nificance of events, which would be fatal to a practical
politician, is ruin to a student of history who is the politician with
his face turned backwards.[83] It is playing at study, to see nothing
but the unmeaning and unsuggestive surface, as we generally do. Then
we have a curious proclivity to neglect, and by degrees to forget,
what has been certainly known. An instance or two will explain my
idea. The most popular English writer relates how it happened in his
presence that the title of Tory was conferred upon the Conservative
party. For it was an opprobrious name at the time, applied to men for
whom the Irish Government offered head-money; so that if I have made
too sure of progress, I may at least complacently point to this
instance of our mended manners. One day, Titus Oates lost his temper
with the men who refused to believe him, and after looking about for a
scorching imprecation, he began to call them Tories.[84] The name
remained; but its origin, attested by Defoe, dropped out of common
memory, as if one party were ashamed of their godfather, and the other
did not care to be identified with his cause and character. You all
know, I am sure, the story of the news of Trafalgar, and how, two
days after it had arrived, Mr. Pitt, drawn by an enthusiastic crowd,
went to dine in the city. When they drank the health of the minister
who had saved his country, he declined the praise. "England," he said,
"has saved herself by her own energy; and I hope that after having
saved herself by her energy, she will save Europe by her example." In
1814, when this hope had been realised, the last speech of the great
orator was remembered, and a medal was struck upon which the whole
sentence was engraved, in four words of compressed Latin: "_Seipsam
virtute, Europam exemplo._" Now it was just at the time of his last
appearance in public that Mr. Pitt heard of the overwhelming success
of the French in Germany, and of the Austrian surrender at Ulm. His
friends concluded that the contest on land was hopeless, and that it
was time to abandon the Continent to the conqueror, and to fall back
upon our new empire of the sea. Pitt did not agree with them. He said
that Napoleon would meet with a check whenever he encountered a
national resistance; and he declared that Spain was the place for it,
and that then England would intervene.[85] General Wellesley, fresh
from India, was present. Ten years later, when he had accomplished
that which Pit