To a young man,
getting an education in politics, there could be no sense in
history unless a constant course of faults implied a constant
motive.
For his father the question was not so abstruse; it was a
practical matter of business to be handled as Weed or Evarts
handled their bargains and jobs. Minister Adams held the
convenient belief that, in the main, Russell was true, and the
theory answered his purposes so well that he died still holding
it. His son was seeking education, and wanted to know whether he
could, in politics, risk trusting any one. Unfortunately no one
could then decide; no one knew the facts. Minister Adams died
without knowing them. Henry Adams was an older man than his
father in 1862, before he learned a part of them. The most
curious fact, even then, was that Russell believed in his own
good faith and that Argyll believed in it also.
Argyll betrayed a taste for throwing the blame on Bethell, Lord
Westbury, then Lord Chancellor, but this escape helped Adams not
at all. On the contrary, it complicated the case of Russell. In
England, one half of society enjoyed throwing stones at Lord
Palmerston, while the other half delighted in flinging mud at
Earl Russell, but every one of every party united in pelting
Westbury with every missile at hand. The private secretary had no
doubts about him, for he never professed to be moral.
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