2 REMARKS UPON BISHOP BURNETTS 



been defended ; and time lias already erinced the truth of certain 

 records which rested on his single authority."* 



Now it will be readily admitted by all, that he who volunta- 

 rily takes upon himself to record the transactions of his own time 

 for the instruction of posterity, engages in an office, not only of 

 grave responsibility, but, perhaps, as thankless as can possibly be 

 imagined : for, however severely he may be trained in the school of 

 discretion, he will be sure to give offence to those of his contempo- 

 raries who, according to certain rooted and pre- conceived opinions, 

 think that their own good actions cannot be too highly magnified, 

 or their own faults too lightly censivred. Unquestionably, na 

 man is called upon to transmit to future ages the virtues or vices of 

 his contemporaries. But if, for the benefit of his country, he will 

 impose upon himself this task, he must know no middle line be- 

 tween right and wrong — he must shun all casuistry — he must show 

 himself immeasurably superior to those who, actuated by a morbid 

 love of popularity, make it their chief aim and intent to place the 

 actions of their contemporaries in a flattering point of view ; and 

 whose pens, therefore, are ever silent when an honest declaration of 

 opinion, and a fearless testimony to important but disagreeable 

 truths may be required. Equal freedom and justice;^ then, must be 

 used in speaking of the living as well as of the dead, if any one 

 writer wish to render his work subservient to a great moral pur- 

 pose, and to be known in after ages as the steady friend of human 

 improvement and the true lover of his country. Nothing, there- 

 fore, can be more just than the remark, that impartiality is the 

 most difficult of all virtues. To keep our faculties unbiassed, and 

 not to suffer them to embrace one side or other of a question, ap- 

 pears so impracticable, that few writers have acquired sufficient 

 strength of mind to display this rare independence. It is, indeed, 

 as uncommon to find two cases in which the combination of circum- 



• Preface, p. 1., Oxford Edit, of Burnett*s History of his own Time. — It 

 reflects great credit upon the wisdom and liberality of an University so often 

 and louoly reproached for its high principles of toryism in church and state, 

 that the work of a whig Bishop should have issued, a century after his death, 

 from the ClarendcMi l*ress. This surely must be regarded, by moderate men 

 of all parties, as an unequivocal si^ of the commencement of truer and just- 

 er notions respecting ine author and his book; and should teach carping 

 critics to set a higher value upon the excellences of both. 



