[Footnote 1:
"The true origin of human events is so little susceptible of that kind of
evidence which can _compel_ our belief; so many are the disturbing forces
which, in every cycle or ellipse of changes, modify the motion given by the
first projection; and every age has, or imagines it has, its own
circumstances, which render past experience no longer applicable to the
present case; that there will never be wanting answers, and explanations,
and specious flatteries of hope, to persuade and perplex its government,
that the history of the past is inapplicable to _their_ case. And no
wonder, if we read history for the facts, instead of reading it for the
sake of the general principles, which are to the facts as the root and sap
of a tree to its leaves: and no wonder if history so read should find a
dangerous rival in novels; nay, if the latter should be preferred to the
former, on the score even of probability. I well remember that, when the
examples of former Jacobins, as Julius Caesar, Cromwell, and the like, were
adduced in France and England, at the commencement of the French consulate,
it was ridiculed as pedantry and pedants' ignorance, to fear a repetition
of usurpation and military despotism at the close of the _enlightened
eighteenth century_! Even so, in the very dawn of the late tempestuous day,
when the revolutions of Corcyra, the proscriptions of the reformers Marius,
Caesar, &c.
Pages:
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282