Not that I derogate from the use of history. It is a great improver of
the understanding, by showing both men and affairs in a great variety of
views. From this source much political wisdom may be learned; that
is, may be learned as habit, not as precept; and as an exercise to
strengthen the mind, as furnishing materials to enlarge and enrich it,
not as a repertory of cases and precedents for a lawyer: if it were, a
thousand times better would it be that a statesman had never learned to
read--vellem nescirent literas. This method turns their understanding
from the object before them, and from the present exigencies of the
world, to comparisons with former times, of which, after all, we can
know very little, and very imperfectly; and our guides, the historians,
who are to give us their true interpretation, are often prejudiced,
often ignorant, often fonder of system than of truth. Whereas, if a
man with reasonably good parts and natural sagacity, and not in the
leading-strings of any master, will look steadily on the business before
him, without being diverted by retrospect and comparison, he may be
capable of forming a reasonably good judgment of what is to be done.
There are some fundamental points in which nature never changes--but
they are few and obvious, and belong rather to morals than to politics.
But so far as regards political matter, the human mind and human affairs
are susceptible of infinite modifications, and of combinations wholly
new and unlooked for. Very few, for instance, could have imagined that
property, which has been taken for natural dominion, should, through the
whole of a vast kingdom, lose all its importance and even its influence.
This is what history or books of speculation could hardly have taught
us. How many could have thought, that the most complete and formidable
revolution in a great empire should be made by men of letters, not as
subordinate instruments and trumpeters of sedition, but as the chief
contrivers and managers, and in a short time as the open administrators
and sovereign rulers? Who could have imagined that atheism could produce
one of the most violently operative principles of fanaticism? Who could
have imagined that, in a commonwealth in a manner cradled in war, and in
extensive and dreadful war, military commanders should be of little or
no account? That the Convention should not contain one military man of
name? That administrative bodies in a state of the utmost confusion, and
of but a momentary duration, and composed of men with not one imposing
part of character, should be able to govern the country and its armies
with an authority which the most settled senates, and the most respected
monarchs, scarcely ever had in the same degree? This, for one, I confess
I did not foresee, though all the rest was present to me very early, and
not out of my apprehension even for several years.