What was his chance of success from Mr Pitt?
If the history of England be ever written by one who has the
knowledge and the courage, and both qualities are equally
requisite for the undertaking, the world would be more
astonished than when reading the Roman annals by Niebuhr.
Generally speaking, all the great events have been distorted,
most of the important causes concealed, some of the principal
characters never appear, and all who figure are so
misunderstood and misrepresented, that the result is a
complete mystification, and the perusal of the narrative about
as profitable to an Englishman as reading the Republic of
Plato or the Utopia of More, the pages of Gaudentio di Lucca
or the adventures of Peter Wilkins.
The influence of races in our early ages, of the church in our
middle, and of parties in our modern history, are three great
moving and modifying powers, that must be pursued and analyzed
with an untiring, profound, and unimpassioned spirit, before a
guiding ray can be secured. A remarkable feature of our
written history is the absence in its pages of some of the
most influential personages. Not one man in a thousand for
instance has ever heard of Major Wildman: yet he was the soul
of English politics in the most eventful period of this
kingdom, and one most interesting to this age, from 1640 to
1688; and seemed more than once to hold the balance which was
to decide the permanent form of our government.
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