On this page

• Text (1)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    procured his call to the bar , lie was made a Commissioner of Bankrupts . His literary achievements raised great expectations , . „ ' and he was placed hi Parliament as a member for one of Lord IiANSDOwn ' 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 Prestyteriansj 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 , aU written before tlieW 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 our literature , but the zeal with which he laboured for the public good , the fortitude with which he endured everv private calamity , the lofty disdain with which he looked down ' on temptations and dangers , the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots arid tyrants , and the / aith which he sternly kept with his country and V J ' ame - " Such language excited the hopes of the young , that liberty had found in him an undaunted leader . His defence and character of Cromwell , whom he vindicated from his . friend Mr . Hallam ' s strictures , and his sketch of the history of the " Great Kebellion , " are conceived in the same spirit as the admh-atipn of Milton . They fanned the impatience of Tory rule , helped the Whigs into office , and taught the public to expect from them the most liberal measures . He was a recognised party widter , and the party obtained credit for the extreme liberalism hei professed , Tri his artiele on Southey , published in January 1830 , before the Whigs had any hopes of immediately Receding 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 yrith comfort and hope . Our tillers will best promote 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 their natural reward , idleness and folly their natural punishment , by maintaining peace ' , by defehdingproperty , 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 do the rest . *' The most ultra laissez-faire partisan could desire nothing more than this . The furthest-advanced people of the present day do not 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 , without any thought of the meaning it would convey to others , Mr ; . Maoaulay was 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 Bolingbroke 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 believe . Like Mr . Hume , too , he was a strict economist . In his / first speech on tiie Reform Bill , delivered on the 2 nd of March , 1831 , he said , referring to the general discontent of the people , which , continually enwuraged by the Whigs , " had become more malignant tlmmgh the whole lifeto . " " \ Vo have tried anodynes ; wo hare tried cruel operations . What are we tp try now 1 Who flatters himself that ho can turn the feeling back ? JDo « b there remain any argument which opcaped tho comprehendiyo intellect of Mr . Burke , or the subtlety of JMx , Windham 1 Doog thorQ n srowofai <* " ¦ # spooics of coercion , which was not tried by Mr . Pitt and Lord < Xjondonderru ? Wo have Had badlaws , tOe have had blood . New treasons ; fcavo been created . Tho PresB has been shackled . * The Habeas Corpus . Act has been suspended ; publjo meetings have been prohibited . Tho tobuU hau proved that these expedients wetc mere palliatives . You are at \ tho end of your palHatlveo , The evil remains . It is mpre formidable than « ver . What is to be done ? " ¦ ^ Mr . Macaulay said of the bill , "it takes aAvay a vast power ' . from-a few . It distributes ,,, that power through tho groat mass of 'thfr middle order . " His speeoh on the second reading of the leeond Ml , delivered on December 16 , } 8 S 1 , denounced emplm-•¦ ••<¦ . #

    " between the narrow oligarchy 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 biddihg of 'Henry YIII . " A great improvement had taken place in them as surely as they have steam engines and gas lights ; and no minister could " now * fife the yoke of Mr . Pitt tothe necks of Englishmen .. You may make the change tedious , " he emphaticaEy said ; " you may make it violent ; you may—God in his mercy forbid !—yon may make it bloody , but avert it you cannot . Therefore be content to guide that movement you cannot stop . Ming wide the gates to that force which i will else enter through the breach . " Thus , taking the foremost i lead in expounding liberal principles , and advocating the people ' s I cause , Mr . Mac aulay gained a high reputatiOn , ' and the great and ! . newly enfranchised borough of Leeds marked its sense of his i services by freely choosing him for its first representative . The readers of his Essays ai-e well aware that he avowed as his guide the great principle of utility . He preferred the philosophy of Bacon * 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 earned Brougham , a like man , professing like opinions , a short time before to the Chancellorship ; and Leeds , with the newinterests which Mr . Mac aulay had advocated , might well be his stepping-stone to the first place in the Treasury . Only liis own conduct could p revent him from reaching a post at least as high as Mr . Disraeli , a far inferior man , has reached . "Whether he had no such honoiu-able 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 ^ vhether , 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 prize of high office at home , to slize an imm&diate 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 whig job . It bore no worthy fruit ; it ended , as if it had been devised for the purpose , in-giving a competent fortune to Mr . Macaulay . It enabled 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 commou-place whiggery in office . His first connection with place and party lowered all the noble aspirations of youth , and fixed his inquiring , comprehensive , 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 1831 he could , fling open wide the gates , ¦*'* whose forward inarch could not be averted , " had become in 1842 " ignorant crowds , " destitute of education , unfit for tho franchise , and to give them the suffrage would bo followed by , one " vast spoliation , " ¦ ' something even worse than that , more horrible than Could be imagined , something like the siege of Jerusalem on a far larger scale . " The great champion of laissezfairein 1829 was in 1842 the advooate of a ten hours' bill , and of a restriction on the employment of capital . The gentleman who in 3 . 821 ) propounded the superiority of the people to tho State , who ascribqd all civilization to the former and spoke of th . o latter as standing in tho way , in 1847 stoutly argued in favour of granting money to the Government , then j ( S 10 O , 00 p , now swollon to upwards of J ( 21 , 000 , 000 , and the pabulum of many rank jobs , for educating tho pooplo . The constitution , argued Mr . Macaulay , gave the Government tho power to hang , and therefore it should havo tho power to drill . 'Bolbre ho went to India he was known as tho most vigorous advooato of freedom and of popular rights ; alter his return from India he was more conspicuous for consistent opposition to universal ?; suffrage , than for any other political opinion . For this groat ohango the , party , to which Mr . Maoawlay was wedded , wlu ' oh after getting into office had changed too , was in a great measure to blame . A man of a really grpaj ; m \ nrl , a man preserving' his faith in tho principles he had acquired from unbiassed observation and study , a man undiverted , by personal and

    Untitled Article

    q The Leader and Saturday Analyst . [ Jan . 7 , I 860 .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 7, 1860, page 8, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2328/page/8/