of religious
opinion, for a free parliament, for a free press, for a free platform,
for an independent jury-box. All the best patriotism, all the most
heroic self-sacrifice of the nation, was thrown into defence of these
causes; and the wisest statesmen of the time made it the main object
of their legislation to protect and consolidate them.

These things are now as valuable as they ever were, but no reasonable
man will maintain that they are in the smallest danger. The battles of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been definitely won. A
kind of language which at one period of English history implied the
noblest heroism is now the idlest and cheapest of clap-trap. The
sycophant and the self-seeker bow before quite other idols than of
old. The dangers of the time come from other quarters; other
tendencies prevail, other tasks remain to be accomplished; and a
public man who in framing his course followed blindly in the steps of
the heroes or reformers of the past would be like a mariner who set
his sails to the winds of yesterday.

It is difficult, I think, to doubt that the judgments of all of us are
more or less affected by causes of this kind. It is, I imagine, true
of the great majority of educated men that their first political
impression or bias is formed much less by the events of their own time
than by childish recollections of the more dramatic conflicts of the
past. We are Cavaliers or Roundheads before we are Conservatives or
Liberals; and although we gradually learn to realise how profoundly
the condition of affairs and the balance of forces have altered, yet
no wise man can doubt the power which the first bias of the
imagination exercises in very many cases through a whole life.
Language which grew out of bygone conflicts continues to be used long
after those conflicts and their causes have ended; but that which was
once a very genuine voice comes at last to be little more than an
insincere echo.

The best corrective for this kind of evil is a really intelligent
study of history. One of the first tasks that every sincere student
should set before himself is to endeavour to understand what is the
dominant idea or characteristic of the period with which he is
occupied; what forces chiefly ruled it, what forces were then rising
into a dangerous ascendancy, and what forces were on the decline; what
illusions, what exaggerations, what false hopes and unworthy
influences chiefly prevailed. It is only