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    TtEFORM.—THE CLAIM OF CHELSEA..

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    WE do not think the question of the Borough JjrancJuso will bo , after all , that on which parties -will probably come to issue before Easter . Mr . Benson , instructed by tho Cnrlton , we presume , told the people of Heading the other day , that the Tories were prepared to bid an £ 8 occupation suffrage in towns , which would be equivalent to the rating recommended by Mr . Walpolb and Mr . Hen ley last year . The Whigs , on the o ( h <; r hand , are committed to n dEO occupation franchise ; and to this they will be held , as a matter of good faith , by tho iladiruls who not to

    helped to hurry them into power , alid whoso delation ( name hostility )' would leave them to the nierey of their hereditary rivals . Sooner than accept tho responsibility , fatal to them , of attempting again to deal with the llulbvm question , the followers of Lord Dkubv would yield , at tho eleventh hour on the point , referred to ; or they would endeavour to get the House of Lords to propound some scheme of compromise whtwby the matter would be settled . As for this £ 10 county aullVagc , there is about that .. no longer any dispute ;• and the ballot , by general consent , is to be suffered to stand over till a more convenient

    The ' ro remains , however , the serious question of the ^ --distribution of ' seats . The anomalies that were permitted to survive

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    nearly exhausted his merits . It is the boast of his . admirers that he walked by the constitution . He stood by the practices ^ of our ancient monarchy , instead of consulting " natural rights . " He honoured , old barbarism more than new civilization . Than other enlightened men , he served whig government more and God less . " He did not waste his powers on the barren subtleties of metaphysics . " He was therefore not a philosopher , not a profound thinker , not a guide for the future , however clearly he might have known and described the past . He was in this respect far inferior to Burke , who , if a worse apostate than Lord Macatjlay , was a great political improver , and has been , and is yet a guide to statesmen . The early provision acquired by the noble lord , his connexion with the Whigs , which we have already said was a misfortune for him , injured his literary-character . It could not give him a taste for the drudgery of business ; it did not make him an administrator , —it debased him into a party writer . It is quite true , as a contemporary remarks , that a unity characterizes the whole of his life and writings , but it is the unity of whig principles . He was too well informed to sink below whig professions , and he dare not soar above whig practice . At college , probably , he discarded what is ordinarily called faith ; and faith in constitutions or political parties is an unknown sentiment . Men may hope for reward from them—they can only have faith in nature or revelation . For an educated and literary -man to disregard metaphysics , and turn aside from abstractions , to believe only in constitutions and administrations , is to fall into scep ^ ticism of the worst kind , and have no hope but of political advancement or pecuniary greatness . Lord Macaulay had a wonderful intellect , but he ' had not faith even in that , and he had no enthusiasm . . We have little knowledge of Lord Macaulay ' s private life . He w as a rich , bachelor , and the world does not teem with stories of his generosity . He gave a few books to ' a . philosophical society in Edinburgh , of which he had been chosen president . . He is said to have rendered a great service to his friend Mr . Black . He did nothing ' that we ever heard of to promote , like Lord Brougham , " self-education amongst the people . From first to last he appears to have been eminently -self-seeking , and even took a peerage less i \ s a means of ' serving his country than as giving him dignity with ease . The Atheumim says , that " his kindness to men of letters was above price . His gifts of money in beneficence were on a scale far beyond that of his fortune , " There is the greater merit in this , ' as neither the noble lord nor any other person has informed the public of his good deeds . We at least have never heard of them , and mention them with satisfaction on the authority of our contemporary . His early and his continued success obviously increased the arrogance which seems to have been part of his nature . Instead of recognising in the loss of his seat for Edinburgh a just punishment for his tergiversation , he regarded it as an insult , and was angry , not convicted and humbled . ' He was not even impressed with a sense of his own fallibility by an admission of error . He treated Mr . Milt ,, the historian of British India , with an .. ?« acrimony" of which he became so sensible that he refused to republish the essays in which it was infused . He wrote so . virulently against the editor of Mackin * tosh ' s History of the devolution , that on republislring that essay he softened many passages , aiid some he wholly omitted . He applied to what he supposed to be literary offences " language which should be reserved for crimes . '' This did not prevent him , however , from attacking very furiously in ' tho preface jto his speeches in 1851 the editors and reporters of them , who had the misfortune 'to commit errors quite venial compared to his acrimonious abuse of two distinguished authors . " He seems to suffer , " was said of him at that period , " the arrogance of success , and to be enamoured of the instrument that has produced it . He has n prodigious admiration of words , and a vivid detestation of small errors . He speaks jocularly of a man ' being allowed a fair time to choke before the hangman began to grabble in his entrails ; ' and he sets no bound to'his indignation against a printer who had misprinted Bennet for Burnett , and against the editor who defaced tho fragment by Mackintosh . What remains of his remarks show an irritation far beyond reason ; but originally they must have been terrih ' c . They wore so violent that he was himself ashamed of them , and cancelled them . Deeply in love with mere style , Mr . Maoaulay sometimes sacrifices , as in this case , truth and generosity to ^ a vindictive and arrogant vanity . " In two instances , at least , his arroganoo got Ihq better ofh ' is judgment , and , had ho lived n , fmv years longer , he in ' igbjbjioye been us jnuoh asluunod oftho ' . aorunonious preface to his speech " es—a proof of excessive vanity , wounded by a trifle —as . he was of his attack on Mr . Mihh and tho editor of Mackintosh . He was undoubtedly first of his kind ,, but his kind is not

    the first . He was not a philosopher , nor an inventor , nor a great poet , in all of whom the true essence of greatness is identical . They are all discoverers , and all make discoveries , some of mind and others of . matter , by means of reflection . They receive approbation for making known something " new and good . Every subject Lord Macaulay wrote about was known before . He has not even the merit of Niebuhr , or other diligent pokers into antiquity , of turning up the evidence of a forgotten condition of mankind . He has reproduced , repaired , and beautified the recently passed ; brought again before this generation images of their immediate predecessors , which implies the absence of discovery . He originated nothing grand nor good " . He has fixed his name on no memorable change . His improvements are confined to the instrument he used . He polished our language . Some of his novel readings of history are of doubtful truth . We acquit him of being actuated by anything worse than party motives when he dethroned two or three popular idols . He diligently consulted records , and believed Avhat he said of Marlborough and Penn . For a man who wrote so much on events and individuals his errors are marvellously few . Even these , as it has been admitted by one of his impugners , it required a combination of talents to detect . He did not confess his errors . What . party writer Or what politician ever did ? Bid Lord Macaulay ever bring Mr . Groker , another party writer , to a confession ? . We are not disposed to exaggerate Lord Macaulay ' s errors ; but we know that on political subjects his party predilections continually led him astray . May we not say as much for Mr . Cr ' oker ' s aberrations ? That we can ask such , questions , and for one moment place Mr . Croker in the same category as Lord Macaulay , shows that his kind is not the foremost . He was a capital literary artist ; he was not a first-rate man . If he mig ht have been , he was not one of the heroic race . As he is now entombed in Westminster Abbey , why should not Mr . . Croker . have , had a like honour ? Wiry should it not be decerned in due time , though we hope not-for a long time , to Mr . Dickens and Mr . Thackeray , and Mr . CARLYMS ? That they have heki up official humbug andkingly knavery to just execration , though a heavy disqualification in the eyes of whigs and tories , will be a recommendation in the eyes of the advancing democraey . Where Can : Nixo lies—the heartless tory jester , who through his life jnoeked . at degradation and sufferings caused by tory misrule— Lord Macaulay may , indeed , deserve a . Cliche of honour . It has been remarked ( not quite correctly ) that no conservative was present at his funeral . But it may be asked , would any whig have done a like honour to Mr . Croker ? At the end of their lives the two men stood nearly on the same political platform , and the / right-minded public will probably think the unscrupulous consistent toryism of the one quite as honourable as the apostasy of the other . That Lord Macaulay was raised to the peerage merely for literary labour is less a proof of great merit , than of the progress of the democracy to whose pleasure he ministered . But if Westminster Abbey be opened to all who hereafter gain applause by exquisite writing , the qualification is becoming , now that all can write , so widely spread , that the area of the Abbey must be greatly enlarged . Otherwise it may fall under the notice of the Right Hon . Secretary for the Home Department ,- and , like any overcrowded churchyard in the heart of the metropolis , bo shut up by his authority as a nuisance '

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    Jxn . 14 . 1860 . 1 The Leader jnd Saturday Analyst . 37

    Tteform.—The Claim Of Chelsea..

    HEFOEM . ^ -T HE CLAIM OF CHELSEA .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 14, 1860, page 37, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2329/page/9/