NOTES ON POLITICS HISTORY A UNIVERSITY ADDRESS BY VISCOUNT MORLEY, O. M. CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTINS STREET, LONDON 1914 COPYRIGHT First Edition 1913 Reprinted January and I I arch 1914 NOTE THESE pages are a version, amplified and recast, of an Address delivered by the writer as Chancellor of the University of Manchester, in the summer of 1912. The strict rules that limit the contents of a Bill in parliament by its Title, would be fatal to an academic address like this. I only hope that my Notes are not too dispersive to prevent some points of thought from being of use in the way of suggestion, interrogatory, and perhaps, s spur to curiosity. NOTES ON POLITICS AND HISTOKY WHEN I had the pleasure of coming among you a u few months ago, I offered some remarks upon the obvious truth that democracy in the discussions mind. of the day means government working directly through public opinion and upon the equally urgent importance of a body, like this University, making it one part of its office to help in forming those habits of mind and temper upon which, along with knowledge of the right facts, the sound ness of opinion depends. To-night I propose to harp upoji the same string, and to say something about politics and history. I intend a double subject with a single object. I need your indulgence, for of history I know too little, and of politics some of you may think I know too much, and know it wrong. Pretty manifest roots of mischief easily spoil both contemporary politician and historian both the minister or the elector of to-day, and the interpreter of days long ago. Looseness of mind is one i B 2 POLITICS AND HISTORY narrowness ofvision is another. Plenty of infirmities besides are left. You know the worst of them, at least by distant report indolence, impatience, procrastination, incoherence, pugnacity. I include pugnacity among defects, for it is no vice of intellect if our first attitude towards new opinion is one of readiness and attentive response, rather than instantaneous combat to give a hearing, before rushing to controversial fire-arms. A recep tive mind is after all no hindrance to firm love of truth. On the other hand life is short, and there are limits to patience with quackish fungoids. You have not, I would fain believe, forgotten the spirit of a passage from Spinoza that I quoted here last time When I applied my mind to politics, so that I might examine what belongs to politics, with the same precision of mind as we use for mathematics, I have taken my best pains not to laugh at the actions of mankind, not to groan over them, not to be angry with them, but to understand them 9 By understanding them, he says, he means looking at all the motives of human feeling, love, hatred, envy, ambition, pity, not as vices of human nature, but as properties belonging to it, just as heat, cold, storm, thunder belong to air and sky. signs of So much to begin with the mood and temper the times., . r then the application and occasion. Any re flective observer, if he likes, can sketch some of the signs of the times in rather formidable outline. POLITICS AND HISTORY 3 Let us look at it. Political power is described as lying in the hands of a vast and mobile electorate, with scanty regard for tradition or history. What is history to me asks the plain busy man. Demo cracy, they warn us, is going to insist on writingits own programme. The structure of executive organs and machinery is undergoing half-hidden but profound alterations. The two Houses of our Parliament are being fundamentally transformed before our eyes. The Cabinet, keystone of the arch, in size and in prerogative is not altogether safe against invasion. The great wholesome system of party is said to be melting into groups and coalitions...