National life and character.

  • Charles Henry Pearson
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: National life and character. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    happen within a few hours or days,1 and are trusted and valued accordingly, it seems justifiable to say that in a certain broad and vague way the tendency of the times may be and constantly is appreciated, so that we are landed in the apparent paradox of knowing better what is remote than what is so near that it may seem to be within every one's ken. Accordingly political prophecies are for the most part little regarded. The statesman of a modern parliament is not working for results fifty years hence, but for the day's need; and would be apt to distrust himself if he attempted any- thing more. Perhaps there are cases when we see that a more calculating policy would have been the wiser. If England had granted Catholic Emancipation fifty years before she did; if the American Congress had bought up and expatriated the slaves while they were still a mere handful; if France had followed Talley- rand's policy, and confined herself to such acquisitions as awakened no violent resentments;2 if Eussian ad- ministrations under Nicholas I. had been determinately liberal, instead of absolutist, each particular country would have gained, and the civilised world would have been the better for rancours and miseries averted. It is idle, however, to discuss what might have been ; and almost equally so to discuss what might be under con- ditions never likely to be realised. The distant future of a country is so unimportant by the side of its im- mediate needs to the men in possession, that even if they were reasonably certain that a particular evil 1 For an instance of Talleyrand's sagacity in this line see his directions to the Duke of Orleans, which placed that prince on the throne.—Bulwer's Historic Characters, pp. 221, 222. 2 Memoirs of Talleyrand, vol. ii. part vii. pp. 97-100. Madame de EMmuBt in her Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 399, quotes Talleyrand as saying : ■• To keep the Czar shut up at home by creating the natural barrier which Poland offers, ought to have been the Emperor's design.