ce of moral and intellectual influence thus established
between the nations of Europe is far more important than the balance
of political power. Indeed, we are inclined to think that the latter
is valuable principally because it tends to maintain the former. The
civilised world has thus been preserved from a uniformity of character
fatal to all improvement. Every part of it has been illuminated with
light reflected from every other. Competition has produced activity
where monopoly would have produced sluggishness. The number of
experiments in moral science which the speculator has an opportunity of
witnessing has been increased beyond all calculation. Society and human
nature, instead of being seen in a single point of view, are presented
to him under ten thousand different aspects. By observing the manners of
surrounding nations, by studying their literature, by comparing it with
that of his own country and of the ancient republics, he is enabled to
correct those errors into which the most acute men must fall when they
reason from a single species to a genus. He learns to distinguish
what is local from what is universal: what is transitory from what is
eternal; to discriminate between exceptions and rules; to trace the
operation of disturbing causes; to separate those general principles
which are always true and everywhere applicable from the accidental
circumstances with which, in every community, they are blended, and
with which, in an isolated community, they are confounded by the most
philosophical mind.

Hence it is that, in generalisation, the writers of modern times have
far surpassed those of antiquity. The historians of our own country are
unequalled in depth and precision of reason; and, even in the works of
our mere compilers, we often meet with speculations beyond the reach of
Thucydides or Tacitus.

But it must, at the same time, be admitted that they have characteristic
faults, so closely connected with their characteristic merits, and of
such magnitude, that it may well be doubted whether, on the whole,
this department of literature has gained or lost during the last
two-and-twenty centuries.

The best historians of later times have been seduced from truth, not
by their imagination, but by their reason. They far excel their
predecessors in the art of deducing general principles from facts. But
unhappily they have fallen into the error of distorting facts to suit
general principles. They arrive at a th