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g The Leader and Saturday Analyst. [Jan....
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Lord Macaulay —The Politician". The Publ...
procured his call to the bar , he was made a Commissioner of Bankrupts . His literary achievements raised , great expectations , and he was placed in Parliament as a member for one of Lord LANSBOwiN ' s boroughs . So he became wedded to ' a party- ; . Its creed became his creed . His researches , as well as his opinions , were influenced by it ; and aspiring to be a leader , he became one of the led . For him this was a great misfortune . Descended from Presbyterians , and allied to Nonconformists , he was naturally opposed to Government . His earlier productions , his Life of Milton , his review of Hallam ' s Constitutional History , and of Southey's Colloquies , all written before the Whigs obtained office in . 1830 ,
were extremely liberal , and adapted to an opposition struggling for power by , courting the people . The young of that period will not soon forget the noble words with which the essay on Milton concluded : " Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or writings of the great poet and patriot without aspiring to emulate , not , indeed , the sublime works with which his genius has enriched bur literature , but the zeal with which he laboured for the public good , the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity , the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptations and dangers , the deadly hatred winch he bore to bigots and tyrants , and the 'faith which Jie sternly ' kept with his country and ' his fame . " Such language excited the hopes of the young , that liberty had found in him an undaunted
leader . His defence and character of Cuomweli ., whom he vindicated from his friend Mr . Hallam's strictures , and his sketch of the history , of the " Great Rebellion , " are conceived in the same spirit as the admiration of Milton . They fanned the impatience of Tory rule , help ed the Whigs into office , and taught the public to expect from them the most liberal measures . He was a recognised party writer , and the party obtained , credit for the extreme liberalism he professed . In his article on Southey , published in January 1830 , before the Whigs . had any hopes of immediately acceding to . office , he wrote :
" ¦ It is not by the intermeddling of Mr . Southey ' s idol , the omniscient and omnipotent State , but by the prudence and energy of the people that England has hitherto been carried forward in civilization , and it is to the same prudence and energy that we now look with comfort and . hope . Our rulers will best promo . te the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties , by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course , commodities their fair price , industry and intelligence theii ; natural reward , idleness and folly their natural punishment , by maintaining peace , by defending property , by diminishing the price of law , and by observing strict economy in every department of the State . Let the Government do this , the people will assuredly dp the rest . " The most ultra laissez-faire partisan could desire nothing more than this . The furthest-advanced people of the present day do riot go further than to demand perfect freedom for capital and commodities , and that industry and intelligence should freely obtain their natural reward , and idleness and folly suffer their natural punishment . They do not , and cannot , go further than to say that civilization is the result of the prudence and energy of the people , and not of the intermeddling of the State . If the passage be not a mere rhetorical flourish , Avithout any thought of the meaning it would convey to others , Mr . Macaulay wn § then
convinced that the people , not the State , were the authors of civilization . He believed , as Burke ; in his younger days believed , and made Lord Boli > tgbroke say for him , that the natural punishment of folly and the natural reward of intelligence was far superior to legislation in promoting the progress and ensuring the well-being of society . He taught others so to belieye . Like Mr . Hume , too , he was a strict economist . In his first speech on , the Reform Bill , delivered on the 2 nd of March , 1831 , he said , referring to the general discontent of the people , which , continually encouraged by the Whigs , " had become more malignant through the whole lifetime of two generations : —"
" between the narrow oligarcJiy ' above , and the infuriated multitude below ; " but he warned the parliament that the men of the present day were not like " those who changed their religion once a . year ' at the bidding of Henry VIII . " A great improvement had taken place in them as surely as they have steam engines and gas lights ; and no minister could'" now fit the yoke of Mr . Pitt to the necks of Englishmen . You may make the change tedious , " he emphatically said ; " you may make it violent ; you but
may—God in his mercy forbid ! - —you may make it blood y * avert it you cannot . Therefore be content to guide that movement you cannot stop . Fling wide the gates to that force which will else enter through the breach . " Thus , taking the foremost lead in expounding liberal principles , and advocating the people ' s cause , Mr . Macaulay gained a high reputation , and the great and newly enfranchised borough of Leeds marked its sense of his services by freely choosing him for its first representative .
The readers of his Essays are well aware that he avowed as his guide the great principle of utility . He preferred the philosophy of JBacox and Locke to that of Plato and Aristotle . He looked for his rule of conduct in the outward world , not in the feelings . He was expected , therefore , to peruse , undiverted by any fine Utopian projects , the ordinary paths of great ambition . The representation of Yorkshire had carried Brougham , a like man , professing like opinions , a short time before to the Chancellorship ; and Leeds , with the newinterests which Mr . Macaulay had advocated , might well be his stepping-stone to the first place in the Treasury . Only his own
conduct could prevent him fi-om reaching a post at least as high as Mri Disraeli , a far inferior man , has reached . Whether he had no such honourable ambition , whether his dear friends the Whigs wanted him out of the way , whether he were too grateful for their favours to think of becoming their master , or whether , as we are afraid , was the case , he had in his disposition a larger spice of sordidness than of that faith in his own exertions and his own fame he ascribed to Milton , we know not , but his admirers at Leeds and in the public , were soon surprised to learn that he had left the tempting prae of high , office at home , to seize an immediate large pecuniary reward in India . The plan of forming a code of laws for that country was believed at the time to be little better than a wliig job . , It bore no worthy fruit ; it ended , as if it had been devised for the pui'pose , in giving a competent fortune to Mr . Macaulay . It ena . bled him to choose at his leisure either politics or literature for his subsequent occupation . - A three years' absence in India , which has corrupted many a liberal , broke the chain which connected him with Leeds and the first office in the . State , and after leaving it he devoted himself chiefly to literature , From that time , he occupied in politics only a subordinate place . He went backwards rather than forwards , and his first class liberalism sank into mere common-place whiggery in office . His first connection with place and party lowered all the noble aspirations of youth , and fixed his inquiring , compx-ehensive , and sagacious mind at one point , though all knowledge , as he well knew , especially of society , is progressive . It tied him to errors from which every advancing day carried away much meaner men . The great personal benefit he derived from his India mission confirmed his conversion , and the advocate of laissez-faire , —of the superiority of the people to the State and of mankind to politicians , sank into a mere defender of old errors . The people , to whom in , 18 S 1 he could fling open wide the gates , " whose forward margh could not be averted , " had become in 1842 " ignorant crowds , " destitute of education , unfit for the
franchise , and to give them the suffrage would be followed by one " vast spoliation , " " something even worse than that , more horrible than coukl be imagined , something like the siege of Jerusalem on a far larger scale . " The great champion of laissezr faire in 1829 was in 1842 the Advocate of a ten hours' bill , and of a restriction on the employment of capital . The , gentleman who . in 1829 propounded the superiority of the people to the State , who ascribed all civilization to the former and spoke of the latter as standing in the way , in 1847 stoutly argued in
favour of granting money to the Government , thon £ 100 , 000 , now swollen to upwards of £ 1 , 000 , 000 , and the pabulum of many rank jobs , for educating the people . The constitution , argued Mr . Maoaulay , gave the ( Jovernmont the power to hang , and therefore it should have the power to drill . Before ho went to India he was known as the most vigorous advocate of freedom and of popular rights \ after his return from India ho was more conspicuous for consistent opposition to universal suffrage than for any other political opinion .
For tins great change tho party to which Mr . Maoaulay was wed / led , whioh ' after getting into oflico had changed too , was in a great measure to blame A man of a really great mind , n man OTcsorving his faith in the principles ho had acquired IVom unbiassed observation and study , a man undiverted by porsonal and
" We have tried anodynes ; we have tried cruel operations . What are we to try now ? Who flatters himself ' thafr ho can turn tho feeling back ? Does there remain any argument which escaped the oomproheneive intellect of Mr , Burke , or the subtlety of Mr . Windham ? Does there remain any sjiovios of coercion- whioh ivaa not Mod by Mr . JPitt and Lord Xtondondewy / IVo havo had bad laws , wo have had blood . New treasons have been created . The JProea has been shackled . The Habeas Corpus Act has been suspended ; public meetings huvq been prohibited . The resujt has proved that these expedients were mere palliatives . Yon arc at tho end « f your palliatives . The evil remains . It is more formidable than « ver . What is to be done ?" Mr . Maoaulay . said of tho bill , "it takes away a vast power
from a few . It distributes that power through the great mass of the middlo ordor . " His speech on the second reading of tho se , cond bill , delivered on December 16 , 1881 , denounced emphatically the rotten borough system by whioh he sat for Calno . It corrupted , , the virtuo of men of genius , whom it admitted to political power , perverted their principles , and broke their spirit . " The beautiful and kindly Ariel doing the bidding of the loathsome and malignant Sycorax boing but a faint t ! ype of genius enslaved by the spells and employed in the drudgery of corruption , " He did not expect suoh a horrible event as a collision
G The Leader And Saturday Analyst. [Jan....
g The Leader and Saturday Analyst . [ Jan . 7 , 1860 .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 7, 1860, page 8, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_07011860/page/8/
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