THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. t 73 



so long beguiled the ear of Ireland with specious promises, who mocked us with 

 sham reforms and insulted us with barren concessions, who traded on the griev- 

 ances of this country only to aggravate them, and who, with smooth profes- 

 sions on their lips, trampled out the last traces of liberty in the land, are to-day 

 a beaten and outcast party." 



Which exhibition of feeling we may either consider specially, as show- 

 ing how the " Nationalists " are likely to behave in the immediate 

 future ; or may consider more generally, as giving us a trait of Irish 

 nature tending to justify Mr. Froude's harsh verdict on Irish conduct 

 in the past ; or may consider most generally, after the manner here 

 appropriate, as a striking example of the distortions which the politi- 

 cal bias works in men's judgments. 



When we remember that all are thus affected more or less, in esti- 

 mating political antagonists, their acts and their views, we are re- 

 minded what an immense obstacle political partisanship is in the way 

 of Social Science. I do not mean simply that, as all know, it often 

 determines opinions about pending questions ; as shown by cases in 

 which a measure, reprobated by Conservatives when brought forward 

 by Liberals, is approved when brought forward by their own party. 

 I refer to the far wider effect it has on men's interpretations of the 

 past and of the future ; and therefore on their sociological conceptions 

 in general. The political sympathies and antipathies fostered by the 

 conflicts of parties, respectively upholding this or that kind of institu- 

 tion, become sympathies and antipathies drawn out toward the allied 

 institutions of other nations, extinct or surviving. These sympathies 

 and antipathies inevitably cause tendencies to accept or reject favor- 

 able or unfavorable evidence respecting such institutions. The well- 

 known contrast between the pictures which the Tory Mitford and the 

 Radical Grote have given of the Athenian democracy, serves as an 

 instance to which many parallels may be found. In proof of the per- 

 verting effects of the political bias, I cannot do better than quote some 

 sentences from Mr. Froude's lecture on " The Scientific Method applied 

 to History : " 



"Thucydides wrote to expose the vices of democracy ; Tacitus, the historian 

 of the Cassars, to exhibit the hatefulness of imperialism." x 



" Read Macaulay on the condition of the English poor before the last cen- 

 tury or two, and you wonder how they lived at all. Eead Cobbett, and I may 

 even say Hallam, and you wonder how they endure the contrast between their 

 past prosperity and their present misery." s 



" An Irish Catholic prelate once told me that to his certain knowledge two 

 millions of men, women, and children had died in the great famine of 1846. I 

 asked him if he was not including those who had emigrated. lie repeated that 

 over and above the emigration two millions had actually died ; and added, ' we 

 might assert that every one of these deaths lay at the door of tbe English Gov- 

 ernment.' I mentioned this to a distinguished lawyer in Dublin, a Protestant. 



1 Froude, "Short Studies on Great Subjects," Second Series, 1871, p. 4S0. 



2 Ibid., p. 483. 



