Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/18

 4 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [011.52. The philosophy of history which resolves events intc the action of organic and necessary laws, conceals from us the perplexities of the living instruments by which those events were brought about. We see what actually happened ; we imagine that we discern the causes which determined the effects; and, in assuming a necessary connection between them, we smile at the needless fears, we ridicule the needless precautions, of kings and minis- ters ; we despise them as short-sighted; we censure them as arbitrary and tyrannical ; failing to perceive, or else failing to acknowledge, that if the results were inevitable, the characters which assisted to produce those results were inevitable also. By a subtle process of in- tellectunl injustice,, we convert the after-experience of facts into principles of reasoning which would have enabled us to foresee those facts ; and we infer, with unconscious complacency, the superiority of modern in- telligence. ' Knowledge of the result/ a wise man once observed, ' has spoilt the composition of history.' A just moral appreciation of conduct is made impossible by it. The remedj', so far as there is a remedy, is to look wherever we can through the eyes of contemporaries from whom the future was concealed. Of the prospects and position of England in the open- ing months of the year 1569, a remarkable sketch has been left by Sir William Cecil drawn either for his own use, according to his habit of looking everything in the face, or that he might place distinctly before Elizabeth the dangers to which he believed that she was exposed.