INAUGURAL ADDRESS

BY

PROFESSOR SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER

PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY.

WHEN you did me the very great honour of inviting me to be your President, I asked myself very much the same question which, as I have just heard, Professor Seeley put to himself at the beginning of his address last year, "What shall my address be about?" The one thing that occurred to me at the time was, that I unfortunately knew very little about you, that I had never been in this place in my life except, I think, for about three or four hours in an afternoon. However, after considering a little, I remembered that Birmingham was not quite unknown to the world, that it was not in the habit of hiding its light under a bushel, and that one does know, from the public prints and from the records of history, something about it. If you take its history from the beginning--at all events from the time to which my historical memory goes back-Mr. Freeman took you back a great deal further some years ago-when you go back to the day when Birmingham makers of arms were offered a considerable sum if they would arm Charles the First's army, then on the way to Edge-hill, and find that they not only absolutely refused to touch his money, but immediately set about to make arms to send to the Parliamentary army under the Earl of Essex-you begin to suspect that you have to do with a place likely to be associated with the popular party on the questions of the day.

It is not very long ago since I had a curious story told me, which I had never heard before. It was told me by a very old

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gentleman, a landowner in Buckinghamshire, who was old enough to have been a man at the time when the London and NorthWestern Railway-I suppose then it was the London and Birmingham Railway-was being made, and whose house lay close by the line which George Stephenson thought to be the best the railway should take-not that which it actually took. found himself alone among the landowners in wishing it to take this course. The Duke of Buckingham opposed the line, and said to the gentleman of whom I have spoken: "You are a young man and I am an old one, and you don't understand these things; but the fact is, that railway is a branch of the Birmingham Political Union." This story brought to my mind the activity of the work that Birmingham does in political matters, and which some people admire and some people dislike. Yet even if we allow our minds to dwell not only on the political activity of the place, but also on its material labours in providing things useful and beautiful for the world at large, I doubt whether we shall succeed in fully comprehending the life of the town. It is not so very long ago that there appeared from Birmingham a book which was very largely read--indeed, the immense sale of which I believe very much astonished the author-the aim of it was very different from any to which the energies of Birmingham--those which we know most about in the rest of England-are usually directed. The object of this book was not to point out how political changes might be effected, but to lay stress upon the supposed life of a person whose character led him as much as possible to avoid all the political movements of his time, to shrink from them, and to set himself as far as possible to cultivate his own life and to seek for some higher sphere which he might reach through the cultivation of his own individual mind and spirit. Is not this just what one might expect to find in a place like Birmingham? Wherever there is a strong development of activity there will be some persons who shrink from the perpetual whirl, and who become afraid lest the mind and spirit should be soiled by contact with the energy which is necessarily often misdirected-necessarily, because we are only

ordinary human beings, likely to make mistakes and to commit errors. Now I think these two sides of Birmingham life, which are the two which most strike a stranger, do answer to the two sides in our national life in all England. The period in which we live is marked by an energy in dealing with physical facts and with scientific enquiry, and with political action besides; but there is also to be found in the literature of the present day a weariness of all this, a yearning after some kind of inner completeness in the life of man, which shows that all that energy and activity does not quite satisfy the wants of the whole of our nature. If that is the state of mind prevailing in England, then may we not, as a society meeting together for one definite object, consider how far this study of history which we have embarked in, can help those who take either of these two views of life? how can it bring them together and enable them to do their work better than they have done it before? Last year and the year before we got an answer to the question. There were two very able addresses delivered here, which I have no doubt you listened to, as I read them, with exceeding interest-which told how one who has laboured in historical study proposes that historical study should be used. I saw in the newspaper, as I travelled down yesterday, that Professor Seeley has recently made a practical application of his theory by writing a book, which I am sure I shall read with very great pleasure. I understand his view is that the study of history is to be of chief use to the statesman-to give him the materials upon which he is to form his judgment. From such a view it would appear to be a legitimate inference that the study of history would be more instructive to the statesman in proportion as it deals with affairs which are only recently past; and, in short, that it is more useful to study the history of the nineteenth century than of the eighteenth, of the eighteenth than of the seventeenth.

It is perhaps not unnatural in one who, like myself, has only paid slight attention to history of the nineteenth or of the eighteenth century, to feel as though there might be something to be said for those who have embarked on the investigation of earlier

periods, though rather to supplement the view of which I have been speaking than to oppose it. It has always seemed to me that even as a help to our modern thought and life, the study of history is of greater service in proportion as it relates to peoples whose habits and thoughts are different from those which prevail at the present day. It is therefore upon the use which may be made of the history of earlier times that I wish to speak to you to day.

One service which a history of former times might render us, and one that is easily comprehensible, would be to afford a refuge for minds that were in any way distressed with the present. This, in fact, is very much the sort of way in which a man like Sir Walter Scott turned to history, that he might escape from environments that were unsatisfactory to him, into what was to him almost a fairyland, where men lived and acted under different conditions to those of his own day. We have, happily a power of solacing ourselves if we have work which we are obliged to do, but which does not occupy all our powers, by thoughts and activities which contrast most sharply with our ordinary employments. It is thus that the contemplation of art or nature seems to fill up that which is wanting to make us more complete than we have been before, and in much the same way we not merely derive pleasure, but enlarge our moral and intellectual sympathies by learning to dwell in thought amongst the men of the past who were more or less unlike ourselves.

After all, however, we can hardly rest satisfied here. Let us therefore ask ourselves how we are to study history to produce a larger result? We are told again, in those lectures of Professor Seeley's, which are so very suggestive-as is generally the case with anything that Professor Seeley says or writes that our study of history must be scientific. For some reason or other, however, he did not tell you in what way history is to be scientifically studied.

Let us then ask ourselves what we mean by the science of history? How do we know what we know or think we know? We are, of course, aware that the first requisite of anybody who

studies history in detail, or on a large scale, is accuracy, and we are frequently told that absolute accuracy is what is required of a historian. Now that is a phrase that comes very nicely and pleasantly over the tongue; it glides off very easily. Try, however, to reduce it to practice by telling the story of any single occurrence correctly, and see what dreadful difficulties you get into; how certain you are, if you have any conscience about the matter at all, to learn that much knowledge which you require to give a complete account is for ever unattainable by you. You will become conscious that after you have for several weeks or months been doing your best, you have only succeeded to a very limited extent, because a great part of the evidence which you need is unprocurable. Even if in dealing with contemporary events, when you can put a witness into the box and cross-examine him, you cannot be sure that he has not told you lies, and you may think it very likely that some lies he has told you have failed to be detected. You know, that even with the most effective system of trial and with living witnesses to examine, you cannot be certain of every detail. How much farther is the chance of certainty removed when you come to deal with the events of the past. You wish to know all about some man, whose words in the course of his life were numerous beyond the possibility of reckoning, and of these have, perhaps, been reported less than a-millioneth part of those which he uttered. It may be that he kept up a most voluminous correspondence, and very likely you have got about the thousandth part of the letters which he wrote and received. No doubt, however, you can learn something from the reports of his friends and enemies, of those who thought that he did everything that was right, and of those who thought he did everything that was wrong, What becomes of your historical accuracy? You may depend upon it that no perfectly accurate history will ever be written unless you can get a man to write it who is omniscient.

The outlook certainly does not appear to be cheerful. Fortunately, however, we are not left without comfort. Happily the sources of error decrease as we ascend from the individual to the