Page:The parallel between the English and American civil wars.djvu/9



parallels are pitfalls for the politician, because history never really repeats itself. One event may resemble another event, one situation another, although there is an interval of scores of years, or perhaps centuries, between them. Yet the conditions under which those events happened can never be the same, since change of place and progress of time forbid it. If we search a little we shall find that the superficial resemblances conceal fundamental differences, just as, when we look beneath the surface of things, we shall often perceive a real likeness where at first sight only the dissimilarity struck the eye.

Suppose then that we take events which possess some general resemblance, and examine into the reasons why they resemble