Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/121

 For my own part I do not see why an honest partisan should not write an honest book if he can persuade himself to look honestly at his subject, and make allowance for his own prejudices. I know it is somewhat critical work, and a man who knows himself in one way, may be quite ignorant of himself in another. I take Hallam as an illustrious example; Hallam knew himself to be a political partisan, and, wherever he knew that political prejudice might darken his counsel, he guarded most carefully against it: he did not claim the judicial character without fitting himself for it; and where he knew himself to be sitting as judge he judged admirably: so admirably that the advanced advocates even of his own views have long ago thrown him over as too timid and temporising for their purpose. Yet where he was not awake to his own prejudice, in matters for instance regarding religion and the Church, in which he seems to have had no doubt about his own infallibility of negation, how ludicrously and transparently unfair he is!

I do not see any necessity for this. I do not see why a man should not say once for all, I like Charles I better than Oliver Cromwell: I like the cause for which Charles believed himself to be contending better than that for which Cromwell strove: Charles is attractive to me, Oliver is repulsive: Charles is my friend, Oliver is my foe: but, am I bound to maintain that my friend is always right and my enemy always wrong; am I bound to hold Charles for a saint, Oliver for a monster; am I bound never to mention Charles without a sigh or Oliver without a sneer; am I bound to conceal the faults of the one and to believe every calumny against the other? If you like, put it the other way, believe in the great Protestant statesman, treat Charles as the overrated fine gentleman, the narrow-minded advocate of a theory which he did not understand, the pig-headed maintainer of the cause you dislike. You may be a partisan, but can you not believe that, if you believe your own side of the question, truth when it is explored will be found on your side? misrepresentation, exaggeration, dishonesty of advocacy will only disparage the presentment which you desire to make of your own convictions and your