The Spirit of Historical Inquiry

In service of present partisanship

I offer the following for two purposes. One is to illustrate that motivated reasoning in the search for historical justification of present policy is nothing at all new. Thomas Babbington Macauley complains of that practice in History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol 1. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1848. This paragraph is itself as longform essay, so if you want the TL:DR it’s just that—the Supreme Court decided whether nationwide injunctions may be issued pursuant to a statute of 1789 (no kidding!) by reference to the lawbooks of that day and their scholarship resulted in the usual 6-3 split in favor of whatever Trump wants.

So just let this flow over you for my second purpose. The man’s prose rolls on like the Mississippi, unstoppably. Each long sentence pulls you along from one word to the next without noticing the length. Churchill read Macauley when he was a young subaltern stationed in the Raj, and it provided part of his own magisterial style.

As there is no country where statesmen have been so much under the influence of the past, so there is no country where historians have been so much under the influence of the present. Between these two things, indeed, there is a natural connection. Where history is regarded merely as a picture of life and manners, or as a collection of experiments from which general maxims of civil wisdom may be drawn, a writer lies under no very pressing temptation to misrepresent transactions of ancient date. But where history is regarded as a repository of titledeeds, on which the rights of governments and nations depend, the motive to falsification becomes almost irresistible. A Frenchman is not now impelled by any strong interest either to exaggerate or to underrate the power of the Kings of the house of Valois. The privileges of the States General, of the States of Britanny, of the States of Burgundy, are to him matters of as little practical importance as the constitution of the Jewish Sanhedrim or of the Amphictyonic Council. The gulph of a great revolution completely separates the new from the old system. No such chasm divides the existence of the English nation into two distinct parts. Our laws and customs have never been lost in general and irreparable ruin. With us the precedents of the middle ages are still valid precedents, and are still cited, on the gravest occasions, by the most eminent Statesmen. For example, when King George the Third was attacked by the malady which made him incapable of performing his regal functions, and when the most distinguished lawyers and politicians differed widely as to the course which ought, in such circumstances, to be pursued, the Houses of Parliament would not proceed to discuss any plan of regency till all the precedents which were to be found in our annals, from the earliest times, had been collected and arranged. Committees were appointed to examine the ancient records of the realm. The first case reported was that of the year 1217: much importance was attached to the cases of 1326, of 1377, and of 1422: but the case which was justly considered as most in point was that of 1455. Thus in our country the dearest interests of parties have frequently been on the results of the researches of antiquaries. The inevitable consequence was that our antiquaries conducted their researches in the spirit of partisans.