TH

CHAP. V.

HISTORY.

SECT. I.

The Logic of History.

HOSE important and interesting truths comprehended under the general name of facts, which determine the fortune of individuals, involve the welfare of societies, on which depend the fate of nations, and which fill all the busy and variegated scenes of life, are incessantly and unexpectedly turning up in the tide of things, and again as incessantly and irrecoverably buried in its vortex. They are by nature transient and irrevocable, confined and circumscribed within the strictest limits of time and place. So likewise from the constitution of humanity are the persons of men. In all cases, therefore, in which these do not hap

pen to coincide with them both in time and place, this species of truth, taken in its widest comprehension, including characters and events as well as acts, cannot be personally and directly known.

This great chasm and defect, by which our personal intercourse is cut off from the largest and most valuable part of this useful and interesting knowledge, is filled and supplied by history,—that elegant retrospective mirror, which by its reflection opens to us a view into ages never to return, which gives facts an enlargement and extension to all times and places, and thus becomes the guide and instructor of human life 1.

1 Historia, testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoriæ, magistra vitæ, nuncia veritatis.-Cic. de Orat. lib. ii. cap. 36.

A

SECT. II.

The Historical Principle.

LL the actions, characters, and events which have existed, or do exist, in times or places, when and where we either did or could not witness them ourselves, if ever we may know them, (and these form the greatest proportion of our knowledge), it must be from the narration or testimony, that is, the authority of others. By narration, I mean to express the communication of facts, with which we are coincident in point of time, but not of place. Testimony, I apply, to the communication of those with which we are coincident neither in time nor place. These two are the necessary and indispensable vehicles of historical truth.

-That on Tuesday the 10th day of March 1789, the cities of London and Westminster exhibited similar tokens of their love and loyalty to their king, by a general illumination on the same joyful occasion above

mentioned1, is a fact of which we, who were not there, rejoiced to hear; of the truth of which we are as fully and certainly, though not so directly convinced, on the narration of others public and private, as we were of that which on the 13th we witnessed ourselves at Oxford. In the case of this fact, there was a coincidence of person and transaction in point of time, but not of place.

And both of these facts will be transmitted, as they deserve, to future ages, and received by them with almost the same degree of certainty, on the authority of sound and well authenticated testimony; in which case, all coincidence of person, transaction, time, and place must be removed.

All historical facts, as truths, derive their existence from narration and testimony, which are therefore to be regarded as their principles, agreeing in one, which is the main point of consideration—that they are both founded on the information and authority of others and, as the short space of

1 P. 197 supra.

man's life, to which narration has a reference, bears so small a proportion to the extent of time within the reach of human tradition and record, testimony may be used, as it often is, to express the whole, -the general principle of all historical truth.

SECT. III.

Historical Reasoning.

S in all parts of knowledge in which general principles are concerned, so in historical reasoning, we argue first to the principle, and thence downwards from the principle.

How then is the credit and authority of testimony, on which all history depends, established and confirmed?

Historical facts are all particular and individual in their existence; and by their nature removed from the evidence of the external senses; and as all general principles are formed by an induction of particulars, there must be some other native