6i4 



Logic of the moral scii:NOEg. 



receive. Xeithei' thinkers nor govern- 

 ments efifect all that they intend, but 

 in compensation they often produce 

 important results which they did not 

 in the least foresee. Great men and 

 great actions are seldom wasted : 

 they send forth a thousand unseen 

 influences, more effective than those 

 which are seen ; and though nine out 

 of every ten things done, with a good 

 purpose, by those who are in advance 

 of their age, produce no material effect, 

 the tenth thing produces effects twenty 

 times as great as any one would have 

 dreamed of predicting from it. Even 

 the men who for want of sufficientl}' 

 favourable circumstances left no im- 

 press at all upon their own age have 

 often been of the greatest value to 

 posterity. Who could appear to have 

 lived more entirely in vain than some 

 of the early heretics? They were 

 burnt or massacred, their writings ex- 

 tirpated, their memory anathematised, 

 and their very names and existence 

 left for seven or eight centuries in 

 the obscurity of musty manuscripts — 

 their history to be gathered, perhaps, 

 only from the sentences by which they 

 were condemned. Yet the memory of 

 these men — men who resisted certain 

 pretensions or certain dogmas of the 

 Church in the very age in which 

 the unanimous assent of Christendom 

 was afterwards claimed as having been 

 given to them, and asserted as the 

 ground of their authority — broke the 

 chain of tradition, established a series 

 of precedents for resistance, inspired 

 later Reformers with the courage, and 

 armed them with the weapons, which 

 they needed when mankind were bet- 

 ter prepared to follow their impulse. 

 To this example from men let us 

 add another from governments. The 

 comparatively enlightened rule of 

 which Spain had the benefit during a 

 considerable part of the eighteenth 

 century did not correct the funda- 

 mental defects of the Spanish people ; 

 and in consequence, though it did 

 great temporary good, so much of that 

 good perished with it, that it may 

 plausibly be affirmed to have had no 



permanent effect. The case has been 

 cited as a proof how little govern- 

 ments can do in opposition to the 

 causes which have determined the 

 general character of the nation. It 

 does show how much there is which 

 they cannot do ; but not that they 

 can do nothing. Compare what Spain 

 was at the beginning of that half cen- 

 tury of liberal government with what 

 she had become at its close. That 

 period fairly let in the light of Euro- 

 pean thought upon the more educated 

 classes, and itnever afterwards ceased 

 to go on spreading. Previous to that 

 time the change was in an inverse 

 direction ; culture, light, intellectual, 

 and even material activity, were be- 

 coming extinguished. Was it nothing 

 to arrest this downward and convert 

 it into an upward course ? How much 

 that Charles the Third and Aranda 

 could not do has been the ultimate 

 conseqiience of what they did ! To 

 that half century Spain owes tliat she 

 has got rid of the Inquisition, that she 

 has got rid of the monks, that she now 

 has parliaments and (save in excep- 

 tional intervals) a free press, and the 

 feelings of freedom and citizenship, 

 and is acquiring railroads and all the 

 other constituents of material and 

 economical progress. In the Spain 

 which preceded that era, there was 

 not a single element at work which 

 could have led to these results in any 

 length of time, if the country had 

 continued to be governed as it was 

 by the last princes of the Austrian 

 d)masty, or if the Bourbon rulers had 

 been from the first what, both in 

 Spain and in Naples, they afterwards 

 became. 



And if a government can do much, 

 even when it seems to have done 

 little, in causing positive improve- 

 ment, still greater are the issues de- 

 pendent on it in the way of warding 

 off evils, both internal and external, 

 which else would stop improvement 

 altogether. A good or a bad counsel- 

 lor, in a single cit}' at a particular 

 crisis, has affected the whole subse- 

 quent fate of the world. It is as cer- 



