On the Moral Influence of History, 557 



jicral ilJ example that history acts upon 4he 

 mind of the reader. Those who, from their 

 introduction on the stage presume that they are 

 destined to be tlic privileged managers of the 

 human drama, read the story of their prede- 

 cessors ; the part which they have acted they 

 receive as the part which thcimsclves are to act j 

 the tempting allurements of wealth and powei^ 

 and grandeur spread their charms before them i 

 the delicate question of right and w^rong hardly 

 occurs .to them, or w^ith i-^ot sufficient power to 

 turn them from their course ; theirs id^is to com- 

 mand, of the multitude to obey ; and hence 

 the constant repetition of the same crimes, a 

 kind of hereditary succession of injustice vio- 

 lence, fraud, broken faith, cruelty, and all the 

 ill-featured progeny of wide-wasting ambition. 

 History is more a change of names, than of 

 action and character, and what in her record is 

 favourable to the general welfare of man, is 

 rarely to be ascribed to the efforts, or even 

 to the concurrence of the great actors ; but to 

 the operation of seemingly fortuitous circum^^ 

 stances, to the general impulse of the neglected 

 many, to the re-action against crime itself, when 

 pushed to an extreme beyond human bearance, 

 and what is the most true, though the least 

 acknowledged, to the counteraction of a being 

 behind the curtain, who diverts the counsels 

 Yy 2. 



