overthrow.  The alliance succeeded, though too late for Bolingbroke to enjoy the fruits of success; but in effecting the purgation of the Tory party from its taint of Jacobitism he rendered no inconsiderable service.  His foundation, moreover, of the Craftsman—­the first official journal of a political party in England—­showed his appreciation of the technique of political controversy.  Most of it is dead now, and, indeed, no small part of its contemporary success is due to the making of comment in terms of the immediate situation, as also by its consistent use of a personal reference which has, save in the mass, no meaning for today.  Though, doubtless, the idea of its inception was derived from journals like Defoe’s Review and Leslie’s Rehearsal, which had won success, its intimate connection with the party leadership was a novel element; and it may therein claim a special relation to the official periodicals of a later generation.

The reputation of Bolingbroke as a political philosopher is something that our age can hardly understand.  “A solemn trifler,” Lord Morley has called him; and it is difficult to know why his easy declamation was so long mistaken for profound thought.  Much, doubtless, is due to that personal fascination which made him the inspiration of men so different as Pope and Voltaire; and the man who could supply ideas to Chatham and Disraeli cannot be wholly devoid of merit.  Certainly he wrote well, in that easy elegance of style which was the delight of the eighteenth century; and he is consistently happy in his choice of adjectives.  But his work is at every point embellished with that affectation of classical learning which was the curse of his age.  He sought no general truths, and he is free from the accusation of sincerity.  Nor has he any enthusiasm save that of bitter partisanship.  He hated Walpole, and his political writings are, at bottom, no more than an attempt to generalize his animosity.  The Dissertation on Parties (1734) and the Idea of a Patriot King (1738) might have betrayed us, taken alone, into regarding their author as a disinterested observer watching with regret the development of a fatal system; but taken in conjunction with the Letter to Sir W. Windham (1717), which was not published until after his death, and is written with an acrid cynicism fatal to his claim to honesty, they reveal the opinions as no more than a mask for ambition born of hate.

The whole, of course, must have some sort of background; and the Letters on the Study of History (1735) was doubtless intended to supply it.  Experience is to be the test of truth, since history is philosophy teaching by example.  But Bolingbroke’s own argument supplies its refutation.  His history is an arbitrary selection of instances intended to illustrate the particular ideas which happened to be uppermost in his mind.  The Roman consuls were chosen by annual election; whence it is clear that