It was about the same time that another historian—Professor Seeley—who held, like Mr. Freeman, that history is the training-ground for both citizenship and statesmanship, was addressing a working-men's club in London; and in the discussion that followed his lecture a remark was made which he often recalled, especially when he tried to measure the competence of the great mass of men for judging of large national issues. ‘I don't know how you feel,’ said a working-man, turning to the gathering of working-men, ‘and I don't know how it is, but whenever I hear the Russians mentioned, I feel the blood tingling all over me.’ The lecturer was alarmed at this way of handling the question before the meeting. Many, however, in the audience seemed to be surprised at the impression which was made upon him by the assumption of this speaker, that a mere instinctive feeling might quite fairly be taken as a guide to the proper steps for determining policy towards an important issue in international affairs.[1] Seeley's lecture was given about ten years after Robert Lowe had uttered his deduction from the passing of the Second Reform Bill—that now we ‘must educate our masters’. Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff[2] very dutifully and trustingly
- ↑ Seeley, Macmillan's Magazine, September 1880.
- ↑ As Member of Parliament for the Elgin Burghs, 1857–81. In 1860 he gave the first in a long succession of annual speeches to his constituents, intended to survey the field of current politics, and especially that of international affairs. See his Elgin Speeches (1871). Everything may be left in part to the hazards of the unforeseen everything except the fate of nations. That, in the language of Emilio Castelar (Grant Duff, Miscellanies, Political and Literary (1878), 214–87), may be taken as the foundation and motive of the effort of the Member for the Elgin Burghs. ‘I think there is no man in Scotland who has tried more carefully to keep his constituents acquainted with what he thought upon all great matters, by submitting his thoughts to them at these annual gatherings.’—Miscellanies, 314. He deplored the evil, that ‘few English politicians find it worth their while to make a specialty of the study of foreign questions.’—
