England, where it would have
pained him to see the uprooting of a system entwined with the ideas
and events of the Middle Ages. In his later years he told me that if
the Liberal party took up the policy of disestablishment in Wales, he
did not know whether he could adhere to them, much as he desired to do
so.

Similarly he disliked all schemes for drawing the colonies into closer
relations with the United Kingdom, and even seemed to wish that they
should sever themselves from it, as the United States had done. This
view sprang partly from his feeling that they were very recent
acquisitions, with which the old historic England had nothing to do,
partly also from the impression made on him by the analogy of the
Greek colonies. He held that the precedent of the Greek settlements
showed the true and proper relation between a "metropolis," or
mother-city, and her colonies to be one not of political dependence or
interdependence, but of cordial friendliness and a disposition to
render help, nothing more. These instances are worth citing because
they illustrate a remarkable difference between his way of looking
historically at institutions and Macaulay's way. A friend of his (the
late Mr. S. R. Gardiner), like Freeman a distinguished historian, and
like him a strong Home Ruler, wrote to me upon this point as
follows:--

Freeman and Macaulay are alike in the high value they set upon
parliamentary institutions. On the other hand, when Macaulay wants
to make you understand a thing, he compares it with that which
existed in his own day. The standard of the present is always with
him. Freeman traces it to its origin, and testifies to its growth.
The strength of this mode of proceeding in an historian is
obvious. Its weakness is that it does not help him to appreciate
statesmanship looking forward and trying to find a solution of
difficult problems. Freeman's attitude is that of the people who
cried out for the good laws of King Edward, trying to revive the
past.

Freeman was apt to go beyond his own dictum about history and
politics, for he sometimes made history present politics as well as
past.

By far the strongest political interest--indeed it rose to a
passion--of his later years was his hatred of the Turk. In it his
historical and religious sentiment, for there was a good deal of the
Crusader about him, was blended with his abhorrence of despotism and
cruelty. Ever since the beginning of the Crim