LORD ACTON'S GREAT PROJECT.
LORD ACTON'S great project of preparing, with the assistance of the best writers he can obtain, and with the support of the Syndics of the University Press, a " comprehensive history of modern times," is, we con- ceive, a very good one. That the world will welcome a continuation of Gibbon up to 1900—which is what the work will practically be—is, we believe, certain, for the world has a genuine interest in modern history, and at the same time a great reluctance to study it by wading, as at pre;ent it must wade, through entire libraries. You must read a hundred volumes at least to form a satisfactory opinion on the causes of only three great modern move- ments,—the rise of the industrial spirit; the outfall of Europe upon the two Americas, which has now lasted for three centuries ; and the fresh and marvellous effort of the white peoples, which, though intermittent in energy, has been continuous for two hundred years, to bring the dark races of Asia and Africa permanently under their dominion. The book which, within the compass of the "Decline and Fall," would bring the real history of the modern world within an intelligent reader's grasp, would not only be one of much interest, but by its mere range and exhaustiveness in one sense would dissipate much mental fog, and therefore help to clear the brains of those -who have in one way or another to carry on in action the processes of history. If you know what has failed, you waste no energy upon repeating that experiment. Nor can we think that the method adopted—that of employing experts to treat each subject—furnishes any solid reason for distrusting the project. Intelligent readers like style, but they do not demand the same style through more than one chapter or one division of a subject. Mr. Traill tried the plan in his history of "Social England," a book which has never received half the appreciation it deserved, and the present writer at least, who has read every word of it, can testify that the many disparities of style and the occasional divergencies of latent bias never for one half- hour destroyed or even diminished his sense of fascination. That was generated by the tale itself, not by any artistic use of words. It is necessary that any such undertaking should be penetrated and bound together from first to last by a single chain of thought ; but such a thread may be detected in many encycloptedias, and is in no way beyond the power of Lord Acton, acting on his responsibility as editor, to ensure. We cannot but think that if he lives he may succeed in producing a true magnum opus, and that "The Cambridge Modern History "—a badly chosen title, for half the fools in the world will take it for a history of modern Cambridge—will not only develop new interest in modern history, but will release those who wish to study that history from the daunting impression that they are about to open a vast volume destitute of any index. Lord Acton's undertaking will be at least a magnificent index to the universal history of the modern world.
We wish Lord Acton could see his way to carry his enterprise one long step further. It is the profound con- viction of the present writer that if strong action is not taken the compilation of general history of any kind will in the twentieth century, which is now advancing so rapidly upon us, become physically impossible, and that our children will be compelled to study modern history, as they are already compelled to study modern physics, in sections, one man devoting himself to one aspect of the subject and another to another, to the gain of specialists, and the profound injury of all who regard history—as he does—as the great clarifier of political thought. The mass of material, increased yearly by the operations of two new forces, threatens to overleap all bounds, and crush all thought under the mass of materials for thought. One of these forces is intercommunication, which so binds the nations together, and so confuses their interdependence, that the man who confines himself to one people finds at once that as regards their external as well as internal history, or to tell the whole truth, as regards even special facts, he has to treat the whole world as a field for his inquiries. He cannot even collect material for a "history of the prices of bread," surely a well- defined and limited subject, without discovering that he must search among the official " Reports " of a dozen different countries, and must settle in his own mind, and in some rough way at least, problems so difficult to the historian as the rise and decline of Russian wheat culture, the strange fluctuations of Indian cereal produce, and the still more strange dependence of the wheat supply in the West of North America upon the inexplicable contests of capitalists for the control of the inter-State railways. Who is to write the history of Liberal Administrations without accounting for explosions of feeling like those produced by the Indian Mutiny, or by the Bulgarian atrocities, or by the Majuba Hill disaster ? As to the materials, they grow more unmanageable every day, as archives give up their secrets, as new classes learn to talk and write, and as the means of record grow in bulk and in completeness. Macaulay is said to have read even the broadsheets published during the English Revolution ; but imagine the fate of the man who, wishing to be as " thorough " about the Victorian Era, attempted a survey of the influence of journals upon the course of its events. He will have to consult thousands of heavy volumes for that purpose alone, and that will be but one among a hundred tasks of equal weight, and perhaps even greater inevitableness. For instance, what will he know accurately of the orators who have successively affected our destinies if he has not mastered Hansard for the sixty years ? The work will be too prodigious, even if the historian belongs to the limited class of men who can excavate books all day at the British Museum, and it will either be avoided, or history will become a thin literary veneer, worthless for any purpose except to revive decaying memories in the old, who are interested only in the limited range of facts amidst which they themselves were con- spicuous. The spread of intercommunication cannot be retarded, the mass of materials cannot be diminished, and the only practicable remedy is, as we conceive, to found a College or Corporation of Archivists, who shall collect and preserve and redact from year to year all in the way of archives, documents, and narratives that should serve in the future as the material of history. They should, in fact, do for each year what Lord Acton proposes to do for modern times, with this difference, that they should collect rather than condense, leaving the condensation for volunteers who believe they have a genius for that work, or who desire to derive from history proof of the accuracy of their own speculations. We have no doubt that such a work could be done, and that it would be of immense advantage to future generations; but it will never be done without the foundation and the strict government of a Guild of Archivists, with the command of very considerable funds for the payment of the historians they employ. Messrs. Black could tell us pretty nearly what the enter- prise would actually cost; but we should say certainly that a permanent fund of from six to ten thousand a year would be indispensable ; in other words, that it could not be attempted without State-aid, or a great legacy from a mighty millionaire, such as those who have in America founded Universities and Observatories. For be it ob- served, the Guild, to be of any use, must be as continuously efficient as a University, must renew itself from time to time by co-optation, must print masses of material, and must acquire, as slowly it would acquire, the feeling that it was independent of politics, above events, and intent solely on remaining, as the French Academy was intended to remain, a continuous source of light upon a single department of human thought.
It is all a dream ? Probably, though if the present writer were a millionaire it is a dream which would be realised before the century ended; but it is a dream which, could it produce results, would be of indefinite advantage to mankind. It is from political wisdom or error that most of the successes and misfortunes of mankind have sprung, and the great prophylactic against such error, after the acceptance of a few moral propositions, is historical knowledge. Men seldom act rightly without experience, or against experience, and nations can only gain experience from their knowledge of history. That knowledge hitherto has been most imperfect, uncertain, and discoloured, and as history is in great part a record of individual minds which are never accurately known, is constantly in great sections forgotten, and is always liable to deliberate falsification—it is probable, for example, that we know literally nothing of the causes which pro- duced that great factor in the history of mankind, the Roman character—many acute observers believe that the world will never derive full benefit from its own experience. The clouds, however, were disappearing under the growth of intelligence, when suddenly this new and thickest one of all arose, this dust-cloud from too great a mass of sandy material, interposed between the subject and human eyes. If that could be dispersed, our grandchildren would see modern history with some distinctness, that is, they would be comparatively, in the entire political region which now comprises so much besides battles and sieges, experienced men. In that, and not any vague change of sentiment, lies, as we think, the great hope for an improvement in the sense of mankind, and towards that improvement the Guild we have suggested would, we shall always maintain, be an important contribution. It would build nothing, but it would shape masses of stone for the builders.
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