第38章 LETTER 6(1)

From What Period Modern History is Peculiarly Useful to the Service of our Country,Viz.;From the End of the Fifteenth Century to the Present.

The Division of This into Three Particular Periods:In Order to a Sketch of the History and State of Europe from that Time.

Since then you are,my lord,by your birth,by the nature of our government,and by the talents God has given you,attached for life to the service of your country;since genius alone cannot enable you to go through this service with honor to yourself and advantage to your country,whether you support or whether you oppose the administrations that arise;since a great stock of knowledge,acquired betimes and continually improved,is necessary to this end;and since one part of this stock must be collected from the study of history,as the other part is to be gained by observation and experience;I come now to speak to your lordship of such history as has an immediate relation to the great duty and business of your life,and of the method to be observed in this study.The notes I have by me,which were of some little use thus far,serve me no farther,and I have no books to consult.No matter;I shall be able to explain my thoughts without their assistance,and less liable to be tedious.I hope to be as full and as exact on memory alone,as the manner in which I shall treat the subject requires me to be.

I say,then,that however closely affairs are linked together in the progression of governments,and how much soever events that follow are dependent on those that precede,the whole connection diminishes to sight as the chain lengthens;till at last it seems to be broken,and the links that are continued from that point bear no proportion nor any similitude to the former.I would not be understood to speak only of those great changes that are wrought by a concurrence of extraordinary events:for instance,the expulsion of one nation,the destruction of one government,and the establishment of another:but even of those that are wrought in the same governments and among the same people,slowly and almost imperceptibly,by the necessary effects of time,and flux condition of human affairs.When such changes as these happen in several states about the same time,and consequently affect other states by their vicinity,and by many different relations which they frequently bear to one another;then is one of those periods formed,at which the chain spoken of is so broken as to have little or no real or visible connection with that which we see continue.A new situation,different from the former,begets new interests in the same proportion of difference;not in this or that particular state alone,but in all those that are concerned by vicinity or other relations,as I said just now,in one general system of policy.

New interests beget new maxims of government,and new methods of conduct.

These,in their turns,beget new manners,new habits,new customs.The longer this new constitution of affairs continues,the more will this difference increase:and although some analogy may remain long between what preceded and what succeeds such a period,yet will this analogy soon become an object of mere curiosity,not of profitable inquiry.Such a period therefore is,in the true sense of the words,an epocha or an era,a point of time at which you stop,or from which you reckon forward.I say forward;because we are not to study in the present case,as chronologers compute,backward.Should we persist to carry our researches much higher,and to push them even to some other period of the same kind,we should misemploy our time;the causes then laid having spent themselves,the series of effects derived from them being over,and our concern in both consequently at an end.But a new system of causes and effects,that subsists in our time,and whereof our conduct is to be a part,arising at the last period,and all that passes in our time being dependent on what has passed since that period,or being immediately relative to it,we are extremely concerned to be well informed about all these passages.To be entirely ignorant about the ages that precede this era would be shameful.Nay,some indulgence may be had to a temperate curiosity in the review of them.But to be learned about them is a ridiculous affectation in any man who means to be useful to the present age.Down to this era let us read history:from this era,and down to our time,let us study it.

The end of the fifteenth century seems to be just such a period as I have been describing,for those who live in the eighteenth,and who inhabit the western parts of Europe.A little before,or a little after this point of time,all those events happened,and all those revolutions began,that have produced so vast a change in the manners,customs,and interests of particular nations,and in the whole policy,ecclesiastical and civil,of these parts of the world.I must descend here into some detail,not of histories,collections,or memorials;for all these are well enough known:and though the contents are in the heads of few,the books are in the hands of many.But instead of showing your lordship where to look,I shall contribute more to your entertainment and instruction,by marking out,as well as my memory will serve me to do it,what you are to look for,and by furnishing a kind of clue to your studies.

I shall give,according to custom,the first place to religion.