*6 LETTER II.

get over the prefent difficulty, we improve themomentary advantage, as well as we can, and welook no farther. Experience can carry us no far-ther ; for experience can go a very little way backin difcovering caufes; and effects are not the ob-jects of experience till they happen. From hencemany errors in judgment, and by confequence it?conduct, neceffarfty arife. And here too lies thedifference we are fpeaking of between hiftory andexperience. The advantage on the fide of the for-mer is double. In ancient hiftory as we have faidalready, the examples are complete, which are in-complete in the courfe of experience. The begin-ning, the progreflion , and the end appear, not ofparticular reigns, much lefs ofparticular enterprifes,or fyftems of policy alone, but of governments ofnations , of empires, and of all the various fyftemsthat have fucceeded one another in the courfe oftheir duration. In modern hiftory , the examplesmaybe, and fometimes are, incomplete; but theyhave this advantage when they are fo , that theyferve to render complete the examples of our owntime. Experience is doubly defective ; we are borntoo late to fee the beginning, and we die too foouto fee the end of many things. Hiftory fuppliesboth thele defeats. Modern hiftory fliows the cau-fes , when experience prefents the effects alone:and ancient hiftory enables us to guefs at theeffeds, when experience prefents the caufes aloneLet me explain my meaning by two examples ofthefe kinds; one paft, the other adually prefent.