Thus it has been in the present case.

Historians have, almost without exception, confined themselves to the public transactions of states, and have left to the negligent administration of writers of fiction a province at least equally extensive and valuable.
All wise statesmen have agreed to consider the prosperity or adversity of nations as made up of the happiness or misery of individuals, and to reject as chimerical all notions of a public interest of the community, distinct from the interest of the component parts.

It is therefore strange that those whose office it is to supply statesmen with examples and warnings should omit, as too mean for the dignity of history, circumstances which exert the most extensive influence on the state of society.

In general, the under current of human life flows steadily on, unruffled by the storms which agitate the surface.

The happiness of the many commonly depends on causes independent of victories or defeats, of revolutions or restorations,--causes which can be regulated by no laws, and which are recorded in no archives.