Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

In a different context, Malcolm was considering the contribution of the historian E.H.Lecky (1838-1903). For anyone with a TCD background, that's familiar territory: a seated statue, a library and a professor of history with his name.

Scanning the Dictionary of National Biography entry about Lecky, Malcolm hit on this:

He saw Gladstone as an honest man with a dishonest mind who, by skilful casuistry, could persuade himself that he was in the right, and then, his moral nature taking fire, act as if under a divine impulse.

That seemed uncannily descriptive of a much later, quite recent, occupant of 10 Downing Street. Sphere: Related Content