to maintain in policy and in the zeal and tenacity of State officers, themselves genuinely Russian.
The path of inquiry in comparative politics is very alluring, but it is dangerously devious. It is better to concentrate on one political system, and to get the lessons as sharp and decisive as possible. If we look to our own government since the time when a parliamentary system began to prevail in England, we find an almost unbroken line of appeal to close the ranks and maintain unity of mind and purpose for unity in action, where the interests of the country have had to be adjusted to the interests and the contentions of others. We need not press very far the charges made at the time, both at home and abroad, and later by historians, more especially Continental, that on several notable occasions Britain, through the force of party influences, was false of faith to her allies—during the Spanish Succession War, and again in the War of the Austrian Succession, without taking account of the more exceptional case of the 'desertion' or 'betrayal', as it has been termed, of the cause of Frederick II of Prussia before his day of danger was over. The historical and political writer,[1] to whom probably more than to any other these charges have owed wide currency, stated them dispassionately, without acrimony. They were urged as charges due to the faults of a constitutional system; they were not brought forward as unqualified charges of a violation of public faith. The minister who was chiefly responsible for terminating the war in each case was not the minister, and did not represent the party or the political connexion, that had been in power when the war was entered
- ↑ Heeren (A. H. L.), who was Knight of the Guelphic Order, Councillor, and Professor of History in the University of Göttingen, born 1760, died 1842. See especially his 'Historical Development of the Rise and Growth of the Continental Interests of Great Britain'.—Historical Treatises, translated (1836) from the German (1821), 351–2; cf. 314–15.
