CHAPTER V. 1832-1834.

Macaulay is invited to stand for Leeds--The Reform bill

passes--Macaulay appointed Commissioner of the Board of

Control--His life in office--Letters to his sisters--

Contested election at Leeds--Macaulay's bearing as a

candidate--Canvassing--Pledges--Intrusion of religion into

politics--Placemen in Parliament--Liverpool--Margaret

Macaulay's marriage--How it affected her brother--He is

returned for Leeds--Becomes Secretary of the Board of

Control--Letters to Hannah Macaulay--Session of 1832--

Macaulay's Speech on the India Bill--His regard for Lord

Glenelg--Letters to Hannah Macaulay--The West Indian

question--Macaulay resigns Office--He gains his point, and

resumes his place--Emancipation of the Slaves--Death of

Wilberforce--Macaulay is appointed Member of the Supreme

Council of India--Letters to Hannah Macaulay, Lord

Lansdowne, and Mr. Napier--Altercation between Lord Althorp

and Mr. Shiel--Macaulay's appearance before the Committee of

Investigation--He sails for India.

DURING the earlier half of the year 1832 the vessel of Reform was still

labouring heavily; but, long before she was through the breakers, men

had begun to discount the treasures which she was bringing into port.

The time was fast approaching when the country would be called upon to

choose its first Reformed Parliament. As if the spectacle of what

was doing at Westminster did not satisfy their appetite for political

excitement, the Constituencies of the future could not refrain from

anticipating the fancied pleasures of an electoral struggle. Impatient

to exercise their privileges, and to show that they had as good an eye

for a man as those patrons of nomination seats whose discernment was

being vaunted nightly in a dozen speeches from the Opposition benches

of the House of Commons, the great cities were vying with each other to

seek representatives worthy of the occasion and of themselves. The Whigs

of Leeds, already provided with one candidate in a member of the great

local firm of the Marshalls, resolved to seek for another among the

distinguished politicians of their party. As early as October 1831

Macaulay had received a requisition from that town, and had pledged

himself to stand as soon as it had been elevated into a Parliamentary

borough. The Tories, on their side, brought forward Mr. Michael Sadler,

the very man on whose behalf the Duke of Newcastle had done "what he

liked with his own" in Newark,--and, at the last general election, had

done it in vain. Sadler, smarting from the lash of the Edinburgh Review,

infused into the contest an amount of personal bitterness that for

his own sake might better have been spared; and, during more than a

twelvemonth to come, Macaulay lived the life of a candidate whose own

hands are full of public work at a time when his opponent has nothing to

do except to make himself disagreeable. But, having once undertaken

to fight the battle of the Leeds Liberals, he fought it stoutly and

cheerily; and he would have been the last to claim it as a merit, that,

with numerous opportunities of a safe and easy election at his disposal,

he remained faithful to the supporters who had been so forward to honour

him with their choice.

The old system died hard; but in May 1832 came its final agony. The

Reform Bill had passed the Commons, and had been read a second time in

the Upper House; but the facilities which Committee affords for maiming

and delaying a measure of great magnitude and intricacy proved too much

for the self-control of the Lords. The King could not bring himself

to adopt that wonderful expedient by which the unanimity of the three

branches of our legislature may, in the last resort, be secured.

Deceived by an utterly fallacious analogy, his Majesty began to be

persuaded that the path of concession would lead him whither it had led

Louis the Sixteenth; and he resolved to halt on that path at the point

where his Ministers advised him to force the hands of their lordships

by creating peers. The supposed warnings of the French Revolution, which

had been dinned into the ears of the country by every Tory orator

from Peel to Sibthorpe, at last had produced their effect on the royal

imagination. Earl Grey resigned, and the Duke of Wellington, with a

loyalty which certainly did not stand in need of such an unlucky proof,

came forward to meet the storm. But its violence was too much even for

his courage and constancy. He could not get colleagues to assist him in

the Cabinet, or supporters to vote with him in Parliament, or soldiers

to fight for him in the streets; and it was evident that in a few days

his position would be such as could only be kept by fighting.

The revolution had in truth commenced. At a meeting of the political

unions on the slope of Newhall Hill at Birmingham a hundred thousand

voices had sung the words:

God is our guide. No swords we draw.

We kindle not war's battle fires.

By union, justice, reason, law,

We claim the birthright of our sires.

But those very men were now binding themselves by a declaration that,

unless the Bill passed, they would pay no taxes, nor purchase property

distrained by the tax-gatherer. In thus renouncing the first obligation

of a citizen they did in effect draw the sword, and they would have been

cravens if they had left it in the scabbard. Lord Milton did something

to enhance the claim of his historic house upon the national gratitude

by giving practical effect to this audacious resolve; and, after the

lapse of two centuries, another Great Rebellion, more effectual than its

predecessor, but so brief and bloodless that history does not recognise

it as a rebellion at all, was inaugurated by the essentially English

proceeding of a quiet country gentleman telling the Collector to

call again. The crisis lasted just a week. The Duke had no mind for a

succession of Peterloos, on a vaster scale, and with a different issue.

He advised the King to recall his Ministers; and his Majesty, in his

turn, honoured the refractory lords with a most significant circular

letter, respectful in form, but unmistakable in tenor. A hundred peers

of the Opposition took the hint, and contrived to be absent whenever

Reform was before the House. The Bill was read for a third time by a

majority of five to one on the 4th of June; a strange, and not very

complimentary, method of celebrating old George the Third's birthday. On

the 5th it received the last touches in the Commons; and on the 7th

it became an Act, in very much the same shape, after such and so many

vicissitudes, as it wore when Lord John Russell first presented it to

Parliament.

Macaulay, whose eloquence had signalised every stage of the conflict,

and whose printed speeches are, of all its authentic records, the most

familiar to readers of our own day, was not left without his reward. He

was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Board of Control, which,

for three quarters of a century from 1784 onwards, represented the Crown

in its relations to the East Indian directors. His duties, like those of

every individual member of a Commission, were light or heavy as he chose

to make them; but his own feeling with regard to those duties must not

be deduced from the playful allusions contained in letters dashed off,

during the momentary leisure of an over-busy day, for the amusement of

two girls who barely numbered forty years between them. His speeches and

essays teem with expressions of a far deeper than official interest in

India and her people; and his minutes remain on record, to prove that he

did not affect the sentiment for a literary or oratorical purpose. The

attitude of his own mind with regard to our Eastern empire is depicted

in the passage on Burke, in the essay on Warren Hastings, which

commences with the words, "His knowledge of India--," and concludes

with the sentence, "Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing as

oppression in the streets of London." That passage, unsurpassed as it is

in force of language, and splendid fidelity of detail, by anything that

Macaulay ever wrote or uttered, was inspired, as all who knew him could

testify, by sincere and entire sympathy with that great statesman

of whose humanity and breadth of view it is the merited, and not

inadequate, panegyric.

In Margaret Macaulay's journal there occurs more than one mention of

her brother's occasional fits of contrition on the subject of his own

idleness; but these regrets and confessions must be taken for what they

are worth, and for no more. He worked much harder than he gave himself

credit for. His nature was such that whatever he did was done with all

his heart, and all his power; and he was constitutionally incapable

of doing it otherwise. He always under-estimated the tension and

concentration of mind which he brought to bear upon his labours, as

compared with that which men in general bestow on whatever business

they may have in hand; and, to-wards the close of life, this honourable

self-deception no doubt led him to draw far too largely upon his failing

strength, under the impression that there was nothing unduly severe in

the efforts to which he continued to brace himself with ever increasing

difficulty.

During the eighteen months that he passed at the Board of Control he had

no time for relaxation, and very little for the industry which he loved

the best. Giving his days to India, and his nights to the inexorable

demands of the Treasury Whip, he could devote a few hours to the

Edinburgh Review only by rising at five when the rules of the House of

Commons had allowed him to get to bed betimes on the previous evening.

Yet, under these conditions, he contrived to provide Mr. Napier with

the highly finished articles on Horace Walpole and Lord Chatham, and to

gratify a political opponent, who was destined to be a life-long friend,

by his kindly criticism and spirited summary of Lord Mahon's "History of

the War of the Succession in Spain." And, in the "Friendship's Offering"

of 1833, one of those mawkish annual publications of the album species

which were then in fashion, appeared his poem of the Armada; whose

swinging couplets read as if somewhat out of place in the company of

such productions as "The Mysterious Stranger, or the Bravo of Banff;"

"Away to the Greenwood, a song;" and "Lines on a Window that had been

frozen," beginning with,

"Pellucid pane, this morn on thee

My fancy shaped both tower and tree."

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay

Bath: June 10, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--Everything has gone wrong with me. The people at Calne

fixed Wednesday for my re-election on taking office; the very day on

which I was to have been at a public dinner at Leeds. I shall therefore

remain here till Wednesday morning, and read Indian politics in quiet. I

am already deep in Zemindars, Ryots, Polygars, Courts of Phoujdary, and

Courts of Nizamut Adawlut. I can tell you which of the native Powers are

subsidiary, and which independent, and read you lectures of an hour on

our diplomatic transactions at the courts of Lucknow, Nagpore, Hydrabad,

and Poonah. At Poonah, indeed, I need not tell you that there is no

court; for the Paishwa, as you are doubtless aware, was deposed by Lord

Hastings in the Pindarree War. Am I not in fair training to be as great

a bore as if I had myself been in India?--that is to say, as great a

bore as the greatest.

I am leading my watering-place life here; reading, writing, and walking

all day; speaking to nobody but the waiter and the chambermaid; solitary

in a great crowd, and content with solitude. I shall be in London again

on Thursday, and shall also be an M. P. From that day you may send your

letters as freely as ever; and pray do not be sparing of them. Do you

read any novels at Liverpool? I should fear that the good Quakers would

twitch them out of your hands, and appoint their portion in the fire.

Yet probably you have some safe place, some box, some drawer with a key,

wherein a marble-covered book may lie for Nancy's Sunday reading. And,

if you do not read novels, what do you read? How does Schiller go on? I

have sadly neglected Calderon; but, whenever I have a month to spare, I

shall carry my conquests far and deep into Spanish literature.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: July 2, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--I am, I think, a better correspondent than you two put

together. I will venture to say that I have written more letters, by a

good many, than I have received, and this with India and the Edinburgh

Review on my hands; the Life of Mirabeau to be criticised; the Rajah of

Travancore to be kept in order; and the bad money, which the Emperor

of the Burmese has had the impudence to send us byway of tribute, to be

exchanged for better. You have nothing to do but to be good, and write.

Make no excuses, for your excuses are contradictory. If you see sights,

describe them; for then you have subjects. If you stay at home, write;

for then you have time. Remember that I never saw the cemetery or the

railroad. Be particular, above all, in your accounts of the Quakers.

I enjoin this especially on Nancy; for from Meg I have no hope of

extracting a word of truth.

I dined yesterday at Holland House; all Lords except myself. Lord

Radnor, Lord Poltimore, Lord King, Lord Russell, and his uncle Lord

John. Lady Holland was very gracious, praised my article on Burleigh to

the skies, and told me, among other things, that she had talked on the

preceding day for two hours with Charles Grant upon religion, and had

found him very liberal and tolerant. It was, I suppose, the cholera

which sent her Ladyship to the only saint in the Ministry for ghostly

counsel. Poor Macdonald's case was most undoubtedly cholera. It is

said that Lord Amesbury also died of cholera, though no very strange

explanation seems necessary to account for the death of a man of

eighty-four. Yesterday it was rumoured that the three Miss Molyneuxes,

of whom by the way there are only two, were all dead in the same way;

that the Bishop of Worcester and Lord Barham were no more; and many

other foolish stories. I do not believe there is the slightest ground

for uneasiness; though Lady Holland apparently considers the case so

serious that she has taken her conscience out of Allen's keeping, and

put it into the hands of Charles Grant.

Here I end my letter; a great deal too long already for so busy a man to

write, and for such careless correspondents to receive.

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: July 6, 1832.

Be you Foxes, be you Pitts,

You must write to silly chits.

Be you Tories, be you Whigs,

You must write to sad young gigs.

On whatever board you are--

Treasury, Admiralty, War,

Customs, Stamps, Excise, Control;--

Write you must, upon my soul.

So sings the judicious poet; and here I sit in my parlour, looking

out on the Thames, and divided, like Garrick in Sir Joshua's picture,

between Tragedy and Comedy; a letter to you, and a bundle of papers

about Hydrabad, and the firm of Palmer and Co., late bankers to the

Nizam.

Poor Sir Walter Scott is going back to Scotland by sea tomorrow. All

hope is over; and he has a restless wish to die at home. He is many

thousand pounds worse than nothing. Last week he was thought to be so

near his end that some people went, I understand, to sound Lord Althorp

about a public funeral. Lord Althorp said, very like himself, that if

public money was to be laid out, it would be better to give it to the

family than to spend it in one day's show. The family, however, are said

to be not ill off.

I am delighted to hear of your proposed tour, but not so well pleased

to be told that you expect to be bad correspondents during your stay at

Welsh inns. Take pens and ink with you, if you think that you shall find

none at the Bard's Head, or the Glendower Arms. But it will be too

bad if you send me no letters during a tour which will furnish so many

subjects. Why not keep a journal, and minute down in it all that you

see and hear? and remember that I charge you, as the venerable circle

charged Miss Byron, to tell me of every person who "regards you with an

eye of partiality."

What can I say more? as the Indians end their letters. Did not Lady

Holland tell me of some good novels? I remember:--Henry Masterton, three

volumes, an amusing story and a happy termination. Smuggle it in,

next time that you go to Liverpool, from some circulating library; and

deposit it in a lock-up place out of the reach of them that are clothed

in drab; and read it together at the curling hour.

My article on Mirabeau will be out in the forthcoming number. I am not

a good judge of my own compositions, I fear; but I think that it will be

popular. A Yankee has written to me to say that an edition of my works

is about to be published in America with my life prefixed, and that he

shall be obliged to me to tell him when I was born, whom I married,

and so forth. I guess I must answer him slick right away. For, as the

judicious poet observes,

Though a New England man lolls back in his chair,

With a pipe in his mouth, and his legs in the air,

Yet surely an Old England man such as I

To a kinsman by blood should be civil and spry.

How I run on in quotation! But, when I begin to cite the verses of our

great writers, I never can stop. Stop I must, however.

Yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: July 18, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--I have heard from Napier. He speaks rapturously of my

article on Dumont, [Dumont's "Life of Mirabeau." See the Miscellaneous

Writings of Lord Macaulay.] but sends me no money. Allah blacken his

face! as the Persians say. He has not yet paid me for Burleigh.

We are worked to death in the House of Commons, and we are henceforth

to sit on Saturdays. This, indeed, is the only way to get through our

business. On Saturday next we shall, I hope, rise before seven, as I am

engaged to dine on that day with pretty, witty Mrs.--. I fell in with

her at Lady Grey's great crush, and found her very agreeable. Her

husband is nothing in society. Ropers has some very good stories about

their domestic happiness,--stories confirming a theory of mine which, as

I remember, made you very angry. When they first married, Mrs.--treated

her husband with great respect. But, when his novel came out and

failed completely, she changed her conduct, and has, ever since that

unfortunate publication, henpecked the poor author unmercifully. And the

case, says Ropers, is the harder, because it is suspected that she wrote

part of the book herself. It is like the scene in Milton where Eve,

after tempting Adam, abuses him for yielding to temptation. But do you

not remember how I told you that much of the love of women depended on

the eminence of men? And do you not remember how, on behalf of your sex,

you resented the imputation?

As to the present state of affairs, abroad and at home, I cannot sum it

up better than in these beautiful lines of the poet:

Peel is preaching, and Croker is lying.

The cholera's raging, the people are dying.

When the House is the coolest, as I am alive,

The thermometer stands at a hundred and five.

We debate in a heat that seems likely to burn us,

Much like the three children who sang in the furnace.

The disorders at Paris have not ceased to plague us;

Don Pedro, I hope, is ere this on the Tagus;

In Ireland no tithe can be raised by a parson;

Mr. Smithers is just hanged for murder and arson;

Dr. Thorpe has retired from the Lock, and 'tis said

That poor little Wilks will succeed in his stead.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: July 21 1832.

My dear Sisters,--I am glad to find that there is no chance of Nancy's

turning Quaker. She would, indeed, make a queer kind of female Friend.

What the Yankees will say about me I neither know nor care. I told them

the dates of my birth, and of my coming into Parliament. I told them

also that I was educated at Cambridge. As to my early bon-mots, my

crying for holidays, my walks to school through showers of cats and

dogs, I have left all those for the "Life of the late Right Honourable

Thomas Babington Macaulay, with large extracts from his correspondence,

in two volumes, by the Very Rev. J. Macaulay, Dean of Durham, and Rector

of Bishopsgate, with a superb portrait from the picture by Pickersgill

in the possession of the Marquis of Lansdowne."

As you like my verses, I will some day or other write you a whole

rhyming letter. I wonder whether any man ever wrote doggrel so easily. I

run it off just as fast as my pen can move, and that is faster by about

three words in a minute than any other pen that I know. This comes of

a schoolboy habit of writing verses all day long. Shall I tell you the

news in rhyme? I think I will send you a regular sing-song gazette.

We gained a victory last night as great as e'er was known.

We beat the Opposition upon the Russian loan.

They hoped for a majority, and also for our places.

We won the day by seventy-nine. You should have seen their faces.

Old Croker, when the shout went down our rank, looked blue with rage.

You'd have said he had the cholera in the spasmodic stage.

Dawson was red with ire as if his face was smeared with berries;

But of all human visages the worst was that of Herries.

Though not his friend, my tender heart I own could not but feel

A little for the misery of poor Sir Robert Peel.

But hang the dirty Tories! and let them starve and pine!

Huzza for the majority of glorious seventy-nine!

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

House of Commons Smoking-Room

July 23, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--I am writing here, at eleven at night, in this

filthiest of all filthy atmospheres, and in the vilest of all vile

company; with the smell of tobacco in my nostrils, and the ugly,

hypocritical face of Lieutenant ---- before my eyes. There he sits

writing opposite to me. To whom, for a ducat? To some secretary of an

Hibernian Bible Society; or to some old woman who gives cheap tracts,

instead of blankets, to the starving peasantry of Connemara; or to

some good Protestant Lord who bullies his Popish tenants. Reject not my

letter, though it is redolent of cigars and genuine pigtail; for this is

the room--

The room,--but I think I'll describe it in rhyme, That smells of tobacco

and chloride of lime. The smell of tobacco was always the same; But the

chloride was brought since the cholera came.

But I must return to prose, and tell you all that has fallen out since

I wrote last. I have been dining with the Listers at Knightsbridge.

They are in a very nice house, next, or almost next, to that which

the Wilberforces had. We had quite a family party. There were George

Villiers, and Hyde Villiers, and Edward Villiers. Charles was not there.

George and Hyde rank very high in my opinion. I liked their behaviour to

their sister much. She seems to be the pet of the whole family; and

it is natural that she should be so. Their manners are softened by her

presence; and any roughness and sharpness which they have in intercourse

with men vanishes at once. They seem to love the very ground that she

treads on; and she is undoubtedly a charming woman, pretty, clever,

lively, and polite.

I was asked yesterday evening to go to Sir John Burke's, to meet another

heroine who was very curious to see me. Whom do you think? Lady Morgan.

I thought, however, that, if I went, I might not improbably figure in

her next novel; and, as I am not ambitious of such an honour, I kept

away. If I could fall in with her at a great party, where I could see

unseen and hear unheard, I should very much like to make observations on

her; but I certainly will not, if I can help it, meet her face to face,

lion to lioness.

That confounded chattering--, has just got into an argument about the

Church with an Irish papist who has seated himself at my elbow; and they

keep such a din that I cannot tell what I am writing. There they go.

The Lord Lieutenant--the Bishop of Derry-Magee--O'Connell--your

Bible meetings--your Agitation meetings--the propagation of the

Gospel--Maynooth College--the Seed of the Woman shall bruise the

Serpent's head. My dear Lieutenant, you will not only bruise, but break,

my head with your clatter. Mercy! mercy! However, here I am at the end

of my letter, and I shall leave the two demoniacs to tear each other to

pieces.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

Library of the H. of C. July 30, 1832, 11 o'clock at night.

My dear Sisters,--Here I am. Daniel Whittle Harvey is speaking; the

House is thin; the subject is dull; and I have stolen away to write

to you. Lushington is scribbling at my side. No sound is heard but the

scratching of our pens, and the ticking of the clock. We are in a far

better atmosphere than in the smoking-room, whence I wrote to you last

week; and the company is more decent, inasmuch as that naval officer,

whom Nancy blames me for describing in just terms, is not present.

By the bye, you know doubtless the lines which are in the mouth of every

member of Parliament, depicting the comparative merits of the two rooms.

They are, I think, very happy.

If thou goest into the Smoking-room

Three plagues will thee befall,--

The chloride of lime, the tobacco smoke,

And the Captain who's worst of all,

The canting Sea-captain,

The prating Sea-captain,

The Captain who's worst of all.

If thou goest into the Library

Three good things will thee befall,-- Very good books, and very good air,

And M*c**l*y, who's best of all,

The virtuous M*c**l*y,

The prudent M*c**l*y,

M*c**l*y who's best of all.

Oh, how I am worked! I never see Fanny from Sunday to Sunday. All my

civilities wait for that blessed day; and I have so many scores of

visits to pay that I can scarcely find time for any of that Sunday

reading in which, like Nancy, I am in the habit of indulging. Yesterday,

as soon as I was fixed in my best and had breakfasted, I paid a round

of calls to all my friends who had the cholera. Then I walked to all the

clubs of which I am a member, to see the newspapers. The first of

these two works you will admit to be a work of mercy; the second, in

a political man, one of necessity. Then, like a good brother, I walked

under a burning sun to Kensington to ask Fanny how she did, and stayed

there two hours. Then I went to Knightsbridge to call on Mrs. Listen and

chatted with her till it was time to go and dine at the Athenaeum. Then

I dined, and after dinner, like a good young man, I sate and read Bishop

Heber's journal till bedtime. There is a Sunday for you! I think that I

excel in the diary lire. I will keep a journal like the Bishop, that my

memory may

"Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust."

Next Sunday I am to go to Lord Lansdowne's at Richmond, so that I hope

to have something to tell you. But on second thoughts I will tell you

nothing, nor ever will write to you again, nor ever speak to you again.

I have no pleasure in writing to undutiful sisters. Why do you not send

me longer letters? But I am at the end of my paper, so that I have no

more room to scold.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: August 14, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--Our work is over at last; not, however, till it has

half killed us all.[On the 8th August, 1832, Macaulay writes to Lord

Mahon: "We are now strictly on duty. No furloughs even for a dinner

engagement, or a sight of Taglioni's legs, can be obtained. It is very

hard to keep forty members in the House. Sibthorpe and Leader are on the

watch to count us out; and from six till two we never venture further

than the smoking-room without apprehension. In spite of all our

exertions the end of the Session seems further and further off every

day. If you would do me the favour of inviting Sibthorpe to Chevening

Park you might be the means of saving my life, and that of thirty or

forty more of us who are forced to swallow the last dregs of the oratory

of this Parliament; and nauseous dregs they are."] On Saturday we

met,--for the last time, I hope, on business. When the House rose, I set

off for Holland House. We had a small party, but a very distinguished

one. Lord Grey, the Chancellor, Lord Palmerston, Luttrell, and myself

were the only guests. Allen was of course at the end of the table,

carving the dinner and sparring with my Lady. The dinner was not so

good as usual; for the French cook was ill; and her Ladyship kept up a

continued lamentation during the whole repast. I should never have found

out that everything was not as it should be but for her criticisms. The

soup was too salt; the cutlets were not exactly comme il faut; and the

pudding was hardly enough boiled. I was amused to hear from the splendid

mistress of such a house the same sort of apologies which--made when her

cook forgot the joint, and sent up too small a dinner to table. I told

Luttrell that it was a comfort to me to find that no rank was exempted

from these afflictions.

They talked about --'s marriage. Lady Holland vehemently defended the

match; and, when Allen said that--had caught a Tartar, she quite went

off into one of her tantrums: "She a Tartar! Such a charming girl a

Tartar! He is a very happy man, and your language is insufferable:

insufferable, Mr. Allen." Lord Grey had all the trouble in the world to

appease her. His influence, however, is very great. He prevailed on her

to receive Allen again into favour, and to let Lord Holland have a slice

of melon, for which he had been petitioning most piteously, but which

she had steadily refused on account of his gout. Lord Holland thanked

Lord Grey for his intercession.. "Ah, Lord Grey, I wish you were always

here. It is a fine thing to be Prime Minister." This tattle is worth

nothing, except to show how much the people whose names will fill the

history of our times resemble, in all essential matters, the quiet folks

who live in Mecklenburg Square and Brunswick Square.

I slept in the room which was poor Mackintosh's. The next day, Sunday,

---- came to dinner. He scarcely ever speaks in the society of Holland

House. Rogers, who is the bitterest and most cynical observer of little

traits of character that ever I knew-, once said to me of him: "Observe

that man. He never talks to men; he never talks to girls; but, when he

can get into a circle of old tabbies, he is just in his element. He will

sit clacking with an old woman for hours together. That always settles

my opinion of a young fellow."

I am delighted to find that you like my review on Mirabeau, though I am

angry with Margaret for grumbling at my Scriptural allusions, and still

more angry with Nancy for denying my insight into character. It is one

of my strong points. If she knew how far I see into hers, she would he

ready to hang herself. Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: August 16, 1832,

My dear Sisters,--We begin to see a hope of liberation. To-morrow, or on

Saturday at furthest, the hope to finish our business. I did not reach

home till four this morning, after a most fatiguing and yet rather

amusing night. What passed will not find its way into the papers, as

the gallery was locked during most of the time. So I will tell you the

story.

There is a bill before the House prohibiting those processions of

Orangemen which have excited a good deal of irritation in Ireland. This

bill was committed yesterday night. Shaw, the Recorder of Dublin, an

honest man enough, but a bitter Protestant fanatic, complained that

it should be brought forward so late in the Session. Several of his

friends, he said, had left London believing that the measure had been

abandoned. It appeared, however, that Stanley and Lord Althorp had given

fair notice of their intention; so that, if the absent members had been

mistaken, the fault was their own; and the House was for going on. Shaw

said warmly that he would resort to all the means of delay in his power,

and moved that the chairman should leave the chair. The motion was

negatived by forty votes to two. Then the first clause was read. Shaw

divided the House again on that clause. He was beaten by the same

majority. He moved again that the chairman should leave the chair. He

was beaten again. He divided on the second clause. He was beaten again.

He then said that he was sensible that he was doing very wrong; that

his conduct was unhandsome and vexatious; that he heartily begged our

pardons; but that he had said that he would delay the bill as far as

the forms of the House would permit; and that he must keep his word. Now

came a discussion by which Nancy, if she had been in the ventilator, [A

circular ventilator, in the roof of the House of Commons, was the only

Ladies' Gallery that existed in the year 1832.] might have been greatly

edified, touching the nature of vows; whether a man's promise given

to himself,--a promise from which nobody could reap any advantage,

and which everybody wished him to violate,--constituted an obligation.

Jephtha's daughter was a case in point, and was cited by somebody

sitting near me. Peregrine Courtenay on one side of the House, and Lord

Palmerston on the other, attempted to enlighten the poor Orangeman

on the question of casuistry. They might as well have preached to any

madman out of St. Luke's. "I feel," said the silly creature, "that I am

doing wrong, and acting very unjustifiably. If gentlemen will forgive

me, I will never do so again. But I must keep my word." We roared with

laughter every time he repeated his apologies. The orders of the House

do not enable any person absolutely to stop the progress of a bill

in Committee, but they enable him to delay it grievously. We divided

seventeen times, and between every division this vexatious Irishman

made us a speech of apologies and self-condemnation. Of the two who had

supported him at the beginning of his freak one soon sneaked away. The

other, Sibthorpe, stayed to the last, not expressing remorse like Shaw,

but glorying in the unaccommodating temper he showed and in the delay

which he produced. At last the bill went through. Then Shaw rose;

congratulated himself that his vow was accomplished; said that the only

atonement he could make for conduct so unjustifiable was to vow that he

would never make such a vow again; promised to let the bill go through

its future stages without any more divisions; and contented himself

with suggesting one or two alterations in the details. "I hint at these

amendments," he said. "If the Secretary for Ireland approves of them, I

hope he will not refrain from introducing them because they are brought

forward by me. I am sensible that I have forfeited all claim to the

favour of the House. I will not divide on any future stage of the bill."

We were all heartily pleased with these events; for the truth was that

the seventeen divisions occupied less time than a real hard debate would

have done, and were infinitely more amusing. The oddest part of the

business is that Shaw's frank good-natured way of proceeding, absurd as

it was, has made him popular. He was never so great a favourite with

the House as after harassing it for two or three hours with the most

frivolous opposition. This is a curious trait of the House of Commons.

Perhaps you will find this long story, which I have not time to read

over again, very stupid and unintelligible. But I have thought it my

duty to set before you the evil consequences of making vows rashly, and

adhering to them superstitiously; for in truth, my Christian brethren,

or rather my Christian sisters, let us consider &c. &c. &c.

But I reserve the sermon on promises, which I had to preach, for another

occasion.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay

London: August 17, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--I brought down my story of Holland House to dinnertime

on Saturday evening. To resume my narrative, I slept there on Sunday

night. On Monday morning, after breakfast, I walked to town with

Luttrell, whom I found a delightful companion. Before we went, we sate

and chatted with Lord Holland in the library for a quarter of an hour.

He was very entertaining. He gave us an account of a visit which he paid

long ago to the Court of Denmark; and of King Christian, the madman, who

was at last deprived of all real share in the government on account of

his infirmity. "Such a Tom of Bedlam I never saw," said Lord Holland.

"One day the Neapolitan Ambassador came to the levee, and made a

profound bow to his Majesty. His Majesty bowed still lower. The

Neapolitan bowed down his head almost to the ground; when, behold! the

King clapped his hands on his Excellency's shoulders, and jumped over

him like a boy playing at leap-frog. Another day the English Ambassador

was sitting opposite the King at dinner. His Majesty asked him to take

wine. The glasses were filled. The Ambassador bowed, and put the wine to

his lips. The King grinned hideously and threw his wine into the face of

one of the footmen. The other guests kept the most profound gravity;

but the Englishman, who had but lately come to Copenhagen, though a

practised diplomatist, could not help giving some signs of astonishment.

The King immediately addressed him in French: 'Eh, mais, Monsieur

l'Envoye d'Angleterre, qu'avez-vous done? Pourquoi riez-vous? Est-ce

qu'il y'ait quelque chose qui vous ait diverti? Faites-moi le plaisir de

me l'indiquer. J'aime beaucoup les ridicules.'"

Parliament is up at last. We official men are now left alone at the

West End of London, and are making up for our long confinement in

the mornings by feasting together at night. On Wednesday I dined with

Labouchere at his official residence in Somerset House. It is well that

he is a bachelor; for he tells me that the ladies his neighbours make

bitter complaints of the unfashionable situation in which they are

cruelly obliged to reside gratis. Yesterday I dined with Will Brougham,

and an official party, in Mount Street. We are going to establish a

Club, to be confined to members of the House of Commons in place under

the present Government, who are to dine together weekly at Grillon's

Hotel, and to settle the affairs of the State better, I hope, than our

masters at their Cabinet dinners.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: September 20, 1832

My dear Sister,--I am at home again from Leeds, where everything is

going on as well as possible. I, and most of my friends, feel sanguine

as to the result. About half my day was spent in speaking, and hearing

other people speak; in squeezing and being squeezed; in shaking hands

with people whom I never saw before, and whose faces and names I forget

within a minute after being introduced to them. The rest was passed in

conversation with my leading friends, who are very honest substantial

manufacturers. They feed me on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding; at

night they put me into capital bedrooms; and the only plague which they

give me is that they are always begging me to mention some food or wine

for which I have a fancy, or some article of comfort and convenience

which I may wish them to procure.

I travelled to town with a family of children who ate without

intermission from Market Harborough, where they got into the coach, to

the Peacock at Islington, where they got out of it. They breakfasted

as if they had fasted all the preceding day. They dined as if they had

never breakfasted. They ate on the road one large basket of sandwiches,

another of fruit, and a boiled fowl; besides which there was not an

orange-girl, an old man with cakes, or a boy with filberts, who came to

the coach-side when we stopped to change horses, of whom they did not

buy something.

I am living here by myself with no society, or scarcely any, except my

books. I read a play of Calderon before I breakfast; then look over

the newspaper; frank letters; scrawl a line or two to a foolish girl

in Leicestershire; and walk to my Office. There I stay till near five,

examining claims of money-lenders on the native sovereigns of India,

and reading Parliamentary papers. I am beginning to understand something

about the Bank, and hope, when next I go to Rothley Temple, to be

a match for the whole firm of Mansfield and Babington on questions

relating to their own business. When I leave the Board, I walk for two

hours; then I dine; and I end the day quietly over a basin of tea and a

novel.

On Saturday I go to Holland House, and stay there till Monday. Her

Ladyship wants me to take up my quarters almost entirely there; but

I love my own chambers and independence, and am neither qualified nor

inclined to succeed Allen in his post. On Friday week, that is to-morrow

week, I shall go for three days to Sir George Philips's, at Weston,

in Warwickshire. He has written again in terms half complaining; and,

though I can ill spare time for the visit, yet, as he was very kind to

me when his kindness was of some consequence to me, I cannot, and will

not, refuse.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay

London: September 25, 1832.

My dear Sister,--I went on Saturday to Holland House, and stayed

there Sunday. It was legitimate Sabbath employment,--visiting the

sick,--which, as you well know, always stands first among the works of

mercy enumerated in good books. My Lord was ill, and my Lady thought

herself so. He was, during the greater part of the day, in bed. For a

few hours he lay on his sofa, wrapped in flannels. I sate by him about

twenty minutes, and was then ordered away. He was very weak and languid;

and, though the torture of the gout was over, was still in pain; but he

retained all his courage, and all his sweetness of temper. I told his

sister that I did not think that he was suffering much. "I hope not,"

said she; "but it is impossible to judge by what he says; for through

the sharpest pain of the attack he never complained." I admire him

more, I think, than any man whom I know. He is only fifty-seven,

or fifty-eight. He is precisely the man to whom health would be

particularly valuable; for he has the keenest zest for those pleasures

which health would enable him to enjoy. He is, however, an invalid, and

a cripple. He passes some weeks of every year in extreme torment. When

he is in his best health he can only limp a hundred yards in a day. Yet

he never says a cross word. The sight of him spreads good humour over

the face of every one who comes near him. His sister, an excellent old

maid as ever lived, and the favourite of all the young people of her

acquaintance, says that it is quite a pleasure to nurse him. She was

reading the "Inheritance" to him as he lay in bed, and he enjoyed it

amazingly. She is a famous reader; more quiet and less theatrical than

most famous readers, and therefore the fitter for the bed-side of a sick

man. Her Ladyship had fretted herself into being ill, could eat nothing

but the breast of a partridge, and was frightened out of her wits by

hearing a dog howl. She was sure that this noise portended her death, or

my Lord's. Towards the evening, however, she brightened up, and was in

very good spirits. My visit was not very lively. They dined at four, and

the company was, as you may suppose at this season, but scanty. Charles

Greville, commonly called, heaven knows why, Punch Greville, came on

the Saturday. Byng, named from his hair Poodle Byng, came on the Sunday.

Allen, like the poor, we had with us always. I was grateful, however,

for many pleasant evenings passed there when London was full, and Lord

Holland out of bed. I therefore did my best to keep the house alive. I

had the library and the delightful gardens to myself during most of the

day, and I got through my visit very well.

News you have in the papers. Poor Scott is gone, and I cannot be sorry

for it. A powerful mind in ruins is the most heart-breaking thing which

it is possible to conceive. Ferdinand of Spain is gone too; and, I fear,

old Mr. Stephen is going fast. I am safe at Leeds. Poor Hyde Villiers is

very ill. I am seriously alarmed about him. Kindest love to all.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Weston House: September 29, 1832.

My dear Sister,--I came hither yesterday, and found a handsome house,

pretty grounds, and a very kind host and hostess. The house is really

very well planned. I do not know that I have ever seen so happy an

imitation of the domestic architecture of Elizabeth's reign. The oriels,

towers, terraces, and battlements are in the most perfect keeping; and

the building is as convenient within as it is picturesque without. A few

weather-stains, or a few American creepers, and a little ivy, would make

it perfect; and all that will come, I suppose, with time. The terrace

is my favourite spot. I always liked "the trim gardens" of which

Milton speaks, and thought that Brown and his imitators went too far

in bringing forests and sheep-walks up to the very windows of

drawing-rooms.

I came through Oxford. It was as beautiful a day as the second day of

our visit, and the High Street was in all its glory. But it made me

quite sad to find myself there without you and Margaret. All my old

Oxford associations are gone. Oxford, instead of being, as it used

to be, the magnificent old city of the seventeenth century,--still

preserving its antique character among the improvements of modern times,

and exhibiting in the midst of upstart Birminghams and Manchesters the

same aspect which it wore when Charles held his court at Christchurch,

and Rupert led his cavalry over Magdalene Bridge, is now to me only the

place where I was so happy with my little sisters. But I was restored to

mirth, and even to indecorous mirth, by what happened after we had

left the fine old place behind us. There was a young fellow of about

five-and-twenty, mustachioed and smartly dressed, in the coach with

me. He was not absolutely uneducated; for he was reading a novel, the

Hungarian brothers, the whole way. We rode, as I told you, through the

High Street. The coach stopped to dine; and this youth passed half an

hour in the midst of that city of palaces. He looked about him with his

mouth open, as he re-entered the coach, and all the while that we were

driving away past the Ratcliffe Library, the Great Court of All Souls,

Exeter, Lincoln, Trinity, Balliol, and St. John's. When we were about

a mile on the road he spoke the first words that I had heard him utter.

"That was a pretty town enough. Pray, sir, what is it called?" I could

not answer him for laughing; but he seemed quite unconscious of his own

absurdity.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

During all the period covered by this correspondence the town of Leeds

was alive with the agitation of a turbulent, but not very dubious,

contest. Macaulay's relations with the electors whose votes he was

courting are too characteristic to be omitted altogether from the story

of his life; though the style of his speeches and manifestoes is more

likely to excite the admiring envy of modern members of Parliament,

than to be taken as a model for their communications to their own

constituents. This young politician, who depended on office for his

bread, and on a seat in the House of Commons for office, adopted from

the first an attitude of high and almost peremptory independence which

would have sat well on a Prime Minister in his grand climacteric. The

following letter, (some passages of which have been here omitted, and

others slightly condensed,) is strongly marked in every line with the

personal qualities of the writer.

London: August 3, 1832.

"My dear Sir,--I am truly happy to find that the opinion of my friends

at Leeds on the subject of canvassing agrees with that which I have long

entertained. The practice of begging for votes is, as it seems to me,

absurd, pernicious, and altogether at variance with the true principles

of representative government. The suffrage of an elector ought not to

be asked, or to be given as a personal favour. It is as much for the

interest of constituents to choose well, as it can be for the interest

of a candidate to be chosen. To request an honest man to vote according

to his conscience is superfluous. To request him to vote against his

conscience is an insult. The practice of canvassing is quite reasonable

under a system in which men are sent to Parliament to serve themselves.

It is the height of absurdity under a system under which men are sent to

Parliament to serve the public. While we had only a mock representation,

it was natural enough that this practice should be carried to a great

extent. I trust it will soon perish with the abuses from which it

sprung. I trust that the great and intelligent body of people who have

obtained the elective franchise will see that seats in the House of

Commons ought not to be given, like rooms in an almshouse, to urgency

of solicitation; and that a man who surrenders his vote to caresses and

supplications forgets his duty as much as if he sold it for a bank-note.

I hope to see the day when an Englishman will think it as great an

affront to be courted and fawned upon in his capacity of elector as in

his capacity of juryman. He would be shocked at the thought of finding

an unjust verdict because the plaintiff or the defendant had been very

civil and pressing; and, if he would reflect, he would, I think, be

equally shocked at the thought of voting for a candidate for whose

public character he felt no esteem, merely because that candidate had

called upon him, and begged very hard, and had shaken his hand very

warmly. My conduct is before the electors of Leeds. My opinions shall on

all occasions be stated to them with perfect frankness. If they approve

that conduct, if they concur in those opinions, they ought, not for my

sake, but for their own, to choose me as their member. To be so chosen,

I should indeed consider as a high and enviable honour; but I should

think it no honour to be returned to Parliament by persons who, thinking

me destitute of the requisite qualifications, had yet been wrought upon

by cajolery and importunity to poll for me in despite of their better

judgment.

"I wish to add a few words touching a question which has lately been

much canvassed; I mean the question of pledges. In this letter, and in

every letter which I have written to my friends at Leeds, I have plainly

declared my opinions. But I think it, at this conjuncture, my duty to

declare that I will give no pledges. I will not bind myself to make or

to support any particular motion. I will state as shortly as I can some

of the reasons which have induced me to form this determination.

The great beauty of the representative system is, that it unites

the advantages of popular control with the advantages arising from a

division of labour. Just as a physician understands medicine better than

an ordinary man, just as a shoemaker makes shoes better than an ordinary

man, so a person whose life is passed in transacting affairs of State

becomes a better statesman than an ordinary man. In politics, as well

as every other department of life, the public ought to have the means of

checking those who serve it. If a man finds that he derives no benefit

from the prescription of his physician, he calls in another. If his

shoes do not fit him, he changes his shoemaker. But when he has called

in a physician of whom he hears a good report, and whose general

practice he believes to be judicious, it would be absurd in him to tie

down that physician to order particular pills and particular draughts.

While he continues to be the customer of a shoemaker, it would be absurd

in him to sit by and mete every motion of that shoemaker's hand. And in

the same manner, it would, I think, be absurd in him to require

positive pledges, and to exact daily and hourly obedience, from his

representative. My opinion is, that electors ought at first to choose

cautiously; then to confide liberally; and, when the term for which they

have selected their member has expired, to review his conduct equitably,

and to pronounce on the whole taken together.

"If the people of Leeds think proper to repose in me that confidence

which is necessary to the proper discharge of the duties of a

representative, I hope that I shall not abuse it. If it be their

pleasure to fetter their members by positive promises, it is in

their power to do so. I can only say that on such terms I cannot

conscientiously serve them.

"I hope, and feel assured, that the sincerity with which I make this

explicit declaration, will, if it deprive me of the votes of my friends

at Leeds, secure to me what I value far more highly, their esteem.

"Believe me ever, my dear Sir,

"Your most faithful Servant,

"T. B. MACAULAY."

This frank announcement, taken by many as a slight, and by some as a

downright challenge, produced remonstrances which, after the interval of

a week, were answered by Macaulay in a second letter; worth reprinting

if it were only for the sake of his fine parody upon the popular cry

which for two years past had been the watchword of Reformers.

"I was perfectly aware that the avowal of my feelings on the subject of

pledges was not likely to advance my interest at Leeds. I was perfectly

aware that many of my most respectable friends were likely to differ

from me; and therefore I thought it the more necessary to make,

uninvited, an explicit declaration of my feelings. If ever there was

a time when public men were in an especial measure _bound to speak the

truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth_, to the people, this

is that time. Nothing is easier than for a candidate to avoid unpopular

topics as long as possible, and, when they are forced on him, to take

refuge in evasive and unmeaning phrases. Nothing is easier than for

him to give extravagant promises while an election is depending, and to

forget them as soon as the return is made. I will take no such course.

I do not wish to obtain a single vote on false pretences. Under the

old system I have never been the flatterer of the great. Under the new

system I will not be the flatterer of the people. The truth, or what

appears to me to be such, may sometimes be distasteful to those whose

good opinion I most value. I shall nevertheless always abide by it, and

trust to their good sense, to their second thoughts, to the force of

reason, and the progress of time. If, after all, their decision should

be unfavourable to me, I shall submit to that decision with fortitude

and good humour. It is not necessary to my happiness that I should

sit in Parliament; but it is necessary to my happiness that I should

possess, in Parliament or out of Parliament, the consciousness of having

done what is right."

Macaulay had his own ideas as to the limits within which constituents

are justified in exerting their privilege of questioning a candidate;

and, on the first occasion when those limits were exceeded, he made a

notable example of the transgressor. During one of his public meetings,

a voice was heard to exclaim from the crowd in the body of the hall:

"An elector wishes to know the religious creed of Mr. Marshall and Mr.

Macaulay." The last-named gentleman was on his legs in a moment. "Let

that man stand up!" he cried. "Let him stand on a form, where I can see

him!" The offender, who proved to be a Methodist preacher, was heisted

on to a bench by his indignant neighbours; nerving himself even in that

terrible moment by a lingering hope that he might yet be able to hold

his own. But the unhappy man had not a chance against Macaulay,

who harangued him as if he were the living embodiment of religious

intolerance and illegitimate curiosity. "I have heard with the greatest

shame and sorrow the question which has been proposed to me; and with

peculiar pain do I learn that this question was proposed by a minister

of religion. I do most deeply regret that any person should think

it necessary to make a meeting like this an arena for theological

discussion. I will not be a party to turning this assembly to such

a purpose. My answer is short, and in one word. Gentlemen, I am a

Christian." At this declaration the delighted audience began to cheer;

but Macaulay would have none of their applause. "This is no subject," he

said, "for acclamation. I will say no more. No man shall speak of me as

the person who, when this disgraceful inquisition was entered upon in an

assembly of Englishmen, brought forward the most sacred subjects to be

canvassed here, and be turned into a matter for hissing or for cheering.

If on any future occasion it should happen that Mr. Carlile should

favour any large meeting with his infidel attacks upon the Gospel, he

shall not have it to say that I set the example. Gentlemen, I have done;

I tell you, I will say no more; and if the person who has thought fit to

ask this question has the feelings worthy of a teacher of religion, he

will not, I think, rejoice that he has called me forth."

This ill-fated question had been prompted by a report, diligently spread

through the town, that the Whig candidates were Unitarians; a report

which, even if correct, would probably have done little to damage

their electioneering prospects. There are few general remarks which

so uniformly hold good as the observation that men are not willing to

attend the religious worship of people who believe less than themselves,

or to vote at elections for people who believe more than themselves.

While the congregations at a high Anglican service are in part composed

of Low churchmen and Broad churchmen; while Presbyterians and

Wesleyans have no objection to a sound discourse from a divine of the

Establishment; it is seldom the case that any but Unitarians are seen

inside a Unitarian chapel. On the other hand, at the general election

of 1874, when not a solitary Roman Catholic was returned throughout

the length and breadth of the island of Great Britain, the

Unitarians retained their long acknowledged pre-eminence as the most

over-represented sect in the kingdom.

While Macaulay was stern in his refusal to gratify his electors with

the customary blandishments, he gave them plenty of excellent political

instruction; which he conveyed to them in rhetoric, not premeditated

with the care that alone makes speeches readable after a lapse of years,

but for this very reason all the more effective when the passion of the

moment was pouring itself from his lips in a stream of faultless, but

unstudied, sentences. A course of mobs, which turned Cobden into an

orator, made of Macaulay a Parliamentary debater; and the ear and eye

of the House of Commons soon detected, in his replies from the Treasury

bench, welcome signs of the invaluable training that can be got nowhere

except on the hustings and the platform. There is no better sample of

Macaulay's extempore speaking than the first words which he addressed

to his committee at Leeds after the Reform Bill had received the Royal

assent. "I find it difficult to express my gratification at seeing such

an assembly convened at such a time. All the history of our own country,

all the history of other countries, furnishes nothing parallel to it.

Look at the great events in our own former history, and in every one of

them, which, for importance, we can venture to compare with the Reform

Bill, we shall find something to disgrace and tarnish the achievement.

It was by the assistance of French arms and of Roman bulls that King

John was harassed into giving the Great Charter. In the times of Charles

I., how much injustice, how much crime, how much bloodshed and misery,

did it cost to assert the liberties of England! But in this event, great

and important as it is in substance, I confess I think it still more

important from the manner in which it has been achieved. Other countries

have obtained deliverances equally signal and complete, but in no

country has that deliverance been obtained with such perfect peace; so

entirely within the bounds of the Constitution; with all the forms of

law observed; the government of the country proceeding in its regular

course; every man going forth unto his labour until the evening. France

boasts of her three days of July, when her people rose, when barricades

fenced the streets, and the entire population of the capital in grins

successfully vindicated their liberties. They boast, and justly, of

those three days of July; but I will boast of our ten days of May. We,

too, fought a battle, but it was with moral arms. We, too, placed an

impassable barrier between ourselves and military tyranny; but we fenced

ourselves only with moral barricades. Not one crime committed, not one

acre confiscated, not one life lost, not one instance of outrage or

attack on the authorities or the laws. Our victory has not left a single

family in mourning. Not a tear, not a drop of blood, has sullied the

pacific and blameless triumph of a great people."

The Tories of Leeds, as a last resource, fell to denouncing Macaulay as

a placeman; a stroke of superlative audacity in a party which, during

eight-and-forty years, had been out of office for only fourteen months.

It may well be imagined that he found plenty to say in his own defence.

"The only charge which malice can prefer against me is that I am a

placeman. Gentlemen, is it your wish that those persons who are thought

worthy of the public confidence should never possess the confidence of

the King? Is it your wish that no men should be Ministers but those whom

no populous places will take as their representatives? By whom, I ask,

has the Reform Bill been carried? By Ministers. Who have raised Leeds

into the situation to return members to Parliament? It is by the

strenuous efforts of a patriotic Ministry that that great result has

been produced. I should think that the Reform Bill had done little for

the people, if under it the service of the people was not consistent

with the service of the Crown."

Just before the general election Hyde Villiers died, and the

Secretaryship to the Board of Control became vacant. Macaulay

succeeded his old college friend in an office that gave him weighty

responsibility, defined duties, and, as it chanced, exceptional

opportunities for distinction. About the same time, an event occurred

which touched him more nearly than could any possible turn of fortune

in the world of politics. His sisters Hannah and Margaret had for some

months been almost domesticated among a pleasant nest of villas which

lie in the southern suburb of Liverpool, on Dingle Bank; a spot whose

natural beauty nothing can spoil, until in the fulness of time its

inevitable destiny shall convert it into docks. The young ladies were

the guests of Mr. John Cropper, who belonged to the Society of Friends,

a circumstance which readers who have got thus far into the Macaulay

correspondence will doubtless have discovered for themselves. Before the

visit was over, Margaret became engaged to the brother of her host, Mr.

Edward Cropper, a man in every respect worthy of the personal esteem and

the commercial prosperity which have fallen to his lot.

There are many who will be surprised at finding in Macaulay's letters,

both now and hereafter, indications of certain traits in his disposition

with which the world, knowing him only through his political actions

and his published works, may perhaps be slow to credit him; but which,

taking his life as a whole, were predominant in their power to affect

his happiness and give matter for his thoughts. Those who are least

partial to him will allow that his was essentially a virile intellect.

He wrote, he thought, he spoke, he acted, like a man. The public

regarded him as an impersonation of vigour, vivacity, and self-reliance;

but his own family, together with one, and probably only one, of

his friends, knew that his affections were only too tender, and his

sensibilities only too acute. Others may well be loth to parade what he

concealed; but a portrait of Macaulay, from which these features were

omitted, would be imperfect to the extent of misrepresentation; and it

must be acknowledged that, where he loved, he loved more entirely, and

more exclusively, than was well for himself. It was improvident in him

to concentrate such intensity of feeling upon relations who, however

deeply they were attached to him, could not always be in a position to

requite him with the whole of their time, and the whole of their heart.

He suffered much for that improvidence; but he was too just and too kind

to permit that others should suffer with him; and it is not for one who

obtained by inheritance a share of his inestimable affection to regret a

weakness to which he considers himself by duty bound to refer.

How keenly Macaulay felt the separation from his sister it is impossible

to do more than indicate. He never again recovered that tone of thorough

boyishness, which had been produced by a long unbroken habit of gay

and affectionate intimacy with those younger than himself; indulged in

without a suspicion on the part of any concerned that it was in its very

nature transitory and precarious. For the first time he was led to doubt

whether his scheme of life was indeed a wise one; or, rather, he began

to be aware that he had never laid out any scheme of life at all. But

with that unselfishness which was the key to his character and to much

of his career, (resembling in its quality what we sometimes admire in

a woman, rather than what we ever detect in a man,) he took successful

pains to conceal his distress from those over whose happiness it

otherwise could not have failed to cast a shadow.

"The attachment between brothers and sisters," he writes in November

1832, "blameless, amiable, and delightful as it is, is so liable to be

superseded by other attachments that no wise man ought to suffer it to

become indispensable to him. That women shall leave the home of their

birth, and contract ties dearer than those of consanguinity, is a law

as ancient as the first records of the history of our race, and as

unchangeable as the constitution of the human body and mind. To repine

against the nature of things, and against the great fundamental law of

all society, because, in consequence of my own want of foresight, it

happens to bear heavily on me, would be the basest and most absurd

selfishness.

"I have still one more stake to lose. There remains one event for which,

when it arrives, I shall, I hope, be prepared. From that moment, with

a heart formed, if ever any man's heart was formed, for domestic

happiness, I shall have nothing left in this world but ambition.

There is no wound, however, which time and necessity will not render

endurable; and, after all, what am I more than my fathers,--than the

millions and tens of millions who have been weak enough to pay double

price for some favourite number in the lottery of life, and who have

suffered double disappointment when their ticket came up a blank?"

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Leeds: December 12, 1832

My dear Sister,--The election here is going on as well as possible.

Today the poll stands thus:

Marshall Macaulay Sadler

1,804 1,792 1,353

The probability is that Sadler will give up the contest. If he persists,

he will be completely beaten. The voters are under 4,000 in number;

those who have already polled are 3,100; and about five hundred will

not poll at all. Even if we were not to bring up another man, the

probability is that we should win. On Sunday morning early I hope to be

in London; and I shall see you in the course of the day.

I had written thus far when your letter was delivered to me. I am

sitting in the midst of two hundred friends, all mad with exultation and

party spirit, all glorying over the Tories, and thinking me the happiest

man in the world. And it is all that I can do to hide my tears, and

to command my voice, when it is necessary for me to reply to their

congratulations. Dearest, dearest sister, you alone are now left to me.

Whom have I on earth but thee? But for you, in the midst of all these

successes, I should wish that I were lying by poor Hyde Villiers. But

I cannot go on. I am wanted to waste an address to the electors; and I

shall lay it on Sadler pretty heavily. By what strange fascination is it

that ambition and resentment exercise such power over minds which ought

to be superior to them? I despise myself for feeling so bitterly towards

this fellow as I do. But the separation from dear Margaret has jarred

my whole temper. I am cried up here to the skies as the most affable and

kind-hearted of then, while I feel a fierceness and restlessness within

me, quite new, and almost inexplicable.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: December 24, 1832.

My dear Sister,--I am much obliged to you for your letter, and am

gratified by all its contents, except what you say about your own cough.

As soon as you come back, you shall see Dr. Chambers, if you are not

quite well. Do not oppose me in this; for I have set my heart on it.

I dined on Saturday at Lord Essex's in Belgrave Square. But never was

there such a take-in. I had been given to understand that his Lordship's

cuisine was superintended by the first French artists, and that I

should find there all the luxuries of the Almanach des Gourmands. What

a mistake! His lordship is luxurious, indeed, but in quite a different

way. He is a true Englishman. Not a dish on his table but what Sir Roger

de Coverley, or Sir Hugh Tyrold, [The uncle of Miss Burney's Camilla.]

might have set before his guests. A huge haunch of venison on the

sideboard; a magnificent piece of beef at the bottom of the table;

and before my Lord himself smoked, not a dindon aux truffes, but a fat

roasted goose stuffed with sage and onions. I was disappointed, but

very agreeably; for my tastes are, I fear, incurably vulgar, as you may

perceive by my fondness for Mrs. Meeke's novels.

Our party consisted of Sharp; Lubbock; Watson, M.P. for Canterbury; and

Rich, the author of "What will the Lords do?" who wishes to be M. P.

for Knaresborough. Rogers was to have been of the party; but his brother

chose that very day to die upon, so that poor Sam had to absent himself.

The Chancellor was also invited, but he had scampered off to pass his

Christmas with his old mother in Westmoreland. We had some good talk,

particularly about Junius's Letters. I learned some new facts which I

will tell you when we meet. I am more and more inclined to believe that

Francis was one of the people principally concerned.

Ever yours

T.B. M.

On the 29th of January, 1833, commenced the first Session of the

Reformed Parliament. The main incidents of that Session, so fruitful in

great measures of public utility, belong to general history; if indeed

Clio herself is not fated to succumb beneath the stupendous undertaking

of turning Hansard into a narrative imbued with human interest.

O'Connell,--criticising the King's speech at vast length, and passing in

turns through every mood from the most exquisite pathos to downright and

undisguised ferocity,--at once plunged the House into a discussion on

Ireland, which alternately blazed and smouldered through four livelong

nights. Shed and Grattan spoke finely; Peel and Stanley admirably;

Bulwer made the first of his successes, and Cobbett the second of

his failures; but the longest and the loudest cheers were those which

greeted each of the glowing periods in which Macaulay, as the champion

of the Whig party, met the great agitator face to face with high, but

not intemperate, defiance.["We are called base, and brutal, and bloody.

Such are the epithets which the honourable and learned member for Dublin

thinks it becoming to pour forth against the party to which he owes

every political privilege that he enjoys. The time will come when

history will do justice to the Whigs of England, and will faithfully

relate how much they did and suffered for Ireland. I see on the

benches near me men who might, by uttering one word against Catholic

Emancipation.--nay, by merely abstaining from uttering a word in favour

of Catholic Emancipation,--have been returned to this House without

difficulty or expense, and who, rather than wrong their Irish

fellow-subjects, were content to relinquish all the objects of their

honourable ambition, and to retire into private life with conscience

and fame untarnished. As to one eminent person, who seems to be regarded

with especial malevolence by those who ought never to mention his name

without respect and gratitude, I will only say this, that the loudest

clamour which the honourable and learned gentleman can excite against

Lord Grey will be trifling when compared with the clamour which Lord

Grey withstood in order to place the honourable and learned gentleman

where he now sits. Though a young member of the Whig party I will

venture to speak in the name of the whole body. I tell the honourable

and learned gentleman, that the same spirit which sustained us in a just

contest for him will sustain us in an equally just contest against him.

Calumny, abuse, royal displeasure, popular fury, exclusion from office,

exclusion from Parliament, we were ready to endure them all, rather than

that he should be less than a British subject. We never will suffer him

to be more."] In spite of this flattering reception, he seldom addressed

the House. A subordinate member of a Government, with plenty to do in

his own department, finds little temptation, and less encouragement,

to play the debater. The difference of opinion between the two Houses

concerning the Irish Church Temporalities Bill, which constituted the

crisis of the year, was the one circumstance that excited in Macaulay's

mind any very lively emotions; but those emotions, being denied their

full and free expression in the oratory of a partisan, found vent in the

doleful prognostications of a despairing patriot which fill his letters

throughout the months of June and July. His abstinence from the passing

topics of Parliamentary controversy obtained for him a friendly, as well

as an attentive, hearing from both sides of the House whenever he

spoke on his own subjects; and did much to smooth the progress of those

immense and salutary reforms with which the Cabinet had resolved to

accompany the renewal of the India Company's Charter.

So rapid had been the march of events under that strange imperial

system established in the East by the enterprise and valour of three

generations of our countrymen, that each of the periodical revisions

of that system was, in effect, a revolution. The legislation of 1813

destroyed the monopoly of the Indian trade. In 1833 the time had arrived

when it was impossible any longer to maintain the monopoly of the China

trade; and the extinction of this remaining commercial privilege could

not fail to bring upon the Company commercial ruin. Skill, and energy,

and caution, however happily combined, would not enable rulers who were

governing a population larger than that governed by Augustus, and making

every decade conquests more extensive than the conquests of Trajan, to

compete with private merchants in an open market. England, mindful of

the inestimable debt which she owed to the great Company, did not intend

to requite her benefactors by imposing on them a hopeless task. Justice

and expediency could be reconciled by one course, and one only;--that

of buying up the assets and liabilities of the Company on terms the

favourable character of which should represent the sincerity of the

national gratitude. Interest was to be paid from the Indian exchequer

at the rate of ten guineas a year on every hundred pounds of stock;

the Company was relieved of its commercial attributes, and became a

corporation charged with the function of ruling Hindoostan; and its

directors, as has been well observed, remained princes, but merchant

princes no longer.

The machinery required for carrying into effect this gigantic

metamorphosis was embodied in a bill every one of whose provisions

breathed the broad, the fearless, and the tolerant spirit with which

Reform had inspired our counsels. The earlier Sections placed the whole

property of the Company in trust for the Crown, and enacted that "from

and after the 22nd day of April 1834 the exclusive right of trading

with the dominions of the Emperor of China, and of trading in tea, shall

cease." Then came clauses which threw open the whole continent of

India as a place of residence for all subjects of his Majesty; which

pronounced the doom of Slavery; and which ordained that no native of the

British territories in the East should "by reason only of his religion,

place of birth, descent, or colour, be disabled from holding any place,

office, or employment." The measure was introduced by Mr. Charles Grant,

the President of the Board of Control, and was read a second time on

Wednesday the 10th July. On that occasion Macaulay defended the bill in

a thin House; a circumstance which may surprise those who are not aware

that on a Wednesday, and with an Indian question on the paper, Cicero

replying to Hortensius would hardly draw a quorum. Small as it was, the

audience contained Lord John Russell, Peel, O'Connell, and other masters

in the Parliamentary craft. Their unanimous judgment was summed up by

Charles Grant, in words which every one who knows the House of Commons

will recognise as being very different from the conventional verbiage

of mutual senatorial flattery. "I must embrace the opportunity of

expressing, not what I felt, (for language could not express it,) but

of making an attempt to convey to the House my sympathy with it in its

admiration of the speech of my honourable and learned friend; a speech

which, I will venture to assert, has never been exceeded within these

walls for the development of statesmanlike policy and practical good

sense. It exhibited all that is noble in oratory; all that is sublime,

I had almost said, in poetry; all that is truly great, exalted, and

virtuous in human nature. If the House at large felt a deep interest in

this magnificent display, it may judge of what were my emotions when

I perceived in the hands of my honourable friend the great principles

which he expounded glowing with fresh colours, and arrayed in all the

beauty of truth."

There is no praise more gratefully treasured than that which is bestowed

by a generous chief upon a subordinate with whom he is on the best of

terms. Macaulay to the end entertained for Lord Glenelg that sentiment

of loyalty which a man of honour and feeling will always cherish with

regard to the statesman under whom he began his career as a servant of

the Crown. [The affinity between this sentiment and that of the Quaestor

towards his first Proconsul, so well described in the Orations against

Verres, is one among the innumerable points of resemblance between the

public life of ancient Rome and modern England.] The Secretary repaid

the President for his unvarying kindness and confidence by helping him

to get the bill through committee with that absence of friction which

is the pride and delight of official men. The vexed questions of

Establishment and Endowment, (raised by the clauses appointing

bishops to Madras and Bombay, and balancing them with as many salaried

Presbyterian chaplains,) increased the length of the debates and the

number of the divisions; but the Government carried every point by

large majorities, and, with slight modifications in detail, and none in

principle, the measure became law with the almost universal approbation

both of Parliament and the country.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

House of Commons. Monday night, half-past 12.

My dear Sister,--The papers will scarcely contain any account of what

passed yesterday in the House of Commons in the middle of the day.

Grant and I fought a battle with Briscoe and O'Connell in defence of

the Indian people, and won it by 38 to 6. It was a rascally claim of

a dishonest agent of the Company against the employers whom he had

cheated, and sold to their own tributaries. [In his great Indian speech

Macaulay referred to this affair, in a passage, the first sentence of

which has, by frequent quotation, been elevated into an apophthegm: "A

broken head in Cold Bath Fields produces a greater sensation than three

pitched battles in India. A few weeks ago we had to decide on a claim

brought by an individual against the revenues of India. If it had been

an English question the walls would scarcely have held the members who

would have flocked to the division. It was an Indian question; and we

could scarcely, by dint of supplication, make a House."] The nephew

of the original claimant has been pressing his case on the Board most

vehemently. He is an attorney living in Russell Square, and very likely

hears the word at St. John's Chapel. He hears it however to very little

purpose; for he lies as much as if he went to hear a "cauld clatter of

morality" at the parish church.

I remember that, when you were at Leamington two years ago, I used to

fill my letters with accounts of the people with whom I dined. High life

was new to me then; and now it has grown so familiar that I should

not, I fear, be able, as I formerly was, to select the striking

circumstances. I have dined with sundry great folks since you left

London, and I have attended a very splendid rout at Lord Grey's. I

stole thither, at about eleven, from the House of Commons with Stewart

Mackenzie. I do not mean to describe the beauty of the ladies, nor

the brilliancy of stars and uniforms. I mean only to tell you one

circumstance which struck, and even affected me. I was talking to Lady

Charlotte Lindsay, the daughter of Lord North, a great favourite of

mine, about the apartments and the furniture, when she said with a good

deal of emotion: "This is an interesting visit to me. I have never been

in this house for fifty years. It was here that I was born; I left it a

child when my father fell from power in 1782, and I have never crossed

the threshold since." Then she told me how the rooms seemed dwindled to

her; how the staircase, which appeared to her in recollection to be the

most spacious and magnificent that she had ever seen, had disappointed

her. She longed, she said, to go over the garrets and rummage her old

nursery. She told me how, in the No-Popery riots of 1780, she was

taken out of bed at two o'clock in the morning. The mob threatened Lord

North's house. There were soldiers at the windows, and an immense and

furious crowd in Downing Street. She saw, she said, from her nursery

the fires in different parts of London; but she did not understand the

danger; and only exulted in being up at midnight. Then she was conveyed

through the Park to the Horse Guards as the safest place; and was laid,

wrapped up in blankets, on the table in the guardroom in the midst of

the officers. "And it was such fun," she said, "that I have ever after

had rather a liking for insurrections."

I write in the midst of a crowd. A debate on Slavery is going on in the

Commons; a debate on Portugal in the Lords. The door is slamming behind

me every moment, and people are constantly going out and in. Here comes

Vernon Smith. "Well, Vernon, what are they doing?" "Gladstone has just

made a very good speech, and Howick is answering him." "Aye, but in the

House of Lords?" "They will beat us by twenty, they say." "Well, I do

not think it matters much." "No; nobody out of the House of Lords cares

either for Don Pedro, or for Don Miguel."

There is a conversation between two official men in the Library of the

House of Commons on the night of the 3rd June 1833, reported word

for word. To the historian three centuries hence this letter will be

invaluable. To you, ungrateful as you are, it will seem worthless.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Smoking-Room of the House of Commons June 6, 1833.

My Darling,--Why am I such a fool as to write to a gypsey at Liverpool,

who fancies that none is so good as she if she sends one letter for my

three? A lazy chit whose fingers tire with penning a page in reply to a

quire! There, Miss, you read all the first sentence of my epistle, and

never knew that you were reading verse. I have some gossip for you about

the Edinburgh Review. Napier is in London, and has called on me several

times. He has been with the publishers, who tell him that the sale is

falling off; and in many private parties, where he hears sad complaints.

The universal cry is that the long dull articles are the ruin of the

Review. As to myself, he assures me that my articles are the only things

which keep the work up at all. Longman and his partners correspond with

about five hundred booksellers in different parts of the kingdom. All

these booksellers, I find, tell them that the Review sells, or does not

sell, according as there are, or are not, articles by Mr. Macaulay.

So, you see, I, like Mr. Darcy,[The central male figure in "Pride and

Prejudice."] shall not care how proud I am. At all events, I cannot but

be pleased to learn that, if I should be forced to depend on my pen for

subsistence, I can command what price I choose.

The House is sitting; Peel is just down; Lord Palmerston is speaking;

the heat is tremendous; the crowd stifling; and so here I am in the

smoking-room, with three Repealers making chimneys of their mouths under

my very nose.

To think that this letter will bear to my Anna

The exquisite scent of O'Connor's Havannah!

You know that the Lords have been foolish enough to pass a vote implying

censure on the Ministers.[On June 3rd, 1833, a vote of censure on the

Portuguese policy of the Ministry was moved by the Duke of

Wellington, and carried in the Lords by 79 votes to 69. On June 6th a

counter-resolution was carried in the Commons by 361 votes to 98.] The

Ministers do not seem inclined to take it of them. The King has snubbed

their Lordships properly; and in about an hour, as I guess, (for it is

near eleven), we shall have come to a Resolution in direct opposition

to that agreed to by the Upper House. Nobody seems to care one straw for

what the Peers say about any public matter. A Resolution of the Court

of Common Council, or of a meeting at Freemasons' Hall, has often made

a greater sensation than this declaration of a branch of the Legislature

against the Executive Government. The institution of the Peerage is

evidently dying a natural death.

I dined yesterday--where, and on what, and at what price, I am ashamed

to tell you. Such scandalous extravagance and gluttony I will not commit

to writing. I blush when I think of it. You, however, are not wholly

guiltless in this matter. My nameless offence was partly occasioned by

Napier; and I have a very strong reason for wishing to keep Napier in

good humour. He has promised to be at Edinburgh when I take a certain

damsel thither; to loop out for very nice lodgings for us in Queen

Street; to show us everything and everybody; and to see us as far as

Dunkeld on our way northward, if we do go northward. In general I abhor

visiting; but at Edinburgh we must see the people as well as the walls

and windows; and Napier will be a capital guide.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: June 14, 1833.

My dear Sister,--I do not know what you may have been told. I may have

grumbled, for ought I know, at not having more letters from you; but, as

to being angry, you ought to know by this time what sort of anger mine

is when you are its object.

You have seen the papers, I dare say, and you will perceive that I did

not speak yesterday night.[The night of the First Reading of the India

Bill.] The House was thin. The debate was languid. Grant's speech had

done our work sufficiently for one night; and both he and Lord Althorp

advised me to reserve myself for the Second Reading.

What have I to tell you? I will look at my engagement book, to see where

I am to dine.

Friday June 14 . Lord Grey.

Saturday June 15. Mr. Boddington.

Sunday June 16 . Mr. S. Rice.

Saturday June 22. Sir R. Inglis.

Thursday June 27. The Earl of Ripon.

Saturday June 29. Lord Morpeth.

Read, and envy, and pine, and die. And yet I would give a large slice of

my quarter's salary, which is now nearly due, to be at the Dingle. I am

sick of Lords with no brains in their heads, and Ladies with paint on

their cheeks, and politics, and politicians, and that reeking furnace of

a House. As the poet says,

Oh! rather would I see this day

My little Nancy well and merry

Than the blue riband of Earl Grey,

Or the blue stockings of Miss Berry.

Margaret tells us that you are better, and better, and better. I want to

hear that you are well. At all events our Scotch tour will set you up.

I hope, for the sake of the tour, that we shall keep our places; but I

firmly believe that, before many days have passed, a desperate attempt

will be made in the House of Lords to turn us out. If we stand the

shock, we shall be firmer than ever. I am not without anxiety as to the

result; yet I believe that Lord Grey understands the position in which

he is placed, and, as for the King, he will not forget his last blunder,

I will answer for it, even if he should live to the age of his father.

[This "last blunder" was the refusal of the King to stand by his

Ministers in May 1832. Macaulay proved a bad prophet; for, after an

interval of only three years, William the Fourth repeated his blunder in

an aggravated form.]

But why plague ourselves about politics when we have so much pleasanter

things to talk of? The Parson's Daughter; don't you like the Parson's

Daughter? What a wretch Harbottle was! And Lady Frances, what a sad

worldly woman! But Mrs. Harbottle, dear suffering angel! and Emma Level,

all excellence! Dr. Mac Gopus you doubtless like; but you probably do

not admire the Duchess and Lady Catherine. There is a regular cone over

a novel for you! But, if you will have my opinion, I think it Theodore

Book's worst performance; far inferior to the Surgeon's Daughter; a set

of fools making themselves miserable by their own nonsensical fancies

and suspicions. Let me hear your opinion, for I will be sworn that,

In spite of all the serious world,

Of all the thumbs that ever twirled,

Of every broadbrim-shaded brow,

Of every tongue that e'er said "thou,"

You still read books in marble covers

About smart girls and dapper lovers.

But what folly I have been scrawling! I must go to work.

I cannot all day

Be neglecting Madras

And slighting Bombay

For the sake of a lass.

Kindest love to Edward, and to the woman who owns him.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: June 17, 1833.

Dear Hannah,--All is still anxiety here. Whether the House of Lords will

throw out the Irish Church Bill, whether the King will consent to create

new Peers, whether the Tories will venture to form a Ministry, are

matters about which we are all in complete doubt. If the Ministry should

really be changed, Parliament will, I feel quite sure, be dissolved.

Whether I shall have a seat in the next Parliament I neither know nor

care. I shall regret nothing for myself but our Scotch tour. For the

public I shall, if this Parliament is dissolved, entertain scarcely any

hopes. I see nothing before us but a frantic conflict between extreme

opinions; a short period of oppression; then a convulsive reaction; and

then a tremendous crash of the Funds, the Church, the Peerage, and the

Throne. It is enough to make the most strenuous royalist lean a little

to republicanism to think that the whole question between safety and

general destruction may probably, at this most fearful conjuncture,

depend on a single man whom the accident of his birth has placed in a

situation to which certainly his own virtues or abilities would never

have raised him.

The question must come to a decision, I think, within the fortnight. In

the meantime the funds are going down, the newspapers are storming, and

the faces of men on both sides are growing day by day more gloomy and

anxious. Even during the most violent part of the contest for the Reform

Bill I do not remember to have seen so much agitation in the political

circles. I have some odd anecdotes for you, which I will tell you when

we meet. If the Parliament should be dissolved, the West Indian and East

Indian Bills are of course dropped. What is to become of the slaves?

What is to become of the tea-trade? Will the negroes, after receiving

the Resolutions of the House of Commons promising them liberty, submit

to the cart-whip? Will our merchants consent to have the trade with

China, which has just been offered to them, snatched away? The Bank

Charter, too, is suspended. But that is comparatively a trifle. After

all, what is it to me who is in or out, or whether those fools of Lords

are resolved to perish, and drag the King to perish with them in

the ruin which they have themselves made? I begin to wonder what the

fascination is which attracts men, who could sit over their tea and

their books in their own cool quiet room, to breathe bad air, hear bad

speeches, lounge up and down the long gallery, and doze uneasily on the

green benches till three in the morning. Thank God, these luxuries

are not necessary to me. My pen is sufficient for my support, and my

sister's company is sufficient for my happiness. Only let me see

her well and cheerful, and let offices in Government, and seats in

Parliament, go to those who care for them. If I were to leave public

life to-morrow, I declare that, except for the vexation which it might

give you and one or two others, the event would not be in the slightest

degree painful to me. As you boast of having a greater insight into

character than I allow to you, let me know how you explain this

philosophical disposition of mine, and how you reconcile it with my

ambitious inclinations. That is a problem for a young lady who professes

knowledge of human nature.

Did I tell you that I dined at the Duchess of Kent's, and sate next that

loveliest of women, Mrs. Littleton? Her husband, our new Secretary for

Ireland, told me this evening that Lord Wellesley, who sate near us

at the Duchess's, asked Mrs. Littleton afterwards who it was that was

talking to her. "Mr. Macaulay." "Oh! "said the Marquess," I am

very sorry I did not know it. I have a most particular desire to be

acquainted with that man." Accordingly Littleton has engaged me to dine

with him, in order to introduce me to the Marquess. I am particularly

curious, and always was, to know him. He has made a great and splendid

figure in history, and his weaknesses, though they make his character

less worthy of respect, make it more interesting as a study. Such a

blooming old swain I never saw; hair combed with exquisite nicety, a

waistcoat of driven snow, and a star and garter put on with rare skill.

To-day we took up our Resolutions about India to the House of Lords. The

two Houses had a conference on the subject in an old Gothic room called

the Painted Chamber. The painting consists in a mildewed daub of a woman

in the niche of one of the windows. The Lords sate in little cocked hats

along a table; and we stood uncovered on the other side, and delivered

in our Resolutions. I thought that before long it may be our turn to

sit, and theirs to stand.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: June 21, 1833.

Dear Hannah,--I cannot tell you how delighted I was to learn from Fanny

this morning that Margaret pronounces you to be as well as she could

wish you to be. Only continue so, and all the changes of public life

will be as indifferent to me as to Horatio. If I am only spared the

misery of seeing you suffer, I shall be found

A man that fortune's buffets and rewards

Has ta'en with equal thanks.

Whether we are to have buffets or rewards is known only to Heaven and

to the Peers. I think that their Lordships are rather cowed. Indeed, if

they venture on the course on which they lately seemed bent, I would not

give sixpence for a coronet or a penny for a mitre.

I shall not read the Repealers; and I think it very impudent in you to

make such a request. Have I nothing to do but to be your novel-taster?

It is rather your duty to be mine. What else have you to do? I have read

only one novel within the last week, and a most precious one it was: the

Invisible Gentleman. Have you ever read it? But I need not ask. No

doubt it has formed part of your Sunday studies. A wretched, trumpery,

imitation of Godwin's worst manner. What a number of stories I shall

have to tell you when we meet!--which will be, as nearly as I can guess,

about the 10th or 12th of August. I shall be as rich as a Jew by that

time.

Next Wednesday will be quarter-day;

And then, if I'm alive,

Of sterling pounds I shall receive

Three hundred seventy-five.

Already I possess in cash

Two hundred twenty-four,

Besides what I have lent to John

Which makes up twenty more.

Also the man who editeth

The Yellow and the Blue

Doth owe me ninety pounds at least,

All for my last review.

So, if my debtors pay their debts,

You'll find, dear sister mine,

That all my wealth together makes

Seven hundred pounds and nine.

Ever yours

T. B. M.