. If this consideration should not plead a sufficient excuse for my prolixity on this head, I have one more to add that may. A rage of warring possessed a party in our nation till the death of the late queen; a rage of negotiating has possessed the same party of men ever since. You have seen the consequences of one; you see actually those of the other. The rage

of warring confirmed the beggary of our nation, which began as early as the revolution; but then it gave, in the last war, reputation to our arms and our councils too. For though I think, and must always think, that the principle on which we acted after departing from that laid down in the grand alliance of 1701 was wrong; yet must we confess that it was pursued wisely, as well as boldly. The rage of negotiating has been a chargeable rage likewise, at least as chargeable in its proportion. Far from paying our debts, contracted in war, they continue much the same, after three and twenty years of peace. The taxes that oppress our mercantile interest the most are still in mortgage; and those that oppress the landed interest the most, instead of being laid on extraordinary occasions, are become the ordinary funds for the current service of every year. This is grievous, and the more so to any man who has the honour of his country, as well as her prosperity, at heart, because we have not, in this case, the airy consolation we had in the other. The rage of negotiating began twenty years ago, under pretence of consummating the treaty of Utrecht;

and, from that time to this, our ministers have been in one perpetual maze. They have made themselves and us, often, objects of aversion to the powers on the continent; and we are become at last objects of contempt, even to the Spaniards. What other effect could our absurd conduct have? What other return has it deserved? We came exhausted out of long wars; and, instead of pursuing the measures necessary to give us means and opportunity to repair our strength and to diminish our burdens, our ministers have acted, from that time to this, like men who sought pretences to keep the nation in the same exhausted condition and under the same load of debt. This may have been their view perhaps; and we could not be surprised if we heard the same men declare national poverty necessary to support the present government, who have so frequently declared corruption and a standing army to be so. Your good sense, my lord, your virtue and your love of your country, will always determine you to oppose such vile schemes, and to contribute your utmost towards the cure of both these kinds of rage; the rage of warring, without any proportionable interest of our own, for the ambition of others; and the rage of negotiating, on every occasion, at any rate, without a sufficient call to it, and without any part of that deciding influence which we ought to have. Our nation inhabits an island, and is one of the principal nations of Europe; but, to maintain this rank, we must take the advantages of this situation, which have been neglected by us for almost half a century: we must always remember, that we are not part of the continent, but we must never forget that we are neighbours to it. I will conclude, by applying a rule that Horace gives for the conduct of an epic or dramatic poem, to the part Great Britain ought to take in the affairs of the continent, if you allow me to transform Britannia into a male divinity, as the verse requires.

Nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus inciderit.

If these reflections are just, and I should not have offered them to your lordship had they not appeared both just and important to my best understanding, you will think that I have not spent your time unprofitably in making them, and exciting you by them to examine the true interest of your country relatively to foreign affairs; and to compare it with those principles of conduct, that, I am persuaded, have no other foundation than party designs, prejudices, and habits; the private interest of some men, and the ignorance and rashness of others.

My letter is grown so long, that I shall say nothing to your lordship at this time concerning the study of modern history, relatively to the interests of your country in domestic affairs; and I think there will be no need to do so at any other. The history of the rebellion by your great grandfather, and his private memorials, which your lordship has

136 HOW POLITICAL PAMPHLETS SHOULD BE READ.

6

in manuscript, will guide you surely as far as they go; where they leave you, your lordship must not expect any history; for we have more reason to make this complaint, abest enim historia litteris 'nostris,' than Tully had to put it into the mouth of Atticus in his first book of laws. But where history leaves you, it is wanted least; the traditions of this century, and of the latter end of the last, are fresh. Many who were actors in some of these events are alive; and many who have conversed with those that were actors in others. The public is in possession of several collections and memorials, and several there are in private hands. You will want no materials to form true notions of transactions so recent. Even pamphlets, written on different sides and on different occasions in our party disputes, and histories of no more authority than pamphlets, will help you to come at truth. Read them with suspicion, my lord, for they deserve to be suspected; pay no regard to the epithets given nor to the judgments passed; neglect all declamation, weigh the reasoning, and advert to fact. With such precautions, even Burnet's history may be of some use. In a word, your lordship will want no help of mine to discover, by what progression the whole constitution of our country, and even the character of our nation, has been altered; nor how much a worse use, in a national sense, though a better in the sense of party politics, the men called whigs have made of long wars and new systems of revenue, since the revolution; than the men called tories made before it, of long peace and stale prerogative. When you look back three or four generations ago, you will see that the English were a plain, perhaps a rough, but a good-natured hospitable people, jealous of their liberties, and able as well as ready to defend them, with their tongues, their pens, and their swords. The restoration began to turn hospitality into luxury, pleasure into debauch, and country peers and country commoners into courtiers and men of mode. But whilst our luxury was young, it was little more than elegance; the debauch of that age was enlivened with wit, and varnished over with gallantry. The courtiers, and the men of mode, knew what the constitution was, respected it, and often asserted it. Arts and sciences flourished, and, if we grew more trivial, we were not become either grossly ignorant or openly profligate. Since the revolution, our kings have been reduced indeed to a seeming annual dependence on parliament; but the business of parliament, which was esteemed in general a duty before, has been exercised in general as a trade since. The trade of parliament, and the trade of funds, have grown universal. Men, who stood forward in the world, have attended to little else. The frequency of parliaments, that increased their importance, and should have increased the respect for them, has taken off from their dignity; and the spirit that prevailed, whilst the service in them was duty, has been debased since it became a trade. Few know, and scarce any respect, the British constitution; that

of the Church has been long since derided; that of the State as long neglected; and both have been left at the mercy of the men in power, whoever those men were. Thus the Church, at least the hierarchy, however sacred in its origin or wise in its institution, is become an useless burden on the State; and the State is become, under ancient and known forms, a new and undefinable monster; composed of a king without monarchical splendour, a senate of nobles without aristocratical independency, and a senate of commons without democratical freedom. In the mean time, my lord, the very idea of wit, and all that can be called taste, has been lost among the great; arts and sciences are scarce alive; luxury has been increased, but not refined; corruption has been established, and is avowed. When governments are worn out, thus it is; the decay appears in every instance. Public and private virtue, public and private spirit, science, and wit, decline all together.

That you, my lord, may have a long and glorious share in restoring all these, and in drawing our government back to the true principles of it, I wish most heartily. Whatever errors I may have committed in public life, I have always loved my country: whatever faults may be objected to me in private life, I have always loved my friend: whatever usage I have received from my country, it shall never make me break with her; whatever usage I have received from my friends, I never shall break with one of them, while I think him a friend to my country. These are the sentiments of my heart. I know they are those of your lordship's: and a communion of such sentiments is a tie that will engage me to be, as long as I live,

My lord, your most faithful servant,

HENRY ST. JOHN.

LETTER I.

A PLAN FOR

A GENERAL HISTORY OF EUROPE.

I SHALL take the liberty of writing to you a little oftener than the three or four times a year, which, you tell me, are all you can allow yourself to write to those you like best; and yet I declare to you with great truth, that you never knew me so busy in your life as I am at

138 present. You must not imagine from hence, that I am writing memoirs of myself. The subject is too slight to descend to posterity, in any other manner than by that occasional mention which may be made of any little actor in the history of our age. Sylla, Cæsar, and others of that rank, were, whilst they lived, at the head of mankind; their story was in some sort the story of the world, and as such might very properly be transmitted under their names to future generations. But for those who have acted much inferior parts, if they publish the piece, and call it after their own names, they are impertinent; if they publish only their own share in it, they inform mankind by halves, and neither give much instruction, nor create much attention. France abounds with writers of this sort, and, I think, we fall into the other extreme. Let me tell you, on this occasion, what has sometimes come into my thoughts.

SUMMARY ACCOUNT OF THE STATE OF EUROPE.

There is hardly any century in history which began by opening so great a scene, as the century wherein we live, and shall, I suppose, die. Compare it with others, even the most famous, and you will think So. I will sketch the two last, to help your memory.

The loss of that balance which Lorenzo of Medici had preserved, during his time, in Italy; the expedition of Charles VIII. to Naples; the intrigues of the Duke of Milan, who spun, with all the refinements of art, that net wherein he was taken at last himself; the successful dexterity of Ferdinand the Catholic, who built one pillar of the Austrian greatness in Spain, in Italy, and in the Indies; as the succession of the house of Burgundy joined to the imperial dignity and the hereditary countries, established another in the upper and lower Germany; these causes, and many others, combined to form a very extraordinary conjuncture; and, by their consequences, to render the sixteenth century fruitful of great events, and of astonishing revolutions.

The beginning of the seventeenth opened still a greater and more important scene. The Spanish yoke was well-nigh imposed on Italy by the famous triumvirate, Toledo at Milan, Ossuna at Naples, and La Cueva at Venice. The distractions of France, as well as the statepolicy of the queen mother, seduced by Rome, and amused by Spain; the despicable character of our James I., the rashness of the elector palatine, the bad intelligence of the princes and states of the league in Germany, the mercenary temper of John George of Saxony, and the great qualities of Maximilian of Bavaria, raised Ferdinand II. to the imperial throne; when, the males of the elder branch of the Austrian family in Germany being extinguished at the death of Matthias, nothing was more desirable, nor perhaps more practicable, than to throw the empire into another house. Germany ran the same risk as Italy had done; Ferdinand seemed more likely, even than Charles V. had been, to become absolute master; and, if France had not furnished the greatest minister, and the north the greatest captain, of that age