Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/502

490 Nevertheless, the avoidance of a keen political edge is a risk even to the most dispassionate and conscientious of writers. He does not see that in 1874 it would have been better not to dissolve before the budget ; he looks on the ballot as a medicine for corruption, not for the graver evil of pressure which makes men vote against their conviction, and always involves a lie ; and he does not clearly separate expenditure on insurance and defence from expenditure on the means of aggression. The danger to the student is that moral indifference in political thinking which Leroy Beaulieu homœopathically declares to be a very good thing as well as a very bad one : "Cette sorte de scepticisme, d'athéisme politique, est le grand péril, la grande difficulté de tous nos gouvernements, et en même temps e'en est le principal point d'appui : e'est à la fois le mal et le remède du mal."