LXXIV THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



Macaulay has accused Hume of this in very round terms. "Hume," he 

 says, "is an accomplished advocate: without positively asserting much 

 more than he can prove, he gives prominence to all the circumstances 

 which support his case; he glides lightly over those which are unfavour- 

 able to it; his own witnesses are applauded and encouraged; the contra- 

 dictions into which they fall are explained away; a clear and connected 

 abstract of their evidence is given. Everything that is offered on the 

 other side is scrutinized with the utmost severity; what cannot be denied 

 is extenuated or passed by without notice; concessions even are some- 

 times made, but this insidious candour only increases the effect of the- 

 vast mass of sophistry." 



A formidable indictment! — one in which some may think a certain 

 exuberance of verbosity is not lacking. Yet who is the accuser? A 

 man who so wrote history as to draw upon himself censure of identical 

 character. "Though he (Macaulay) practised little in the courts," 

 says Mr. George Saintsbury in his History of Nineteenth Century 

 Literature, "he had the born advocate's gift, or drawback, of inclination 

 to suppressio veri and suggestio falsi, and he has a heavy account to 



make up under these heads It has to be confessed that 



independent examination of separate points is not very favourable to 

 Macaulay's trustworthiness. He never tells a falsehood; but he not 

 seldom contrives to convey one, and he constantly conceals the truth." 

 Yet Saintsbury fully recognizes the magnificence of Macaulay's achieve- 

 ment considered as a whole. Of his view of the state of England at the 

 death of Charles II he says that it "may challenge comparison, as a 

 clearly arranged and perfectly mastered collection of innumerable 

 minute facts, sifted out of a thousand different sources, with an}'- 

 thing in history ancient or modern." 



Nor have later writers than Macaulay, whose work was done over 

 sixty years ago, always succeeded in maintaining an impeccable impar- 

 tiality. Taine was trained in a very severe school, and was looked upon 

 some years ago as a brilliant exponent of exact historical science: to-day 

 critics are finding fault both Avith his methods and with his results. His 

 whole presentment of the French Revolution is violently assailed by M. 

 Aulard ; while M. Paul Lacombe says that his generalizations are often 

 mere arbitrary abstractions that twist facts all out of shape. The Ger- 

 man Karl Fritzche is very much of the same opinion. I refer to these 

 criticisms, not as either accepting or disputing them, but simply as 

 showing that there is at least no immediate prospect of finality in the 

 results of historical study. 



At the same time it would be idle to deny that the rules and methods 

 of correct historical procedure have been developed and formulated 

 within the last generation with a completeness and self-evident authority 



