will deny that this habit is now
much wanted. The immensely increased prominence in political life of
ephemeral influences, and especially of the influence of a daily
press; the immense multiplication of elections, which intensifies
party conflicts, all tend to concentrate our thoughts more and more
upon an immediate issue. They narrow the range of our vision, and make
us somewhat insensible to distant consequences and remote
contingencies. It is not easy, in the heat and passion of modern
political life, to look beyond a parliament or an election, beyond the
interest of a party or the triumph of an hour. Yet nothing is more
certain than that the ultimate, distant, and perhaps indirect
consequences of political measures are often far more important than
their immediate fruits, and that in the prosperity of nations a large
amount of continuity in politics and the gradual formation of
political habits are of transcendent importance. History is never more
valuable than when it enables us, standing as on a height, to look
beyond the smoke and turmoil of our petty quarrels, and to detect in
the slow developments of the past the great permanent forces that are
steadily bearing nations onwards to improvement or decay.

The strongest of these forces are the moral ones. Mistakes in
statesmanship, military triumphs or disasters, no doubt affect
materially the prosperity of nations, but their permanent political
well-being is essentially the outcome of their moral state. Its
foundation is laid in pure domestic life, in commercial integrity, in
a high standard of moral worth and of public spirit; in simple habits,
in courage, uprightness, and self-sacrifice, in a certain soundness
and moderation of judgment, which springs quite as much from character
as from intellect. If you would form a wise judgment of the future of
a nation, observe carefully whether these qualities are increasing or
decaying. Observe especially what qualities count for most in public
life. Is character becoming of greater or less importance? Are the men
who obtain the highest posts in the nation men of whom in private life
and irrespective of party competent judges speak with genuine respect?
Are they men of sincere convictions, sound judgment, consistent lives,
indisputable integrity, or are they men who have won their positions
by the arts of a demagogue or an intriguer; men of nimble tongues and
not earnest beliefs--skilful, above all things, in spreading t