CHAPTER IV. 1830-1832.

State of public affairs when Macaulay entered Parliament--

His maiden speech--The French Revolution of July 1830--

Macaulay's letters from Paris--The Palais Royal--Lafayette--

Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia--The new Parliament meets--

Fall of the Duke of Wellington--Scene with Croker--The

Reform Bill--Political success--House of Commons life--

Macaulay's party spirit--Loudon Society--Mr. Thomas Flower

Ellis--Visit to Cambridge--Rothley Temple--Margaret

Macaulay's Journal--Lord Brougham--Hopes of Office--Macaulay

as a politician--Letters to Hannah Macaulay, Mr. Napier, and

Mr. Ellis.

THROUGHOUT the last two centuries of our history there never was a

period when a man conscious of power, impatient of public wrongs, and

still young enough to love a fight for its own sake, could have entered

Parliament with a fairer prospect of leading a life worth living, and

doing work that would requite the pains, than at the commencement of the

year 1830.

In this volume, which only touches politics in order to show to what

extent Macaulay was a politician, and for how long, controversies cannot

appropriately be started or revived. This is not the place to enter

into a discussion on the vexed question as to whether Mr. Pitt and his

successors, in pursuing their system of repression, were justified by

the necessities of the long French war. It is enough to assert, what few

or none will deny, that, for the space of more than a generation from

1790 onwards, our country had, with a short interval, been governed on

declared reactionary principles. We, in whose days Whigs and Tories have

often exchanged office, and still more often interchanged policies,

find it difficult to imagine what must have been the condition of the

kingdom, when one and the same party almost continuously held not only

place, but power, throughout a period when, to an unexampled degree,

"public life was exasperated by hatred, and the charities of private

life soured by political aversion." [These expressions occur in Lord

Cockburn's Memorials of his Time.] Fear, religion, ambition, and

self-interest,--everything that could tempt and everything that could

deter,--were enlisted on the side of the dominant opinions. To profess

Liberal views was to be excluded from all posts of emolument, from all

functions of dignity, and from all opportunities of public usefulness.

The Whig leaders, while enjoying that security for life and liberty

which even in the worst days of our recent history has been the reward

of eminence, were powerless in the Commons and isolated in the Lords. No

motive but disinterested conviction kept a handful of veterans steadfast

round a banner which was never raised except to be swept contemptuously

down by the disciplined and overwhelming strength of the ministerial

phalanx. Argument and oratory were alike unavailing under a constitution

which was indeed a despotism of privilege. The county representation

of England was an anomaly, and the borough representation little better

than a scandal. The constituencies of Scotland, with so much else that

of right belonged to the public, had got into Dundas's pocket. In the

year 1820 all the towns north of Tweed together contained fewer voters

than are now on the rolls of the single burgh of Hawick, and all the

counties together contained fewer voters than are now on the register of

Roxburghshire. So small a band of electors was easily manipulated by a

party leader who had the patronage of India at his command. The three

Presidencies were flooded with the sons and nephews of men who were

lucky enough to have a seat in a Town Council, or a superiority in

a rural district; and fortunate it was for our empire that the

responsibilities of that noblest of all careers soon educated young

Indian Civil Servants into something higher than mere adherents of a

political party.

While the will of the nation was paralysed within the senate, effectual

care was taken that its voice should not be heard without. The press was

gagged in England, and throttled in Scotland. Every speech, or sermon,

or pamphlet, the substance of which a Crown lawyer could torture into

a semblance of sedition, sent its author to the jail, the hulks, or the

pillory. In any place of resort where an informer could penetrate, men

spoke their minds at imminent hazard of ruinous fines, and protracted

imprisonment. It was vain to appeal to Parliament for redress against

the tyranny of packed juries, and panic-driven magistrates. Sheridan

endeavoured to retain for his countrymen the protection of Habeas

Corpus; but he could only muster forty-one supporters. Exactly as many

members followed Fox into the lobby when he opposed a bill, which,

interpreted in the spirit that then actuated our tribunals, made

attendance at an open meeting summoned for the consideration of

Parliamentary Reform a service as dangerous as night-poaching, and far

more dangerous than smuggling. Only ten more than that number

ventured to protest against the introduction of a measure, still more

inquisitorial in its provisions and ruthless in its penalties, which

rendered every citizen who gave his attention to the removal of public

grievances liable at any moment to find himself in the position of

a criminal;--that very measure in behalf of which Bishop Horsley had

stated in the House of Peers that he did not know what the mass of the

people of any country had to do with the laws, except to obey them.

Amidst a population which had once known freedom, and was still fit to

be entrusted with it, such a state of matters could not last for ever.

Justly proud of the immense success that they had bought by their

resolution, their energy, and their perseverance, the Ministers regarded

the fall of Napoleon as a party triumph which could only serve to

confirm their power. But the last cannon-shot that was fired on the 18th

of June, was in truth the death-knell of the golden age of Toryism.

When the passion and ardour of the war gave place to the discontent

engendered by a protracted period of commercial distress, the opponents

of progress began to perceive that they had to reckon, not with a small

and disheartened faction, but with a clear majority of the nation led by

the most enlightened, and the most eminent, of its sons. Agitators and

incendiaries retired into the background, as will always be the case

when the country is in earnest; and statesmen who had much to lose, but

were not afraid to risk it, stepped quietly and firmly to the front.

The men, and the sons of the men, who had so long endured exclusion from

office, embittered by unpopularity, at length reaped their reward. Earl

Grey, who forty years before had been hooted through the streets

of North Shields with cries of "No Popery," lived to bear the most

respected name in England; and Brougham, whose opinions differed little

from those for expressing which Dr. Priestley in 1791 had his house

burned about his ears by the Birmingham mob, was now the popular idol

beyond all comparison or competition.

In the face of such unanimity of purpose, guided by so much worth and

talent, the Ministers lost their nerve, and, like all rulers who do not

possess the confidence of the governed, began first to make mistakes,

and then to quarrel among themselves. Throughout the years of Macaulay's

early manhood the ice was breaking fast. He was still quite young when

the concession of Catholic Emancipation gave a moral shock to the Tory

party from which it never recovered until the old order of things had

finally passed away. [Macaulay was fond of repeating an answer made to

him by Lord Clarendon in the year 1829. The young men were talking over

the situation, and Macaulay expressed curiosity as to the terms in which

the Duke of Wellington would recommend the Catholic Relief Bill to the

Peers. "Oh," said the other, "it will be easy enough. He'll say 'My

lords! Attention! Right about face! March!'"] It was his fortune to

enter into other men's labours after the burden and heat of the day had

already been borne, and to be summoned into the field just as the

season was at hand for gathering in a ripe and long-expected harvest of

beneficent legislation.

On the 5th of April, 1830, he addressed the House of Commons on the

second reading of Mr. Robert Grant's bill for the Removal of Jewish

Disabilities. Sir James Mackintosh rose with him, but Macaulay got the

advantage of the preference that has always been conceded to one who

speaks for the first time after gaining his seat during the continuance

of a Parliament;--a privilege which, by a stretch of generosity, is now

extended to new members who have been returned at a general election.

Sir James subsequently took part in the debate; not, as he carefully

assured his audience, "to supply any defects in the speech of his

honourable friend, for there were none that he could find, but

principally to absolve his own conscience." Indeed, Macaulay, addressing

himself to his task with an absence of pretension such as never fails

to conciliate the goodwill of the House towards a maiden speech,

put clearly and concisely enough the arguments in favour of the

bill;--arguments which, obvious, and almost common-place, as they appear

under his straightforward treatment, had yet to be repeated during a

space of six and thirty years before they commended themselves to the

judgment of our Upper Chamber.

"The power of which you deprive the Jew consists in maces, and gold

chains, and skins of parchment with pieces of wax dangling from their

edges. The power which you leave the Jew is the power of principal over

clerk, of master over servant, of landlord over tenant. As things now

stand, a Jew may be the richest man in England. He may possess the

means of raising this party and depressing that; of making East Indian

directors; of making members of Parliament. The influence of a Jew may

be of the first consequence in a war which shakes Europe to the centre.

His power may come into play in assisting or thwarting the greatest

plans of the greatest princes; and yet, with all this confessed,

acknowledged, undenied, you would have him deprived of power! Does not

wealth confer power? How are we to permit all the consequences of that

wealth but one? I cannot conceive the nature of an argument that is to

bear out such a position. If we were to be called on to revert to the

day when the warehouses of Jews were torn down and pillaged, the

theory would be comprehensible. But we have to do with a persecution so

delicate that there is no abstract rule for its guidance. You tell us

that the Jews have no legal right to power, and I am bound to admit it;

but in the same way, three hundred years ago they had no legal right to

be in England, and six hundred years ago they had no legal right to the

teeth in their heads. But, if it is the moral right we are to look at, I

hold that on every principle of moral obligation the Jew has a right to

political power."

He was on his legs once again, and once only, during his first Session;

doing more for future success in Parliament by his silence than he

could have effected by half a dozen brilliant perorations. A crisis was

rapidly approaching when a man gifted with eloquence, who by previous

self-restraint had convinced the House that he did not speak for

speaking's sake, might rise almost in a day to the very summit of

influence and reputation. The country was under the personal rule of the

Duke of Wellington, who had gradually squeezed out of his Cabinet every

vestige of Liberalism, and even of independence, and who at last

stood so completely alone that he was generally supposed to be in more

intimate communication with Prince Polignac than with any of his own

colleagues. The Duke had his own way in the Lords; and on the benches of

the Commons the Opposition members were unable to carry, or even visibly

to improve their prospect of carrying, the measures on which their

hearts were set. The Reformers were not doing better in the division

lobby than in 1821; and their question showed no signs of having

advanced since the day when it had been thrown over by Pitt on the eve

of the French Revolution.

But the outward aspect of the situation was very far from answering to

the reality. While the leaders of the popular party had been spending

themselves in efforts that seemed each more abortive than the

last,--dividing only to be enormously outvoted, and vindicating

with calmness and moderation the first principles of constitutional

government only to be stigmatised as the apostles of anarchy,--a mighty

change was surely but imperceptibly effecting itself in the collective

mind of their fellow-countrymen.

"For, while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main."

Events were at hand, which unmistakably showed how different was the

England of 1830 from the England of 1790. The King died; Parliament was

dissolved on the 24th of July; and in the first excitement and bustle

of the elections, while the candidates were still on the roads and the

writs in the mailbags, came the news that Paris was in arms. The

troops fought as well as Frenchmen ever can be got to fight against

the tricolour; but by the evening of the 29th it was all over with the

Bourbons. The Minister, whose friendship had reflected such unpopularity

on our own Premier, succumbed to the detestation of the victorious

people, and his sacrifice did not save the dynasty. What was passing

among our neighbours for once created sympathy, and not repulsion,

on this side the Channel. One French Revolution had condemned English

Liberalism to forty years of subjection, and another was to be the

signal which launched it on as long a career of supremacy. Most men

said, and all felt, that Wellington must follow Polignac; and the public

temper was such as made it well for the stability of our throne that

it was filled by a monarch who had attracted to himself the hopes and

affection of the nation, and who shared its preferences and antipathies

with regard to the leading statesmen of the day.

One result of political disturbance in any quarter of the globe is to

fill the scene of action with young members of Parliament, who follow

Revolutions about Europe as assiduously as Jew brokers attend upon the

movements of an invading army. Macaulay, whose re-election for Calne

had been a thing of course, posted off to Paris at the end of August,

journeying by Dieppe and Rouen, and eagerly enjoying a first taste of

continental travel. His letters during the tour were such as, previously

to the age of railroads, brothers who had not been abroad before used to

write for the edification of sisters who expected never to go abroad at

all. He describes in minute detail manners and institutions that to us

are no longer novelties, and monuments which an educated Englishman of

our time knows as well as Westminster Abbey, and a great deal better

than the Tower. Everything that he saw, heard, ate, drank, paid, and

suffered, was noted down in his exuberant diction to be read aloud and

commented on over the breakfast table in Great Ormond Street.

"At Rouen," he says, "I was struck by the union of venerable antiquity

with extreme liveliness and gaiety. We have nothing of the sort in

England. Till the time of James the First, I imagine, our houses were

almost all of wood, and have in consequence disappeared. In York there

are some very old streets; but they are abandoned to the lowest people,

and the gay shops are in the newly-built quarter of the town. In London,

what with the fire of 1666, and what with the natural progress of

demolition and rebuilding, I doubt whether there are fifty houses that

date from the Reformation. But in Rouen you have street after street of

lofty stern-looking masses of stone, with Gothic carvings. The buildings

are so high, and the ways so narrow, that the sun can scarcely reach the

pavements. Yet in these streets, monastic in their aspect, you have all

the glitter of Regent Street or the Burlington Arcade. Rugged and dark,

above, below they are a blaze of ribands, gowns, watches, trinkets,

artificial flowers; grapes, melons, and peaches such as Covent Garden

does not furnish, filling the windows of the fruiterers; showy women

swimming smoothly over the uneasy stones, and stared at by national

guards swaggering by in full uniform. It is the Soho Bazaar transplanted

into the gloomy cloisters of Oxford."

He writes to a friend just before he started on his tour: "There is much

that I am impatient to see, but two things specially,--the Palais Royal,

and the man who called me the Aristarchus of Edinburgh." Who this person

might be, and whether Macaulay succeeded in meeting him, are questions

which his letters leave unsolved; but he must have been a constant

visitor at the Palais Royal if the hours that he spent in it bore any

relation to the number of pages which it occupies in his correspondence.

The place was indeed well worth a careful study; for in 1830 it was not

the orderly and decent bazaar of the Second Empire, but was still that

compound of Parnassus and Bohemia which is painted in vivid colours in

the "Grand Homme de Province" of Balzac,--still the paradise of such

ineffable rascals as Diderot has drawn with terrible fidelity in his

"Neveu de Rameau."

"If I were to select the spot in all the earth in which the good and

evil of civilisation are most strikingly exhibited, in which the arts of

life are carried to the highest perfection, and in which all pleasures,

high and low, intellectual and sensual, are collected in the smallest

space, I should certainly choose the Palais Royal. It is the Covent

Garden Piazza, the Paternoster Row, the Vauxhall, the Albion Tavern, the

Burlington Arcade, the Crockford's the Finish, the Athenaeum of Paris

all in one. Even now, when the first dazzling effect has passed off, I

never traverse it without feeling bewildered by its magnificent variety.

As a great capital is a country in miniature, so the Palais Royal is

a capital in miniature,--an abstract and epitome of a vast community,

exhibiting at a glance the politeness which adorns its higher ranks,

the coarseness of its populace, and the vices and the misery which lie

underneath its brilliant exterior. Everything is there, and everybody.

Statesmen, wits, philosophers, beauties, dandies, blacklegs,

adventurers, artists, idlers, the king and his court, beggars with

matches crying for charity, wretched creatures dying of disease and want

in garrets. There is no condition of life which is not to be found in

this gorgeous and fantastic Fairyland."

Macaulay had excellent opportunities for seeing behind the scenes during

the closing acts of the great drama that was being played out through

those summer months. The Duc de Broglie, then Prime Minister, treated

him with marked attention, both as an Englishman of distinction, and as

his father's son. He was much in the Chamber of Deputies, and witnessed

that strange and pathetic historical revival when, after an interval of

forty such years as mankind had never known before, the aged La Fayette

again stood forth, in the character of a disinterested dictator, between

the hostile classes of his fellow-countrymen.

"De La Fayette is so overwhelmed with work that I scarcely knew how

to deliver even Brougham's letter, which was a letter of business, and

should have thought it absurd to send him Mackintosh's, which was a mere

letter of introduction, I fell in with an English acquaintance who told

me that he had an appointment with La Fayette, and who undertook to

deliver them both. I accepted his offer, for, if I had left them with

the porter, ten to one they would never have been opened. I hear that

hundreds of letters are lying in the lodge of the hotel. Every Wednesday

morning, from nine to eleven, La Fayette gives audience to anybody who

wishes to speak with him; but about ten thousand people attend on these

occasions, and fill, not only the house, but all the courtyard and half

the street. La Fayette is Commander in Chief of the National Guard of

France. The number of these troops in Paris alone is upwards of forty

thousand. The Government find a musket and bayonet; but the uniform,

which costs about ten napoleons, the soldiers provide themselves. All

the shopkeepers are enrolled, and I cannot sufficiently admire their

patriotism. My landlord, Meurice, a man who, I suppose, has realised a

million francs or more, is up one night in four with his firelock doing

the duty of a common watchman.

"There is, however, something to be said as an explanation of the zeal

with which the bourgeoisie give their time and money to the public. The

army received so painful a humiliation in the battles of July that it

is by no means inclined to serve the new system faithfully. The rabble

behaved nobly during the conflict, and have since shown rare humanity

and moderation. Yet those who remember the former Revolution feel an

extreme dread of the ascendency of mere multitude and there have been

signs, trifling in themselves, but such as may naturally alarm people of

property. Workmen have struck. Machinery has been attacked. Inflammatory

handbills have appeared upon the walls. At present all is quiet; but the

thing may happen, particularly if Polignac and Peyronnet should not be

put to death. The Peers wish to save them. The lower orders, who have

had five or six thousand of their friends and kinsmen butchered by the

frantic wickedness of these men, will hardly submit. 'Eh! eh!' said a

fierce old soldier of Napoleon to me the other day. 'L'on dit qu'ils

seront deportes: mais ne m'en parle pas. Non! non! Coupez-leur le cou.

Sacre! Ca ne passera pas comme ca.'"

"This long political digression will explain to you why Monsieur De La

Fayette is so busy. He has more to do than all the Ministers together.

However, my letters were presented, and he said to my friend that he

had a soiree every Tuesday, and should be most happy to see me there.

I drove to his house yesterday night. Of the interest which the common

Parisians take in politics you may judge by this. I told my driver to

wait for me, and asked his number. 'Ah! monsieur, c'est un beau numero.

C'est un brave numero. C'est 221.' You may remember that the number

of deputies who voted the intrepid address to Charles the Tenth, which

irritated him into his absurd coup d'etat, was 221. I walked into the

hotel through a crowd of uniforms, and found the reception-rooms as full

as they could hold. I was not able to make my way to La Fayette; but

I was glad to see him. He looks like the brave, honest, simple,

good-natured man that he is."

Besides what is quoted above, there is very little of general interest

in these journal letters; and their publication would serve no purpose

except that of informing the present leader of the Monarchists what

his father had for breakfast and dinner during a week of 1830, and of

enabling him to trace changes in the disposition of the furniture of the

De Broglie hotel. "I believe," writes Macaulay, "that I have given the

inventory of every article in the Duke's salon. You will think that I

have some intention of turning upholsterer."

His thoughts and observations on weightier matters he kept for an

article on the State of Parties in France which he intended to provide

for the October number of the Edinburgh Review. While he was still at

Paris, this arrangement was rescinded by Mr. Napier in compliance

with the wish, or the whim, of Brougham; and Macaulay's surprise and

annoyance vented itself in a burst of indignant rhetoric strong enough

to have upset a Government. [See on page 142 the letter to Mr. Napier of

September 16, 1831.] His wrath,--or that part of it, at least, which was

directed against the editor,--did not survive an interchange of letters;

and he at once set to work upon turning his material into the shape of a

volume for the series of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, under the title

of "The History of France, from the Restoration of the Bourbons to

the Accession of Louis Philippe." Ten years ago proofs of the first

eighty-eight pages were found in Messrs. Spottiswoode's printing office,

with a note on the margin to the effect that most of the type was broken

up before the sheets had been pulled. The task, as far as it went, was

faithfully performed; but the author soon arrived at the conclusion that

he might find a more profitable investment for his labour. With his head

full of Reform, Macaulay was loth to spend in epitomising history the

time and energy that would be better employed in helping to make it.

When the new Parliament met on the 26th of October it was already

evident that the Government was doomed. Where the elections were open,

Reform had carried the day. Brougham was returned for Yorkshire, a

constituency of tried independence, which before 1832 seldom failed

to secure the triumph of a cause into whose scale it had thrown its

enormous weight. The counties had declared for the Whigs by a majority

of eight to five, and the great cities by a majority of eight to one.

Of the close boroughs in Tory hands many were held by men who had not

forgotten Catholic Emancipation, and who did not mean to pardon their

leaders until they had ceased to be Ministers.

In the debate on the Address the Duke of Wellington uttered his famous

declaration that the Legislature possessed, and deserved to possess,

the full and entire confidence of the country; that its existing

constitution was not only practically efficient but theoretically

admirable; and that, if he himself had to frame a system of

representation, he should do his best to imitate so excellent a model,

though he admitted that the nature of man was incapable at a single

effort of attaining to such mature perfection. His bewildered colleagues

could only assert in excuse that their chief was deaf, and wish that

everybody else had been deaf too. The second ministerial feat was of a

piece with the first. Their Majesties had accepted an invitation to dine

at Guildhall on the 9th of November. The Lord Mayor elect informed the

Home Office that there was danger of riot, and the Premier, (who could

not be got to see that London was not Paris because his own political

creed happened to be much the same as Prince Polignac's,) advised the

King to postpone his visit to the City, and actually talked of putting

Lombard Street and Cheapside in military occupation. Such a step taken

at such a time by such a man had its inevitable result. Consols, which

the Duke's speech on the Address had brought from 84 to 80, fell to 77

in an hour and a half; jewellers and silversmiths sent their goods to

the banks; merchants armed their clerks and barricaded their warehouses;

and, when the panic subsided, fear only gave place to the shame and

annoyance which a loyal people, whose loyalty was at that moment more

active than ever, experienced from the reflection that all Europe was

discussing the reasons why our King could not venture to dine in public

with the Chief Magistrate of his own capital. A strong Minister, who

sends the funds down seven per cent. in as many days, is an anomaly that

no nation will consent to tolerate; the members of the Cabinet looked

forward with consternation to a scheme of Reform which, with the

approbation of his party, Brougham had undertaken to introduce on the

15th of November; and when, within twenty-four hours of the dreaded

debate, they were defeated on a motion for a committee on the Civil

List, their relief at having obtained an excuse for retiring at least

equalled that which the country felt at getting rid of them.

Earl Grey came in, saying, (and meaning what he said,) that the

principles on which he stood were "amelioration of abuses, promotion

of economy, and the endeavour to preserve peace consistently with the

honour of the country." Brougham, who was very sore at having been

forced to postpone his notice on Reform on account of the ministerial

crisis, had gratuitously informed the House of Commons on two successive

days that he had no intention of taking office. A week later on he

accepted the Chancellorship with an inconsistency which his friends

readily forgave, for they knew that, when he resolved to join

the Cabinet, he was thinking more of his party than of himself; a

consideration that naturally enough only sharpened the relish with which

his adversaries pounced upon this first of his innumerable scrapes. When

the new writ for Yorkshire was moved, Croker commented sharply on the

position in which the Chancellor was placed, and remarked that he had

often heard Brougham declare that "the characters of public men formed

part of the wealth of England;"--a reminiscence which was delivered with

as much gravity and unction as if it had been Mackintosh discoursing on

Romilly. Unfortunately for himself, Croker ruined his case by referring

to a private conversation, an error which the House of Commons always

takes at least an evening to forgive; and Macaulay had his audience with

him as he vindicated the absent orator with a generous warmth, which

at length carried him so far that he was interrupted by a call to order

from the Chair. "The noble Lord had but a few days for deliberation,

and that at a time when great agitation prevailed, and when the country

required a strong and efficient Ministry to conduct the government of

the State. At such a period a few days are as momentous as months would

be at another period. It is not by the clock that we should measure the

importance of the changes that might take place during such an interval.

I owe no allegiance to the noble Lord who has been transferred to

another place; but as a member of this House I cannot banish from my

memory the extraordinary eloquence of that noble person within these

walls,--an eloquence which has left nothing equal to it behind; and when

I behold the departure of the great man from amongst us, and when I see

the place in which he sat, and from which he has so often astonished

us by the mighty powers of his mind, occupied this evening by the

honourable member who has commenced this debate, I cannot express the

feelings and emotions to which such circumstances give rise."

Parliament adjourned over Christmas; and on the 1st of March 1831 Lord

John Russell introduced the Reform Bill amidst breathless silence,

which was at length broken by peals of contemptuous laughter from the

Opposition benches, as he read the list of the hundred and ten boroughs

which were condemned to partial or entire disfranchisement. Sir Robert

Inglis led the attack upon a measure that he characterised as Revolution

in the guise of a statute. Next morning as Sir Robert was walking into

town over Westminster Bridge, he told his companion that up to the

previous night he had been very anxious, but that his fears were now

at an end, inasmuch as the shock caused by the extravagance of the

ministerial proposals would infallibly bring the country to its senses.

On the evening of that day Macaulay made the first of his Reform

speeches. When he sat down the Speaker sent for him, and told him that

in all his prolonged experience he had never seen the House in such a

state of excitement. Even at this distance of time it is impossible to

read aloud the last thirty sentences without an emotion which suggests

to the mind what must have been their effect when declaimed by one who

felt every word that he spoke, in the midst of an assembly agitated by

hopes and apprehensions such as living men have never known, or have

long forgotten. ["The question of Parliamentary Reform is still behind.

But signs, of which it is impossible to misconceive the import, do most

clearly indicate that, unless that question also be speedily settled,

property, and order, and all the institutions of this great monarchy,

will be exposed to fearful peril. Is it possible that gentlemen long

versed in high political affairs cannot read these signs? Is it possible

that they can really believe that the Representative system of England,

such as it now is, will last to the year 1860? If not, for what would

they have us wait? Would they have us wait, merely that we may show to

all the world how little we have profited by our own recent experience?

Would they have us wait, that we may once again hit the exact point

where we can neither refuse with authority, nor concede with grace?

Would they have us wait, that the numbers of the discontented party may

become larger, its demands higher, its feelings more acrimonious, its

organisation more complete? Would they have us wait till the whole

tragicomedy of 1827 has been acted over again? till they have been

brought into office by a cry of 'No Reform,' to be reformers, as they

were once before brought into office by a cry of 'No Popery', to be

emancipators? Have they obliterated from their minds--gladly, perhaps,

would some among them obliterate from their minds--the transactions

of that year? And have they forgotten all the transactions of the

succeeding year? Have they forgotten how the spirit of liberty in

Ireland, debarred from its natural outlet, found a vent by forbidden

passages? Have they forgotten how we were forced to indulge the

Catholics in all the license of rebels, merely because we chose

to withhold from them the liberties of subjects? Do they wait for

associations more formidable than that of the Corn Exchange, for

contributions larger than the Rent, for agitators more violent than

those who, three years ago, divided with the King and the Parliament

the sovereignty of Ireland? Do they wait for that last and most dreadful

paroxysm of popular rage, for that last and most cruel test of military

fidelity? Let them wait, if their past experience shall induce them to

think that any high honour or any exquisite pleasure is to be obtained

by a policy like this. Let them wait, if this strange and fearful

infatuation be indeed upon them, that they should not see with their

eyes, or hear with their ears, or understand with their heart. But let

us know our interest and our duty better. Turn where we may, within,

around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that

you may preserve. Now, therefore, while everything at home and abroad

forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against the

spirit of the age, now, while the crash of the proudest throne of the

Continent is still resounding in our ears, now, while the roof of a

British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir of

forty kings, now, while we see on every side ancient institutions

subverted, and great societies dissolved, now, while the heart of

England is still sound, now, while old feelings and old associations

retain a power and a charm which may too soon pass away, now, in this

your accepted time, now, in this your day of salvation, take counsel,

not of prejudice, not of party spirit, not of the ignominious pride of

a fatal consistency, but of history, of reason, of the ages which are

past, of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in a

manner worthy of the expectation with which this great debate has been

anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind.

Renew the youth of the State. Save property, divided against itself.

Save the multitude, endangered by its own ungovernable passions.

Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the

greatest, the fairest, and most highly civilised community that ever

existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich

heritage of so many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible.

The time is short. If this bill should be rejected, I pray to God that

none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes

with unavailing remorse, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion

of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social

order."] Sir Thomas Denman, who rose later on in the discussion, said,

with universal acceptance, that the orator's words remained tingling in

the ears of all who heard them, and would last in their memories as

long as they had memories to employ. That sense of proprietorship in an

effort of genius, which the House of Commons is ever ready to entertain,

effaced for a while all distinctions of party. "Portions of the speech,"

said Sir Robert Peel, "were as beautiful as anything I have ever heard

or read. It reminded one of the old times." The names of Fox, Burke,

and Canning were during that evening in everybody's mouth; and Macaulay

overheard with delight a knot of old members illustrating their

criticisms by recollections of Lord Plunket. He had reason to be

pleased; for he had been thought worthy of the compliment which the

judgment of Parliament reserves for a supreme occasion. In 1866, on the

second reading of the Franchise Bill, when the crowning oration of that

memorable debate had come to its close amidst a tempest of applause,

one or two veterans of the lobby, forgetting Macaulay on

Reform,--forgetting, it may be, Mr. Gladstone himself on the

Conservative Budget of 1852,--pronounced, amidst the willing assent of a

younger generation, that there had been nothing like it since Plunket.

The unequivocal success of the first speech into which he had thrown his

full power decided for some time to come the tenor of Macaulay's career.

During the next three years he devoted himself to Parliament, rivalling

Stanley in debate, and Hume in the regularity of his attendance. He

entered with zest into the animated and manysided life of the House of

Commons, of which so few traces can ordinarily be detected in what goes

by the name of political literature. The biographers of a distinguished

statesman too often seem to have forgotten that the subject of their

labours passed the best part of his waking hours, during the half of

every year, in a society of a special and deeply marked character, the

leading traits of which are at least as well worth recording as the

fashionable or diplomatic gossip that fills so many volumes of memoirs

and correspondence. Macaulay's letters sufficiently indicate how

thoroughly he enjoyed the ease, the freedom, the hearty good-fellowship,

that reign within the precincts of our national senate; and how entirely

he recognised that spirit of noble equality, so prevalent among its

members, which takes little or no account of wealth, or title, or indeed

of reputation won in other fields, but which ranks a man according as

the value of his words, and the weight of his influence, bear the test

of a standard which is essentially its own.

In February 1831 he writes to Whewell: "I am impatient for Praed's

debut. The House of Commons is a place in which I would not promise

success to any man. I have great doubts even about Jeffrey. It is the

most peculiar audience in the world. I should say that a man's being

a good writer, a good orator at the bar, a good mob-orator, or a good

orator in debating clubs, was rather a reason for expecting him to fail

than for expecting him to succeed in the House of Commons. A place where

Walpole succeeded and Addison failed; where Dundas succeeded and Burke

failed; where Peel now succeeds and where Mackintosh fails; where

Erskine and Scarlett were dinner-bells; where Lawrence and Jekyll, the

two wittiest men, or nearly so, of their time, were thought bores, is

surely a very strange place. And yet I feel the whole character of the

place growing upon me. I begin to like what others about me like, and to

disapprove what they disapprove. Canning used to say that the House, as

a body, had better taste than the man of best taste in it, and I am very

much inclined to think that Canning was right."

The readers of Macaulay's letters will, from time to time, find reason

to wish that the young Whig of 1830 had more frequently practised that

studied respect for political opponents, which now does so much to

correct the intolerance of party among men who can be adversaries

without ceasing to regard each other as colleagues. But this honourable

sentiment was the growth of later days; and, at an epoch when the system

of the past and the system of the future were night after night in

deadly wrestle on the floor of St. Stephen's, the combatants were apt

to keep their kindliness, and even their courtesies, for those with whom

they stood shoulder to shoulder in the fray. Politicians, Conservative

and Liberal alike, who were themselves young during the Sessions of 1866

and 1867, and who can recall the sensations evoked by a contest of which

the issues were far less grave and the passions less strong than of

yore, will make allowances for one who, with the imagination of a poet

and the temperament of an orator, at thirty years old was sent straight

into the thickest of the tumult which then raged round the standard of

Reform, and will excuse him for having borne himself in that battle of

giants as a determined and a fiery partisan.

If to live intensely be to live happily, Macaulay had an enviable lot

during those stirring years; and, if the old songwriters had reason

on their side when they celebrated the charms of a light purse, he

certainly possessed that element of felicity. Among the earliest

economical reforms undertaken by the new Government was a searching

revision of our Bankruptcy jurisdiction, in the course of which

his Commissionership was swept away, without leaving him a penny of

compensation. "I voted for the Bankruptcy Court Bill," he said in answer

to an inquisitive constituent. "There were points in that Bill of

which I did not approve, and I only refrained from stating those points

because an office of my own was at stake." When this source fell dry he

was for a while a poor man; for a member of Parliament, who has others

to think of besides himself, is anything but rich on sixty or seventy

pounds a quarter as the produce of his pen, and a college income which

has only a few more months to run. At a time when his Parliamentary fame

stood at its highest he was reduced to sell the gold medals which he had

gained at Cambridge; but he was never for a moment in debt; nor did he

publish a line prompted by any lower motive than the inspiration of his

political faith, or the instinct of his literary genius. He had none but

pleasant recollections connected with the period when his fortunes were

at their lowest. From the secure prosperity of after life he delighted

in recalling the time when, after cheering on the fierce debate for

twelve or fifteen hours together, he would walk home by daylight to his

chambers, and make his supper on a cheese which was a present from

one of his Wiltshire constituents, and a glass of the audit ale which

reminded him that he was still a fellow of Trinity.

With political distinction came social success, more rapid and more

substantial, perhaps, than has ever been achieved by one who took so

little trouble to win or to retain it. The circumstances of the time

were all in his favour. Never did our higher circles present so much

that would attract a new-comer, and never was there more readiness to

admit within them all who brought the honourable credentials of talent

and celebrity. In 1831 the exclusiveness of birth was passing away, and

the exclusiveness of fashion had not set in. The Whig party, during

its long period of depression, had been drawn together by the bonds

of common hopes, and endeavours, and disappointments; and personal

reputation, whether literary, political, or forensic, held its own as

against the advantages of rank and money to an extent that was never

known before, and never since. Macaulay had been well received in the

character of an Edinburgh Reviewer, and his first great speech in the

House of Commons at once opened to him all the doors in London that were

best worth entering. Brought up, as he had been, in a household which

was perhaps the strictest and the homeliest among a set of families

whose creed it was to live outside the world, it put his strength of

mind to the test when he found himself courted and observed by the

most distinguished and the most formidable personages of the day. Lady

Holland listened to him with unwonted deference, and scolded him with a

circumspection that was in itself a compliment. Rogers spoke of him with

friendliness, and to him with positive affection, and gave him the last

proof of his esteem and admiration by asking him to name the morning for

a breakfast-party. He was treated with almost fatherly kindness by the

able and worthy man who is still remembered by the name of Conversation

Sharp. Indeed, his deference for the feelings of all whom he liked

and respected, which an experienced observer could detect beneath the

eagerness of his manner and the volubility of his talk, made him a

favourite among those of a generation above his own. He bore his honours

quietly, and enjoyed them with the natural and hearty pleasure of a man

who has a taste for society, but whose ambitions lie elsewhere. For the

space of three seasons he dined out almost nightly, and spent many of

his Sundays in those suburban residences which, as regards the company

and the way of living, are little else than sections of London removed

into a purer air.

Before very long his habits and tastes began to incline in the direction

of domesticity, and even of seclusion; and, indeed, at every period of

his life he would gladly desert the haunts of those whom Pope and

his contemporaries used to term "the great," to seek the cheerful and

cultured simplicity of his home, or the conversation of that one friend

who had a share in the familiar confidence which Macaulay otherwise

reserved for his nearest relatives. This was Mr. Thomas Flower Ellis,

whose reports of the proceedings in King's Bench, extending over a whole

generation, have established and perpetuated his name as that of an

acute and industrious lawyer. He was older than Macaulay by four years.

Though both Fellows of the same college, they missed each other at the

university, and it was not until 1827, on the Northern circuit, that

their acquaintance began. "Macaulay has joined," writes Mr. Ellis; "an

amusing person; somewhat boyish in his manner, but very original." The

young barristers had in common an insatiable love of the classics;

and similarity of character, not very perceptible on the surface, soon

brought about an intimacy which ripened into an attachment as important

to the happiness of both concerned as ever united two men through every

stage of life and vicissitude of fortune. Mr. Ellis had married early;

but in 1839 he lost his wife, and Macaulay's helpful and heartfelt

participation in his great sorrow riveted the links of a chain that was

already indissoluble.

The letters contained in this volume will tell, better than the words

of any third person, what were the points of sympathy between the two

companions, and in what manner they lived together till the end came.

Mr. Ellis survived his friend little more than a year; not complaining

or lamenting but going about his work like a man from whose day the

light has departed.

Brief and rare were the vacations of the most hard-worked Parliament

that had sat since the times of Pym and Hampden. In the late autumn of

1831, the defeat of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords delivered

over the country to agitation, resentment, and alarm; and gave a short

holiday to public men who were not Ministers, magistrates, or officers

in the yeomanry. Hannah and Margaret Macaulay accompanied their brother

on a visit to Cambridge, where they met with the welcome which young

Masters of Arts delight in providing for the sisters of a comrade of

whom they are fond and proud.

"On the evening that we arrived," says Lady Trevelyan, "we met at dinner

Whewell, Sedgwick, Airy, and Thirlwail and how pleasant they were,

and how much they made of us two happy girls, who were never tired of

seeing, and hearing and admiring! We breakfasted, lunched, and dined

with one or the other of the set during our stay, and walked about the

colleges all day with the whole train. [A reminiscence from that week of

refined and genial hospitality survives in the Essay on Madame d'Arblay.

The reception which Miss Burney would have enjoyed at Oxford, if she had

visited it otherwise than as an attendant on Royalty, is sketched off

with all the writer's wonted spirit, and more than his wonted grace.]

Whewell was then tutor; rougher, but less pompous, and much more

agreeable, than in after years; though I do not think that he ever

cordially liked your uncle. We then went on to Oxford, which from

knowing no one there seemed terribly dull to us by comparison with

Cambridge, and we rejoiced our brother's heart by sighing after

Trinity."

During the first half of his life Macaulay spent some months of every

year at the seat of his uncle, Mr. Babington, who kept open house for

his nephews and nieces throughout the summer and autumn. Rothley Temple,

which lies in a valley beyond the first ridge that separates the flat

unattractive country immediately round Leicester from the wild and

beautiful scenery of Charnwood Forest, is well worth visiting as a

singularly unaltered specimen of an old English home. The stately trees;

the grounds, half park and half meadow; the cattle grazing up to the

very windows; the hall, with its stone pavement rather below than above

the level of the soil, hung with armour rude and rusty enough to dispel

the suspicion of its having passed through a collector's hands; the low

ceilings; the dark oak wainscot, carved after primitive designs, that

covered every inch of wall in bedroom and corridor; the general air

which the whole interior presented of having been put to rights at

the date of the Armada and left alone ever since;--all this antiquity

contrasted quaintly, but prettily enough, with the youth and gaiety that

lit up every corner of the ever-crowded though comfortable mansion. In

wet weather there was always a merry group sitting on the staircase, or

marching up and down the gallery; and, wherever the noise and fun were

most abundant, wherever there was to be heard the loudest laughter and

the most vehement expostulation, Macaulay was the centre of a circle

which was exclaiming at the levity of his remarks about the Blessed

Martyr; disputing with him on the comparative merits of Pascal, Racine,

Corneille, Moliere, and Boileau or checking him as he attempted to

justify his godparents by running off a list of all the famous Thomases

in history. The place is full of his memories. His favourite walk was a

mile of field-road and lane which leads from the house to a lodge on

the highway; and his favourite point of view in that walk was a slight

acclivity, whence the traveller from Leicester catches his first sight

of Rothley Temple, with its background of hill and greenwood. He is

remembered as sitting at the window in the hall, reading Dante to

himself, or translating it aloud as long as any listener cared to remain

within ear-shot. He occupied, by choice, a very small chamber on the

ground floor, through the window of which he could escape unobserved

while afternoon callers were on their way between the front door and the

drawing-room. On such occasions he would take refuge in a boat moored

under the shade of some fine oaks which still exist, though the

ornamental water on whose bank they stood has since been converted into

dry land.

A journal kept at intervals by Margaret Macaulay, some extracts from

which have here been arranged in the form of a continuous narrative,

affords a pleasant and faithful picture of her brother's home-life

during the years 1831 and 1832. With an artless candour, from which his

reputation will not suffer, she relates the alternations of hope and

disappointment through which the young people passed when it began to be

a question whether or not he would be asked to join the Administration.

"I think I was about twelve when I first became very fond of my brother,

and from that time my affection for him has gone on increasing during a

period of seven years. I shall never forget my delight and enchantment

when I first found that he seemed to like talking to me. His manner was

very flattering to such a child, for he always took as much pains to

amuse me, and to inform me on anything I wished to know, as ho could

have done to the greatest person in the land. I have heard him express

great disgust towards those people who, lively and agreeable abroad, are

a dead weight in the family circle. I think the remarkable clearness

of his style proceeds in some measure from the habit of conversing with

very young people, to whom he has a great deal to explain and impart.

"He reads his works to us in the manuscript, and, when we find fault, as

I very often do with his being too severe upon people, he takes it with

the greatest kindness, and often alters what we do not like. I hardly

ever, indeed, met with a sweeter temper than his. He is rather hasty,

and when he has not time for an instant's thought, he will sometimes

return a quick answer, for which he will be sorry the moment he has said

it. But in a conversation of any length, though it may be on subjects

that touch him very nearly, and though the person with whom he converses

may be very provoking and extremely out of temper, I never saw him lose

his. He never uses this superiority, as some do, for the purpose

of irritating another still more by coolness; but speaks in a kind,

good-natured manner, as if he wished to bring the other back to temper

without appearing to notice that he had lost it.

"He at one time took a very punning turn, and we laid a wager in books,

my Mysteries of Udolpho against his German Theatre, that he could not

make two hundred puns in one evening. He did it, however, in two hours,

and, although they were of course most of them miserably bad, yet it was

a proof of great quickness.

"Saturday, February 26, 1831--At dinner we talked of the Grants. Tom

said he had found Mr. Robert Grant walking about in the lobbies of the

House of Commons, and saying that he wanted somebody to defend his place

in the Government, which he heard was going to be attacked. 'What did

you say to him?' we asked. 'Oh, I said nothing; but, if they'll give me

the place, I'll defend it. When I am Judge Advocate, I promise you that

I will not go about asking anyone to defend me.'

"After dinner we played at capping verses, and after that at a game in

which one of the party thinks of something for the others to guess at.

Tom gave the slug that killed Perceval, the lemon that Wilkes squeezed

for Doctor Johnson, the pork-chop which Thurtell ate after he had

murdered Weare, and Sir Charles Macarthy's jaw which was sent by the

Ashantees as a present to George the Fourth.

"Some one mentioned an acquaintance who had gone to the West Indies,

hoping to make money, but had only ruined the complexions of his

daughters. Tom said:

Mr. Walker was sent to Berbice

By the greatest of statesmen and earls.

He went to bring back yellow boys,

But he only brought back yellow girls.

"I never saw anything like the fun and humour that kindles in his eye

when a repartee or verse is working in his brain.

"March 3, 1831.--Yesterday morning Hannah and I walked part of the way

to his chambers with Tom, and, as we separated, I remember wishing him

good luck and success that night. He went through it most triumphantly,

and called down upon himself admiration enough to satisfy even his

sister. I like so much the manner in which he receives compliments. He

does not pretend to be indifferent, but smiles in his kind and animated

way, with 'I am sure it is very kind of you to say so,' or something of

that nature. His voice from cold and over-excitement got quite into a

scream towards the last part. A person told him that he had not heard

such speaking since Fox. 'You have not heard such screaming since Fox,'

he said.

"March 24, 1831.--By Tom's account, there never was such a scene of

agitation as the House of Commons presented at the passing of the

second reading of the Reform Bill the day before yesterday, or rather

yesterday, for they did not divide till three or four in the morning.

When dear Tom came the next day he was still very much excited, which I

found to my cost, for when I went out to walk with him he walked so very

fast that I could scarcely keep up with him at all. With sparkling

eyes he described the whole scene of the preceding evening in the most

graphic manner.

"'I suppose the Ministers are all in high spirits,' said Mamma. 'In

spirits, Ma'am? I'm sure I don't know. In bed, I'll answer for it.'

Mamma asked him for franks, that she might send his speech to a lady

[This lady was Mrs. Hannah More.] who, though of high Tory principles,

is very fond of Tom, and has left him in her will her valuable library.

'Oh, no,' he said, 'don't send it. If you do, she'll cut me off with a

prayer-book.'

"Tom is very much improved in his appearance during the last two or

three years. His figure is not so bad for a man of thirty as for a man

of twenty-two. He dresses better, and his manners, from seeing a great

deal of society, are very much improved. When silent and occupied in

thought, walking up and down the room as he always does, his hands

clenched and muscles working with the intense exertion of his

mind, strangers would think his countenance stern; but I remember a

writing-master of ours, when Tom had come into the room and left it

again, saying, 'Ladies, your brother looks like a lump of good-humour!'

"March 30, 1831--Tom has just left me, after a very interesting

conversation. He spoke of his extreme idleness. He said: 'I never knew

such an idle man as I am. When I go in to Empson or Ellis their tables

are always covered with books and papers. I cannot stick at anything for

above a day or two. I mustered industry enough to teach myself Italian.

I wish to speak Spanish. I know I could master the difficulties in a

week, and read any book in the language at the end of a month, but

I have not the courage to attempt it. If there had not been really

something in me, idleness would have ruined me.'

"I said that I was surprised at the great accuracy of his information,

considering how desultory his reading had been. 'My accuracy as to

facts,' he said, 'I owe to a cause which many men would not confess.

It is due to my love of castle-building. The past is in my mind soon

constructed into a romance.' He then went on to describe the way in

which from his childhood his imagination had been filled by the study of

history. 'With a person of my turn,' he said, 'the minute touches are of

as great interest, and perhaps greater, than the most important events.

Spending so much time as I do in solitude, my mind would have rusted

by gazing vacantly at the shop windows. As it is, I am no sooner in

the streets than I am in Greece, in Rome, in the midst of the French

Revolution. Precision in dates, the day or hour in which a man was born

or died, becomes absolutely necessary. A slight fact, a sentence, a

word, are of importance in my romance. Pepys's Diary formed almost

inexhaustible food for my fancy. I seem to know every inch of Whitehall.

I go in at Hans Holbein's gate, and come out through the matted gallery.

The conversations which I compose between great people of the time are

long, and sufficiently animated; in the style, if not with the merits,

of Sir Walter Scott's. The old parts of London, which you are sometimes

surprised at my knowing so well, those old gates and houses down by the

river, have all played their part in my stories.' He spoke, too, of

the manner in which he used to wander about Paris, weaving tales of the

Revolution, and he thought that he owed his command of language greatly

to this habit.

"I am very sorry that the want both of ability and memory should prevent

my preserving with greater truth a conversation which interested me very

much.

"May 21, 1831.--Tom was from London at the time my mother's death

occurred, and things fell out in such a manner that the first

information he received of it was from the newspapers. He came home

directly. He was in an agony of distress, and gave way at first to

violent bursts of feeling. During the whole of the week he was with

us all day, and was the greatest comfort to us imaginable. He talked a

great deal of our sorrow, and led the conversation by degrees to other

subjects, bearing the whole burden of it himself and interesting us

without jarring with the predominant feeling of the time. I never saw

him appear to greater advantage--never loved him more dearly.

"September 1831.--Of late we have walked a good deal. I remember pacing

up and down Brunswick Square and Lansdowne Place for two hours one day,

deep in the mazes of the most subtle metaphysics;--up and down

Cork Street, engaged over Dryden's poetry and the great men of that

time;--making jokes all the way along Bond Street, and talking politics

everywhere.

"Walking in the streets with Tom and Hannah, and talking about the hard

work the heads of his party had got now, I said:

"'How idle they must think you, when they meet you here in the busy

part of the day!' 'Yes, here I am,' said he, 'walking with two unidea'd

girls. [Boswell relates in his tenth chapter how Johnson scolded Langton

for leaving "his social friends, to go and sit with a set of wretched

unidea'd girls."] However, if one of the Ministry says to me, "Why walk

you here all the day idle?" I shall say, "Because no man has hired me."'

"We talked of eloquence, which he has often compared to fresco-painting:

the result of long study and meditation, but at the moment of execution

thrown off with the greatest rapidity; what has apparently been the work

of a few hours being destined to last for ages.

"Mr. Tierney said he was sure Sir Philip Francis had written Junius, for

he was the proudest man he ever knew, and no one ever heard of anything

he had done to be proud of.

"November 14, 1831, half-past-ten.--On Friday last Lord Grey sent for

Tom. His note was received too late to be acted on that day. On

Saturday came another, asking him to East Sheen on that day, or Sunday.

Yesterday, accordingly, he went, and stayed the night, promising to be

here as early as possible to-day. So much depends upon the result of

this visit! That he will be offered a place I have not the least doubt.

He will refuse a Lordship of the Treasury, a Lordship of the Admiralty,

or the Mastership of the Ordnance. He will accept the Secretaryship

of the Board of Control, but will not thank them for it; and would not

accept that, but that he thinks it will be a place of importance during

the approaching discussions on the East Indian monopoly.

"If he gets a sufficient salary, Hannah and I shall most likely live

with him. Can I possibly look forward to anything happier? I cannot

imagine a course of life that would suit him better than thus to enjoy

the pleasures of domestic life without its restraints; with sufficient

business, but not, I hope, too much.

"At one o'clock he came. I went out to meet him. 'I have nothing to

tell you. Nothing. Lord Grey sent for me to speak about a matter of

importance, which must be strictly private.'

"November 27.--I am just returned from a long walk, during which the

conversation turned entirely on one subject. After a little previous

talk about a certain great personage, [The personage was Lord Brougham,

who at this time was too formidable for the poor girl to venture to

write his name at length even in a private journal.] I asked Tom when

the present coolness between them began. He said: 'Nothing could exceed

my respect and admiration for him in early days. I saw at that time

private letters in which he spoke highly of my articles, and of me as

the most rising man of the time. After a while, however, I began to

remark that he became extremely cold to me, hardly ever spoke to me on

circuit, and treated me with marked slight. If I were talking to a man,

if he wished to speak to him on politics or anything else that was not

in any sense a private matter, he always drew him away from me instead

of addressing us both. When my article on Hallam came out, he complained

to Jeffrey that I took up too much of the Review; and, when my first

article on Mill appeared, he foamed with rage, and was very angry with

Jeffrey for having printed it.'

"'But,' said I,' the Mills are friends of his, and he naturally did not

like them to be attacked.'

"'On the contrary,' said Tom, 'he had attacked them fiercely himself;

but he thought I had made a hit, and was angry accordingly. When a

friend of mine defended my articles to him, he said: "I know nothing of

the articles. I have not read Macaulay's articles." What can be imagined

more absurd than his keeping up an angry correspondence with Jeffrey

about articles he has never read? Well, the next thing was that Jeffrey,

who was about to give up the editorship, asked me if I would take it. I

said that I would gladly do so, if they would remove the headquarters of

the Review to London. Jeffrey wrote to him about it. He disapproved of

it so strongly that the plan was given up. The truth was that he felt

that his power over the Review diminished as mine increased, and he saw

that he would have little indeed if I were editor.

"'I then came into Parliament. I do not complain that he should have

preferred Denman's claims to mine, and that he should have blamed Lord

Lansdowne for not considering him. I went to take my seat. As I turned

from the table at which I had been taking the oaths, he stood as near

to me as you do now, and he cut me dead. We never spoke in the House,

excepting once, that I can remember, when a few words passed between

us in the lobby. I have sat close to him when many men of whom I

knew nothing have introduced themselves to me to shake hands, and

congratulate me after making a speech, and he has never said a single

word. I know that it is jealousy, because I am not the first man whom he

has used in this way. During the debate on the Catholic claims he was

so enraged because Lord Plunket had made a very splendid display, and

because the Catholics had chosen Sir Francis Burdett instead of him to

bring the Bill forward, that he threw every difficulty in its way. Sir

Francis once said to him: "Really, Mr.-- you are so jealous that it is

impossible to act with you." I never will serve in an Administration of

which he is the head. On that I have most firmly made up my mind. I do

not believe that it is in his nature to be a month in office without

caballing against his colleagues. ["There never was a direct personal

rival, or one who was in a position which, however reluctantly, implied

rivalry, to whom he has been just; and on the fact of this ungenerous

jealousy I do not understand that there is any difference of

opinion."--Lord Cockburn's Journal.]

"'He is, next to the King, the most popular man in England. There is

no other man whose entrance into any town in the kingdom would be so

certain to be with huzzaing and taking off of horses. At the same time

he is in a very ticklish situation, for he has no real friends. Jeffrey,

Sydney Smith, Mackintosh, all speak of him as I now speak to you. I was

talking to Sydney Smith of him the other day, and said that, great as I

felt his faults to be, I must allow him a real desire to raise the lower

orders, and do good by education, and those methods upon which his heart

has been always set. Sydney would not allow this, or any other, merit.

Now, if those who are called his friends feel towards him, as they all

do, angry and sore at his overbearing, arrogant, and neglectful conduct,

when those reactions in public feeling, which must come, arrive, he will

have nothing to return upon, no place of refuge, no hand of such tried

friends as Fox and Canning had to support him. You will see that he will

soon place himself in a false position before the public. His popularity

will go down, and he will find himself alone. Mr. Pitt, it is true, did

not study to strengthen himself by friendships but this was not from

jealousy. I do not love the man, but I believe he was quite superior to

that. It was from a solitary pride he had. I heard at Holland House the

other day that Sir Philip Francis said that, though he hated Pitt, he

must confess there was something fine in seeing how he maintained his

post by himself. "The lion walks alone," he said. "The jackals herd

together."'"

This conversation, to those who have heard Macaulay talk, bears

unmistakable signs of having been committed to paper while the

words,--or, at any rate, the outlines,--of some of the most important

sentences were fresh in his sister's mind. Nature had predestined the

two men to mutual antipathy. Macaulay, who knew his own range and kept

within it, and who gave the world nothing except his best and most

finished work, was fretted by the slovenly omniscience of Brougham, who

affected to be a walking encyclopaedia, "a kind of semi-Solomon, half

knowing everything from the cedar to the hyssop." [These words are

extracted from a letter written by Macaulay.] The student, who, in his

later years, never left his library for the House of Commons without

regret, had little in common with one who, like Napoleon, held that a

great reputation was a great noise; who could not change horses without

making a speech, see the Tories come in without offering to take a

judgeship, or allow the French to make a Revolution without proposing to

naturalise himself as a citizen of the new Republic. The statesman who

never deserted an ally, or distrusted a friend, could have no fellowship

with a free-lance, ignorant of the very meaning of loyalty; who, if

the surfeited pen of the reporter had not declined its task, would have

enriched our collections of British oratory by at least one Philippic

against every colleague with whom he had ever acted. The many who read

this conversation by the light of the public history of Lord Melbourne's

Administration, and still more the few who have access to the secret

history of Lord Grey's Cabinet, will acknowledge that seldom was a

prediction so entirely fulfilled, or a character so accurately read.

And that it was not a prophecy composed after the event is proved by the

circumstance that it stands recorded in the handwriting of one who died

before it was accomplished.

"January 3, 1832.--Yesterday Tom dined at Holland House, and heard Lord

Holland tell this story. Some paper was to be published by Mr. Fox, in

which mention was made of Mr. Pitt having been employed at a club in a

manner that would have created scandal. Mr. Wilberforce went to Mr. Fox,

and asked him to omit the passage. 'Oh, to be sure,' said Mr. Fox; 'if

there are any good people who would be scandalised, I will certainly

put it out!' Mr. Wilberforce then preparing to take his leave, he said:

'Now, Mr. Wilberforce, if, instead of being about Mr. Pitt, this had

been an account of my being seen gaming at White's on a Sunday, would

you have taken so much pains to prevent it being known?' 'I asked this,'

said Mr. Fox, 'because I wanted to see what he would say, for I knew he

would not tell a lie about it. He threw himself back, as his way was,

and only answered: "Oh, Mr. Fox, you are always so pleasant!"'

"January 8, 1832.--Yesterday Tom dined with us, and stayed late. He

talked almost uninterruptedly for six hours. In the evening he made a

great many impromptu charades in verse. I remember he mentioned a piece

of impertinence of Sir Philip Francis. Sir Philip was writing a history

of his own time, with characters of its eminent men, and one day asked

Mr. Tierney if he should like to hear his own character. Of course

he said 'Yes,' and it was read to him. It was very flattering, and he

expressed his gratification for so favourable a description of himself.

'Subject to revision, you must remember, Mr. Tierney,' said Sir Philip,

as he laid the manuscript by; 'subject to revision according to what may

happen in the future.'

"I am glad Tom has reviewed old John Bunyan. Many are reading it who

never read it before. Yesterday, as he was sitting in the Athenaeum, a

gentleman called out: 'Waiter, is there a copy of the Pilgrim's Progress

in the library?' As might be expected, there was not.

"February 12, 1832.--This evening Tom came in, Hannah and I being

alone. He was in high boyish spirits. He had seen Lord Lansdowne in the

morning, who had requested to speak with him. His Lordship said that he

wished to have a talk about his taking office, not with any particular

thing in view, as there was no vacancy at present, and none expected,

but that he should be glad to know his wishes in order that he might be

more able to serve him in them.

"Tom, in answer, took rather a high tone. He said he was a poor man,

but that he had as much as he wanted, and, as far as he was personally

concerned, had no desire for office. At the same time he thought that,

after the Reform Bill had passed, it would be absolutely necessary that

the Government should be strengthened; that he was of opinion that he

could do it good service; that he approved of its general principles,

and should not be unwilling to join it. Lord Lansdowne said that they

all,--and he particularly mentioned Lord Grey,--felt of what importance

to them his help was, and that he now perfectly understood his views.

"February 13, 1832.--It has been much reported, and has even appeared in

the newspapers, that the Ministers were doing what they could to get Mr.

Robert Grant out of the way to make room for Tom. Last Sunday week it

was stated in the John Bull that Madras had been offered to the Judge

Advocate for this purpose, but that he had refused it. Two or three

nights since, Tom, in endeavouring to get to a high bench in the House,

stumbled over Mr. Robert Grant's legs, as he was stretched out half

asleep. Being roused he apologised in the usual manner, and then added,

oddly enough: 'I am very sorry, indeed, to stand in the way of your

mounting.'

"March 15, 1832.--Yesterday Hannah and I spent a very agreeable

afternoon with Tom.

"He began to talk of his idleness. He really came and dawdled with us

all day long; he had not written a line of his review of Burleigh's

Life, and he shrank from beginning on such a great work. I asked him to

put it by for the present, and write a light article on novels. This he

seemed to think he should like, and said he could get up an article on

Richardson in a very short time, but he knew of no book that he could

hang it on. Hannah advised that he should place at the head of this

article a fictitious title in Italian of a critique on Clarissa Harlowe,

published at Venice. He seemed taken with this idea, but said that, if

he did such a thing, he must never let his dearest friend know.

"I was amused with a parody of Tom's on the nursery song 'Twenty pounds

shall marry me,' as applied to the creation of Peers.

What though now opposed I be?

Twenty Peers shall carry me.

If twenty won't, thirty will,

For I'm his Majesty's bouncing Bill.

Sir Robert Peel has been extremely complimentary to him. One sentence

he repeated to us: 'My only feeling towards that gentleman is a not

ungenerous envy, as I listened to that wonderful flow of natural and

beautiful language, and to that utterance which, rapid as it is, seems

scarcely able to convey its rich freight of thought and fancy!' People

say that these words were evidently carefully prepared.

"I have just been looking round our little drawing-room, as if trying to

impress every inch of it on my memory, and thinking how in future years

it will rise before my mind as the scene of many hours of light-hearted

mirth; how I shall again see him, lolling indolently on the old blue

sofa, or strolling round the narrow confines of our room. With such

a scene will come the remembrance of his beaming countenance, happy

affectionate smile, and joyous laugh; while, with everyone at ease

around him, he poured out the stores of his full mind in his own

peculiarly beautiful and expressive language, more delightful here than

anywhere else, because more perfectly unconstrained. The name which

passes through this little room in the quiet, gentle tones of sisterly

affection is a name which will be repeated through distant generations,

and go down to posterity linked with eventful times and great deeds."

The last words here quoted will be very generally regarded as the

tribute of a sister's fondness. Many, who readily admit that Macaulay's

name will go down to posterity linked with eventful times and great

deeds, make that admission with reference to times not his own, and

deeds in which he had no part except to commemorate them with his pen.

To him, as to others, a great reputation of a special order brought with

it the consequence that the credit, which he deserved for what he had

done well, was overshadowed by the renown of what he did best. The

world, which has forgotten that Newton excelled as an administrator, and

Voltaire as a man of business, remembers somewhat faintly that Macaulay

was an eminent orator and, for a time at least, a strenuous politician.

The universal voice of his contemporaries, during the first three years

of his parliamentary career, testifies to the leading part which he

played in the House of Commons, so long as with all his heart he cared,

and with all his might he tried, to play it. Jeffrey, (for it is well

to adduce none but first-rate evidence,) says in his account of an

evening's discussion on the second reading of the Reform Bill: "Not

a very striking debate. There was but one exception, and it was a

brilliant one. I mean Macaulay, who surpassed his former appearance in

closeness, fire, and vigour, and very much improved the effect of it by

a more steady and graceful delivery. It was prodigiously cheered, as

it deserved, and I think puts him clearly at the head of the great

speakers, if not the debaters, of the House." And again, on the 17th of

December: "Macaulay made, I think, the best speech he has yet delivered;

the most condensed, at least, and with the greatest weight of matter.

It contained, indeed, the only argument to which any of the speakers

who followed him applied themselves." Lord Cockburn, who sat under the

gallery for twenty-seven hours during the last three nights of the Bill,

pronounced Macaulay's speech to have been "by far the best;" though,

like a good Scotchman, he asserts that he heard nothing at Westminster

which could compare with Dr. Chalmers in the General Assembly. Sir James

Mackintosh writes from the Library of the House of Commons: "Macaulay

and Stanley have made two of the finest speeches ever spoken in

Parliament;" and a little further on he classes together the two young

orators as "the chiefs of the next, or rather of this, generation."

To gain and keep the position that Mackintosh assigned him Macaulay

possessed the power, and in early days did not lack the will. He was

prominent on the Parliamentary stage, and active behind the scenes;--the

soul of every honourable project which might promote the triumph of his

principles, and the ascendency of his party. One among many passages

in his correspondence may be quoted without a very serious breach of

ancient and time-worn confidences. On the 17th of September, 1831, he

writes to his sister Hannah: "I have been very busy since I wrote last,

moving heaven and earth to render it certain that, if our ministers

are so foolish as to resign in the event of a defeat in the Lords, the

Commons may be firm and united; and I think that I have arranged a

plan which will secure a bold and instant declaration on our part,

if necessary. Lord Ebrington is the man whom I have in my eye as our

leader. I have had much conversation with him, and with several of our

leading county members. They are all staunch; and I will answer for

this,--that, if the ministers should throw us over, we will be ready to

defend ourselves."

The combination of public spirit, political instinct, and legitimate

self-assertion, which was conspicuous in Macaulay's character, pointed

him out to some whose judgment had been trained by long experience of

affairs as a more than possible leader in no remote future; and it

is not for his biographer to deny that they had grounds for their

conclusion. The prudence, the energy, the self-reliance, which he

displayed in another field, might have been successfully directed to

the conduct of an executive policy, and the management of a popular

assembly. Macaulay never showed himself deficient in the qualities which

enable a man to trust his own sense; to feel responsibility, but not to

fear it; to venture where others shrink; to decide while others waver;

with all else that belongs to the vocation of a ruler in a free country.

But it was not his fate; it was not his work; and the rank which he

might have claimed among the statesmen of Britain was not ill exchanged

for the place which he occupies in the literature of the world.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

York: March 22, 1830.

My dear Sir,--I was in some doubt as to what I should be able to do for

Number 101, and I deferred writing till I could make up my mind. If my

friend Ellis's article on Greek History, of which I have formed high

expectations, could have been ready, I should have taken a holiday. But,

as there is no chance of that for the next number, I ought, I think, to

consider myself as his bail, and to surrender myself to your disposal in

his stead.

I have been thinking of a subject, light and trifling enough, but

perhaps not the worse for our purpose on that account. We seldom want

a sufficient quantity of heavy matter. There is a wretched poetaster of

the name of Robert Montgomery who has written some volumes of detestable

verses on religious subjects, which by mere puffing in magazines and

newspapers have had an immense sale, and some of which are now in their

tenth or twelfth editions. I have for some time past thought that the

trick of puffing, as it is now practised both by authors and publishers,

is likely to degrade the literary character, and to deprave the public

taste, in a frightful degree. I really think that we ought to try what

effect satire will have upon this nuisance, and I doubt whether we can

ever find a better opportunity.

Yours very faithfully

T. B. MACAULAY.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

London: August 19, 1830.

My dear Sir,--The new number appeared this morning in the shop windows.

The article on Niebuhr contains much that is very sensible; but it is

not such an article as so noble a subject required. I am not like Ellis,

Niebuhr-mad; and I agree with many of the remarks which the reviewer

has made both on this work, and on the school of German critics and

historians. But surely the reviewer ought to have given an account of

the system of exposition which Niebuhr has adopted, and of the theory

which he advances respecting the Institutions of Rome. The appearance of

the book is really an era in the intellectual history of Europe, and I

think that the Edinburgh Review ought at least to have given a luminous

abstract of it. The very circumstance that Niebuhr's own arrangement and

style are obscure, and that his translators have need of translators to

make them intelligible to the multitude, rendered it more desirable that

a clear and neat statement of the points in controversy should be laid

before the public. But it is useless to talk of what cannot be mended.

The best editors cannot always have good writers, and the best writers

cannot always write their best.

I have no notion on what ground Brougham imagines that I am going to

review his speech. He never said a word to me on the subject. Nor did

I ever say either to him, or to anyone else, a single syllable to that

effect. At all events I shall not make Brougham's speech my text.

We have had quite enough of puffing and flattering each other in the

Review. It is a vile taste for men united in one literary undertaking to

exchange their favours.

I have a plan of which I wish to know your opinion. In ten days, or

thereabouts, I set off for France, where I hope to pass six weeks. I

shall be in the best society, that of the Duc de Broglie, Guizot, and

so on. I think of writing an article on the Politics of France since the

Restoration, with characters of the principal public men, and a parallel

between the present state of France and that of England. I think that

this might be made an article of extraordinary interest. I do not say

that I could make it so. It must, you will perceive, be a long paper,

however concise I may try to be; but as the subject is important, and

I am not generally diffuse, you must not stint me. If you like this

scheme, let me know as soon as possible.

Ever yours truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

It cannot be denied that there was some ground for the imputation of

systematic puffing which Macaulay urges with a freedom that a modern

editor would hardly permit to the most valued contributor. Brougham had

made a speech on Slavery in the House of Commons; but time was wanting

to get the Corrected Report published soon enough for him to obtain his

tribute of praise in the body of the Review. The unhappy Mr. Napier was

actually reduced to append a notice to the July number regretting that

"this powerful speech, which, as we are well informed, produced an

impression on those who heard it not likely to be forgotten, or to

remain barren of effects, should have reached us at a moment when it was

no longer possible for us to notice its contents at any length.... On

the eve of a general election to the first Parliament of a new reign, we

could have wished to be able to contribute our aid towards the diffusion

of the facts and arguments here so strikingly and commandingly stated

and enforced, among those who are about to exercise the elective

franchise.... We trust that means will be taken to give the widest

possible circulation to the Corrected Report. Unfortunately, we can,

at present, do nothing more than lay before our readers its glowing

peroration--so worthy of this great orator, this unwearied friend of

liberty and humanity."

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

Paris: September 16, 1830.

My dear Sir,--I have just received your letter, and I cannot deny that

I am much vexed at what has happened. It is not very agreeable to find

that I have thrown away the labour, the not unsuccessful labour as I

thought, of a month; particularly as I have not many months of perfect

leisure. This would not have happened if Brougham had notified his

intentions to you earlier, as he ought in courtesy to you, and to

everybody connected with the Review, to have done. He must have known

that this French question was one on which many people would be desirous

to write.

I ought to tell you that I had scarcely reached Paris when I received

a letter containing a very urgent application from a very respectable

quarter. I was desired to write a sketch, in one volume, of the late

Revolution here. Now, I really hesitated whether I should not make

my excuses to you, and accept this proposal,--not on account of the

pecuniary terms, for about these I have never much troubled myself--but

because I should have had ampler space for this noble subject than the

Review would have afforded. I thought, however, that this would not be

a fair or friendly course towards you. I accordingly told the applicants

that I had promised you an article, and that I could not well write

twice in one month on the same subject without repeating myself. I

therefore declined; and recommended a person whom I thought quite

capable of producing an attractive book on these events. To that person

my correspondent has probably applied. At all events I cannot revive the

negotiation. I cannot hawk my rejected articles up and down Paternoster

Row.

I am, therefore, a good deal vexed at this affair; but I am not at all

surprised at it. I see all the difficulties of your situation. Indeed,

I have long foreseen them. I always knew that in every association,

literary or political, Brougham would wish to domineer. I knew also that

no Editor of the Edinburgh Review could, without risking the ruin of

the publication, resolutely oppose the demands of a man so able and

powerful. It was because I was certain that he would exact submissions

which I am not disposed to make that I wished last year to give up

writing for the Review. I had long been meditating a retreat. I thought

Jeffrey's abdication a favourable time for effecting it; not, as I hope

you are well assured, from any unkind feeling towards you; but because I

knew that, under any Editor, mishaps such as that which has now occurred

would be constantly taking place. I remember that I predicted to Jeffrey

what has now come to pass almost to the letter.

My expectations have been exactly realised. The present constitution

of the Edinburgh Review is this, that, at whatever time Brougham may be

pleased to notify his intention of writing on any subject, all previous

engagements are to be considered as annulled by that notification. His

language translated into plain English is this: "I must write about this

French Revolution, and I will write about it. If you have told Macaulay

to do it, you may tell him to let it alone. If he has written an

article, he may throw it behind the grate. He would not himself have

the assurance to compare his own claims with mine. I am a man who act

a prominent part in the world; he is nobody. If he must be reviewing,

there is my speech about the West Indies. Set him to write a puff on

that. What have people like him to do, except to eulogise people like

me?" No man likes to be reminded of his inferiority in such a way, and

there are some particular circumstances in this case which render the

admonition more unpleasant than it would otherwise be. I know that

Brougham dislikes me; and I have not the slightest doubt that he feels

great pleasure in taking this subject out of my hands, and at having

made me understand, as I do most clearly understand, how far my services

are rated below his. I do not blame you in the least. I do not see how

you could have acted otherwise. But, on the other hand, I do not see why

I should make any efforts or sacrifices for a Review which lies under an

intolerable dictation. Whatever my writings may be worth, it is not for

want of strong solicitations, and tempting offers, from other quarters

that I have continued to send them to the Edinburgh Review. I adhered

to the connection solely because I took pride and pleasure in it. It has

now become a source of humiliation and mortification.

I again repeat, my dear Sir, that I do not blame you in the least.

This, however, only makes matters worse. If you had used me ill, I might

complain, and might hope to be better treated another time. Unhappily

you are in a situation in which it is proper for you to do what it

would be improper in me to endure. What has happened now may happen next

quarter, and must happen before long, unless I altogether refrain from

writing for the Review. I hope you will forgive me if I say that I

feel what has passed too strongly to be inclined to expose myself to a

recurrence of the same vexations.

Yours most truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

A few soft words induced Macaulay to reconsider his threat of

withdrawing from the Review; but, even before Mr. Napier's answer

reached him, the feeling of personal annoyance had already been effaced

by a greater sorrow. A letter arrived, announcing that his sister Jane

had died suddenly and most unexpectedly. She was found in the morning

lying as though still asleep, having passed away so peacefully as not to

disturb a sister who had spent the night in the next room, with a door

open between them. Mrs. Macaulay never recovered from this shock. Her

health gave way, and she lived into the coming year only so long as to

enable her to rejoice in the first of her son's Parliamentary successes.

Paris: September 26.

My dear Father,--This news has broken my heart. I am fit neither to go

nor to stay. I can do nothing but sit down in my room, and think of poor

dear Jane's kindness and affection. When I am calmer, I will let you

know my intentions. There will be neither use nor pleasure in remaining

here. My present purpose, as far as I can form one, is to set off in two

or three days for England; and in the meantime to see nobody, if I can

help it, but Dumont, who has been very kind to me. Love to all,--to all

who are left me to love. We must love each other better.

T. B. M.

London: March 30, 1831

Dear Ellis,--I have little news for you, except what you will learn from

the papers as well as from me. It is clear that the Reform Bill must

pass, either in this or in another Parliament. The majority of one

does not appear to me, as it does to you, by any means inauspicious. We

should perhaps have had a better plea for a dissolution if the

majority had been the other way. But surely a dissolution under such

circumstances would have been a most alarming thing. If there should be

a dissolution now, there will not be that ferocity in the public mind

which there would have been if the House of Commons had refused to

entertain the Bill at all. I confess that, till we had a majority, I was

half inclined to tremble at the storm which we had raised. At present I

think that we are absolutely certain of victory, and of victory without

commotion.