HASSEY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND..
IT would appear from the number of works published under the title of histories, that men of letters think history-writing one of the easiest paths to fame, or usefulness, or both. We are not of that opinion ; and we find that a conclusion derived from the nature of the case is amply confirmed by the failure of by far the greater number of such attempts to attain even the average interest of works in other departments of literature. This failure is neces- sarily thrown back upon the difficulty of the subject ; because, ex- cept for that, no subject can offer richer sources of interest; no subject touches matters more important, more various, or more necessary to be known ; no subject affords materials for satisfying more completely speculative curiosity, human sympathies, and the desire for the wisdom that comes of manifold experience. To the inhabitants of a country like our own especially, where a large control over national action has always belonged to and been ex- ercised by the nation as represented in its Parliament, its chartered corporations, and its various institutions for local self-government, a knowledge of their own history must be of great practical importance, and, one would think, of the most commanding interest. Yet it was not long since a statesman of the first rank, himself an adventurer in this field of literature, was able to regret,' amid universal assent, that no history of England existed from which the people could obtain a trustworthy im- pression of the continuous development of their own country's life and action. If persons ambitious of writing history would only dwell upon this fact, and carefully trace its causes, we have no doubt that, in sounding the real difficulties of their enterprise, one here and there would find in himself the strength and deter- mination to master them ; the rest would turn in despair to some task more within the range of ordinary capacities ; and the general result would be, that instead of a crop of historical failures every year, we should now and then get a true picture of a portion of our past national life, and might in time be able to travel along the whole of that mighty stream of progress with something like insight into its main currents, and something like a vivid and human appreciation of the great men and the great deeds that have made England what she is.
A sentence in Mr. Massey's preface raised a hope,—faint, indeed, from long experience of the fallacious character of an author's idea of his own work,—that in one point he had attained to some proper conception of the nature of his task. Instead, he says, of dwelling on occurrences of merely military and personal interest, which have left no trace in the institutions of the country or in the manners of the inhabitants, " I propose to follow with some minuteness the progress of society, and to describe the manners of its various orders, the court, the aristocracy, the middle classes, and the labouring people." Now, though it is a dangerous theory in an historical writer to begin by finding little or no significance in great classes of the facts which are preserved to us of any past periods, yet unquestionably so undue a pre- ponderanoe has been hitherto generally allowed by historians to details of campaigns and court struggles, that there is not much practical danger of history falling into the other extreme of look- ing merely to the progress of legislation, and the material, intel- lectual, and moral condition of the people. And had Mr. Massey accomplished what he proposed to himself and promises to his readers, we should not grumble at his leaving the Duke of New- castle, the Grenvilles, Lord Rockingham, even General Wolfe, the Marquis of Granby, or Admiral Byng, in the undisturbed repose in which the interest of the public has long left most of them. But, strange to say, he has not attempted to execute his own idea; and of all the historians of the period of which he treats, with whom we are acquainted, he deals most with Parliamentary party struggles, contests between the Crown and the great Whig chiefs, intrigues of chiefs with one another, and dry summaries of cam- paigns, while he seems almost entirely to overlook every one of those matters involved in our stereotyped phrase of " condition of the people." The history of the early part of George the Third's reign now most read is, we should suppose, Lord Mahon's. It has been before the public for some years, and is generally accepted as a fair representation of the events and the leading actors in them. Without any special pretension to give other than what is ordinarily meant by political and military history, it does really enter largely upon the progress of commerce, arts, maintfao- tures, morals, religion, and literature. And it does all this in a spirit of large appreciation, and from rich stores of knowledge, which will make it no easy task to write a better history of the same order and on the same scale. With Lord Mahon's History in preoccupa- tion of the ground, Mr. Massey has produced a book which as a narrative is far inferior, and which as a storehouse of knowledge i and reference to original authorities stands nowhere in the com- parison. Even had he preceded Lord Mahon, we should scarcely have thanked him for such a compilation from recently published.
memoirs and Parliamentary debates as any newspaper-writer could have executed, if his ambition bad prompted him so to employ, his leisure. His representation wants life from his want of imagina- tion, and his philosophic) power ranges very little above practical common sense,—an exceedingly valuable working quality, but not quite the adequate sole instrument for the writer of history, even of so recent a period. In a history of this character, where the better p purpose b
paisfay an- other liar, and has been only recently used to far other writer—where neither historical imagination nor philosophic
• A History of England during the Reign of George the Third. By William Massey, M.P. (Vol. I.,1745-1770.) Published by Parker and Son.
depth sheds new light upon well-known facts—where candour and good sense can do but little to atone for want of power and ori- ginality—the only source of interest to the reader lies in the re- flections of the writer upon the events and persons that pass under his notice. These are uniformly sensible and moderate; • and as a legislator, Mr. Massey, if he acts in the same spirit that he writes, may do the state far greater service than by attempting to write history. We do not agree with all the following remarks upon modern Parliamentary debates, but, so far as modern practice is capable of defence, it is on the ground taken by Mr. Massey, that, though they impede public business, they agitate and form public opinion.
`The chief complaint against modern Parliaments is the inordinate length of their debates. The great publicity given to the proceedings of Parliament by means of the daily press, the increased responsibility of the House of Commons to its constituents since the Reform Act, the accumulation of busi- ner, and the interest which all classes of the community take in the discus- sion of public affairs, are causes which have concurred in protracting the debates, or rather, in multiplying speeches in the Lower House. But the comparison, even in this respect, with former times, is not altogether so un- favourable to modem practice. Long before the reporters of the daily press were admitted to the galleries, it was not uncommon for the House to sit ten or twelve hours without intermission. The debate on the convention with Spain, in 1739, lasted from half-past eleven in the morning until half-past twelve at night. The motion of Mr. Sandys for the removal of Sir Robert Walpole, in 1741, was debated for thirteen hours. The debate on general warrants, in 1765, was continued for seventeen hours. The House frequently sat during the whole night. In rarely happens in these days that the sitting of the House is prolonged much beyond midnight merely for the purpose of debate ; but the evil of excessive discussion has been aggravated by the practice, which of late years has obtained, of delivering a series of speeches on important or interesting questions (for these are not convertible terms) by means of adjournment from day to day.
"Many persons, both in and out of parliament, disgusted at this waste of time in useless oratory, are inclined to regard debate altogether as an ob- struction to public business. No man's vote, it is said, was ever affected by a speech, nor is the result of a division ever calculated upon the course of a debate. But even if both of these propositions are admitted, it does not fol- low that the practice of debatin,g should be dispensed with in the British Par- liament. The debates of both Houses are eagerly read throughout the country, and many a speech which nobody listened to but a reporter is perused by thousands out of doors. The speeches of those Members who de- rive authority from office, or from their general reputation, are sure to be considered and canvassed by the public with the greatest attention and in- terest. From the consideration of the Parliamentary debates by every class of the community, giving rise as they do to innumerable other debates in every haunt of business or pleasure—in every club, at every market-room, at the dinner-table, in the ball-room, in the beer-shop, at the cover side, at the corners of the street, in every family circle—from this manifold discussion public opinion is, to a great extent, formed, and reacts upon Parliament itself. It is not true, however, that debate does not immediately influence the vote. Even on occasions when the fate of a Cabinet is to be decided, and each party musters all its strength, some stragglers there are who address themselves only to the merits of the particular question upon which the battle is fought, and reserve their decision until they have heard the argu- ments on either side. These uncertain votes frequently turn the scale. The general business of Parliament is materially affected by the course of debate, and frequently by particular speeches. This independent action of the House of Commons, which is of recent growth, is to be attributed mainly to the increased freedom and purity of election. A Member who is returned by the nomination of one or more great proprietors follows, as of course, his party or his patron. A man who has purchased his seat has commonly some personal object in view, and can be accounted for accordingly in an estimate of the effective strength of a Government or an Opposition. But the repre- sentative who has been chosen by fair and open election is seldom attached to either party, and, except perhaps on some cardinal points, is free and willing to act as his own judgment or any accidental influence may direct bins. This tendency of the House of Commons has, in latter years, no doubt increased the difficulty of administration : it renders, perhaps, the formation of a strong and enduring Government an impossibility ; and thus imparts, to a certain degree, a character of waywardness and indecision to Parliament itself. On the other hand, the old fashion of government by party is gone by. In an age when the people were wholly uninstructed, nor had yet learned to claim an independent position in the political system—when the middle classes were still, for the moat part, rude and ignorant—the phrases Whig and Tory were, perhaps, the only intelligible expressions of public opinion. But these words have long lost their charm ; and candidates, in the interest of party, are driven to every kind of fantastic paraphrase for the purpose of disguising a character with which the people have no longer any sympathy. The elements of political and religious strife nevertheless still exist among us ; and threaten, at no distant day, unless happily the counsels of wisdom and moderation shall disperse them, or mitigate their fury, to shake the pillars of the state, and agitate society itself by their malignant influence.'
Mr. Massey promises to complete his work in four volumes we shall be rejoiced if our remarks have any effect in opening his eyes to the glaring contradiction between his promise and per- formance, and if future volumes prove that he has rather com- mitted an oversight than entirely misapprehended the nature of the task which he aspires to perform, and its relation to his own knowledge and intellectual power.
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