22 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 
Frenchmen, though perhaps the most hopeless, are by 
no means the only sinners. Through the literature 
of all nations runs that same ludicrous assumption that 
our people are better than other people, and from this 
it is but a short step to the kindred assumption that the 
same national acts which are wrongful in other people 
are meritorious in ourselves. The feelings which 
underlie these assumptions are simply evanescent 
forms of the feelings which in a savage state of society 
make warfare perpetual, and they are in no wise com- 
mendable. Their most stupid and contemptible phase 
is that which prompts the different sections of a com- 
mon country to twit and flout one another with the 
various misdeeds of their respective ancestors. Such 
pettiness of outlook is incompatible with an intelligent 
conception of the career of mankind. That some 
people have been more favourably situated than others, 
that some have accomplished more in sundry direc- 
tions than others, is not to be denied. The study of 
such facts and their causes is one of fascinating inter- 
est, and forms part of the most important work of 
the historian; but so long as he allows his views to 
be coloured by fondness for one people as such, and 
dislike for another people as such, his conclusions are 
sure to be warped and to some extent weakened. The 
late Mr. Freeman was a historian of vast knowledge, 
wide sympathies, and unusual breadth of view, but 
he was afflicted by two inveterate prejudices, — one 
against Frenchmen, the other against the House of 
Austria, —and the damage thereby caused is flagrant 
in some parts of his field of work and traceable in 
many more. 
History must not harbour prejudices, because the 
