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.