The outward voyage--Arrival at Madras--Macaulay is summoned
to join Lord William Bentinck in the Neilgherries--His
journey up-country--His native servant--Arcot--Bangalore--
Seringapatam--Ascent of the Neilgherries--First sight of the
Governor-General--Letters to Mr. Ellis, and the Miss
Macaulays--A summer on the Neilgherries--Native Christians--
Clarissa--A tragi-comedy--Macaulay leaves the Neilgherries,
travels to Calcutta, and there sets up house--Letters to Mr.
Napier, and Mrs. Cropper--Mr. Trevelyan--Marriage of Hannah
Macaulay--Death of Mrs. Cropper--Macaulay's work in India--
His Minutes for Council--Freedom of the Press--Literary
gratitude--Second Minute on the Freedom of the Press--The
Black Act--A Calcutta public meeting--Macaulay's defence of
the policy of the Indian Government--His Minute on
Education--He becomes President of the Committee of Public
Instruction--His industry in discharging the functions of
that post--Specimens of his official writing--Results of his
labours--He is appointed President of the Law Commission,
and recommends the framing of a Criminal Code--Appearance of
the Code--Comments of Mr. Fitzjames Stephen--Macaulay's
private life in India--Oriental delicacies--Breakfast-
parties--Macaulay's longing for England--Calcutta and
Dublin--Departure from India--Letters to Mr. Ellis, Mr.
Sharp, Mr. Napier, and Mr. Z. Macaulay.
FROM the moment that a deputation of Falmouth Whigs, headed by their
Mayor, came on board to wish Macaulay his health in India and a happy
return to England, nothing occurred that broke the monotony of an
easy and rapid voyage. "The catching of a shark; the shooting of an
albatross; a sailor tumbling down the hatchway and breaking his head; a
cadet getting drunk and swearing at the captain," are incidents to which
not even the highest literary power can impart the charm of novelty
in the eyes of the readers of a seafaring nation. The company on the
quarterdeck was much on a level with the average society of an East
Indiaman. "Hannah will give you the histories of all these good people
at length, I dare say, for she was extremely social; danced with the
gentlemen in the evenings, and read novels and sermons with the ladies
in the mornings. I contented myself with being very civil whenever I was
with the other passengers, and took care to be with them as little as I
could. Except at meals, I hardly exchanged a word with any human being.
I never was left for so long a time so completely to my own resources;
and I am glad to say that I found them quite sufficient to keep me
cheerful and employed. During the whole voyage I read with keen and
increasing enjoyment. I devoured Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, French,
and English; folios, quartos, octavos, and duodecimos."
On the 10th of June the vessel lay to off Madras; and Macaulay had his
first introduction to the people for whom he was appointed to legislate
in the person of a boatman who pulled through the surf on his raft. "He
came on board with nothing on him but a pointed yellow cap, and walked
among us with a self-possession and civility which, coupled with
his colour and his nakedness, nearly made me die of laughing." This
gentleman was soon followed by more responsible messengers, who brought
tidings the reverse of welcome. Lord William Bentinck, who was then
Governor-General, was detained by ill-health at Ootacamund in the
Neilgherry Hills; a place which, by name at least, is now as familiar to
Englishmen as Malvern; but which in 1834 was known to Macaulay, by
vague report, as situated somewhere "in the mountains of Malabar, beyond
Mysore." The state of public business rendered it necessary that the
Council should meet; and, as the Governor-General had left one member
of that body in Bengal as his deputy, he was not able to make a quorum
until his new colleague arrived from England. A pressing summons to
attend his Lordship in the Hills placed Macaulay in some embarrassment
on account of his sister, who could not with safety commence her Eastern
experiences by a journey of four hundred miles up the country in the
middle of June. Happily the second letter which he opened proved to be
from Bishop Wilson, who insisted that the son and daughter of so eminent
an Evangelical as the Editor of the Christian Observer, themselves part
of his old congregation in Bedford Row, should begin their Indian
life nowhere except under his roof. Hannah, accordingly, continued her
voyage, and made her appearance in Calcutta circles with the Bishop's
Palace as a home, and Lady William Bentinck as a kind, and soon an
affectionate, chaperon; while her brother remained on shore at Madras,
somewhat consoled for the separation by finding himself in a country
where so much was to be seen, and where, as far as the English residents
were concerned, he was regarded with a curiosity at least equal to his
own.
During the first few weeks nothing came amiss to him. "To be on land
after three months at sea is of itself a great change. But to be in such
a land! The dark faces, with white turbans, and flowing robes; the trees
not our trees; the very smell of the atmosphere that of a hothouse, and
the architecture as strange as the vegetation." Every feature in that
marvellous scene delighted him both in itself, and for the sake of the
innumerable associations and images which it conjured up in his active
and well-stored mind. The salute of fifteen guns that greeted him, as
he set his foot on the beach, reminded him that he was in a region where
his countrymen could exist only on the condition of their being warriors
and rulers. When on a visit of ceremony to a dispossessed Rajah or
Nabob, he pleased himself with the reflection that he was face to
face with a prince who in old days governed a province as large as a
first-class European kingdom, conceding to his Suzerain, the Mogul,
no tribute beyond "a little outward respect such as the great Dukes of
Burgundy used to pay to the Kings of France; and who now enjoyed the
splendid and luxurious insignificance of an abdicated prince which fell
to the lot of Charles the Fifth or Queen Christina of Sweden," with a
court that preserved the forms of royalty, the right of keeping as many
badly armed and worse paid ragamuffins as he could retain under his
tawdry standard, and the privilege of "occasionally sending letters of
condolence and congratulation to the King of England, in which he calls
himself his Majesty's good brother and ally."
Macaulay set forth on his journey within a week from his landing,
travelling by night, and resting while the sun was at its hottest. He
has recorded his first impressions of Hindostan in a series of journal
letters addressed to his sister Margaret. The fresh and vivid character
of those impressions--the genuine and multiform interest excited in him
by all that met his ear or eye--explain the secret of the charm which
enabled him in after days to overcome the distaste for Indian literature
entertained by that personage who, for want of a better, goes by the
name of the general reader. Macaulay reversed in his own case, the
experience of those countless writers on Indian themes who have
successively blunted their pens against the passive indifference of the
British public; for his faithful but brilliant studies of the history of
our Eastern Empire are to this day incomparably the most popular of his
works. [When published in a separate form the articles on Lord Clive and
Warren Hastings have sold nearly twice as well as the articles on Lord
Chatham, nearly thrice as well as the article on Addison, and nearly
five times as well as the article on Byron. The great Sepoy mutiny,
while it something more than doubled the sale of the essay on Warren
Hastings, all but trebled the sale of the essay on Lord Clive; but,
taking the last twenty years together, there has been little to choose
between the pair. The steadiness and permanence of the favour with which
they are regarded may be estimated by the fact that, during the five
years between 1870 and 1874, as compared with the five years between
1865 and 1869, the demand for them has been in the proportion of seven
to three; and, as compared with the five years between 1860 and 1864, in
the proportion of three to one.] It may be possible, without injury to
the fame of the author, to present a few extracts from a correspondence,
which is in some sort the raw material of productions that have already
secured their place among our national classics:
"In the afternoon of the 17th June I left Madras. My train consisted of
thirty-eight persons. I was in one palanquin, and my servant followed in
another. He is a half-caste. On the day on which we set out he told me
he was a Catholic; and added, crossing himself and turning up the whites
of his eyes, that he had recommended himself to the protection of his
patron saint, and that he was quite confident that we should perform
our journey in safety. I thought of Ambrose Llamela, Gil Blas's devout
valet, who arranges a scheme for robbing his master of his portmanteau,
and, when he comes back from meeting his accomplices, pretends that he
has been to the cathedral to implore a blessing on their voyage. I did
him, however, a great injustice; for I have found him a very honest man,
who knows the native languages, and who can dispute a charge, bully a
negligent bearer, arrange a bed, and make a curry. But he is so fond of
giving advice that I fear he will some day or other, as the Scotch say,
raise my corruption, and provoke me to send him about his business. His
name, which I never hear without laughing, is Peter Prim.
"Half my journey was by daylight, and all that I saw during that time
disappointed me grievously. It is amazing how small a part of the
country is under cultivation. Two-thirds at least, as it seemed to me,
was in the state of Wandsworth Common, or, to use an illustration which
you will understand better, of Chatmoss. The people whom we met were as
few as in the Highlands of Scotland. But I have been told that in India
the villages generally lie at a distance from the roads, and that much
of the land, which when I passed through it looked like parched moor
that had never been cultivated, would after the rains be covered with
rice."
After traversing this landscape for fifteen hours he reached the town of
Arcot, which, under his handling, was to be celebrated far and wide as
the cradle of our greatness in the East.
"I was most hospitably received by Captain Smith, who commanded the
garrison. After dinner the palanquins went forward with my servant, and
the Captain and I took a ride to see the lions of the neighbourhood.
He mounted me on a very quiet Arab, and I had a pleasant excursion. We
passed through a garden which was attached to the residence of the Nabob
of the Carnatic, who anciently held his court at Arcot. The garden has
been suffered to run to waste, and is only the more beautiful for having
been neglected. Garden, indeed, is hardly a proper word. In England
it would rank as one of our noblest parks, from which it differs
principally in this, that most of the fine trees are fruit trees.
From this we came to a mountain pass which reminded me strongly of
Borradaile, near Derwentwater, and through this defile we struck into
the road, and rejoined the bearers."
And so he went forward on his way, recalling at every step the
reminiscence of some place, or event, or person; and, thereby, doubling
for himself, and perhaps for his correspondent, the pleasure which
the reality was capable of affording. If he put up at a collector's
bungalow, he liked to think that his host ruled more absolutely and over
a larger population than "a Duke of Saxe-Weimar or a Duke of Lucca;"
and, when he came across a military man with a turn for reading, he
pronounced him "as Dominic Sampson said of another Indian Colonel, 'a
man of great erudition, considering his imperfect opportunities.'"
On the 19th of June he crossed the frontier of Mysore; reached Bangalore
on the morning of the 20th and rested there for three days in the house
of the Commandant.
"On Monday, the 23rd, I took leave of Colonel Cubbon, who told me,
with a warmth which I was vain enough to think sincere, that he had not
passed three such pleasant days for thirty years. I went on all night,
sleeping soundly in my palanquin. At five I was waked, and found that a
carriage was waiting for me. I had told Colonel Cubbon that I very much
wished to see Seringapatam. He had written to the British authorities at
the town of Mysore, and an officer had come from the Residency to show
me all that was to be seen. I must now digress into Indian politics;
and let me tell you that, if you read the little that I shall say about
them, you will know more on the subject than half the members of the
Cabinet."
After a few pages occupied by a sketch of the history of Mysore during
the preceding century, Macaulay proceeds
"Seringapatam has always been a place of peculiar interest to me. It was
the scene of the greatest events of Indian history. It was the residence
of the greatest of Indian princes. From a child, I used to hear it
talked of every day. Our uncle Colin was imprisoned there for four
years, and he was afterwards distinguished at the siege. I remember
that there was, in a shop-window at Clapham, a daub of the taking
of Seringapatam, which, as a boy, I often used to stare at with the
greatest interest. I was delighted to have an opportunity of seeing
the place; and, though my expectations were high, they were not
disappointed.
"The town is depopulated; but the fortress, which was one of the
strongest in India, remains entire. A river almost as broad as the
Thames at Chelsea breaks into two branches, and surrounds the walls,
above which are seen the white minarets of a mosque. We entered, and
found everything silent and desolate. The mosque, indeed, is still kept
up, and deserves to be so; but the palace of Tippoo has fallen into
utter ruin. I saw, however, with no small interest, the airholes of the
dungeon in which the English prisoners were confined, and the water-gate
leading down to the river where the body of Tippoo was found still
warm by the Duke of Wellington, then Colonel Wellesley. The exact spot
through which the English soldiers fought their way against desperate
disadvantages into the fort is still perfectly discernible. But, though
only thirty-five years have elapsed since the fall of the city, the
palace is in the condition of Tintern Abbey and Melrose Abbey. The
courts, which bear a great resemblance to those of the Oxford Colleges,
are completely overrun with weeds and flowers. The Hall of Audience,
once considered the finest in India, still retains some very faint
traces of its old magnificence. It is supported on a great number of
light and lofty wooden pillars, resting on pedestals of black granite.
These pillars were formerly covered with gilding, and here and there
the glitter may still be perceived. In a few more years not the smallest
trace of this superb chamber will remain. I am surprised that more care
was not taken by the English to preserve so splendid a memorial of
the greatness of him whom they had conquered. It was not like Lord
Wellesley's general mode of proceeding; and I soon saw a proof of his
taste and liberality. Tippoo raised a most sumptuous mausoleum to his
father, and attached to it a mosque which he endowed. The buildings are
carefully maintained at the expense of our Government. You walk up from
the fort through a narrow path, bordered by flower beds and cypresses,
to the front of the mausoleum, which is very beautiful, and in general
character closely resembles the most richly carved of our small Gothic
chapels. Within are three tombs, all covered with magnificent palls
embroidered in gold with verses from the Koran. In the centre lies
Hyder; on his right the mother of Tippoo; and Tippoo himself on the
left."
During his stay at Mysore, Macaulay had an interview with the deposed
Rajah; whose appearance, conversation, palace, furniture, jewels,
soldiers, elephants, courtiers, and idols, he depicts in a letter,
intended for family perusal, with a minuteness that would qualify him
for an Anglo-Indian Richardson. By the evening of the 24th June he was
once more on the road; and, about noon on the following day, he began
to ascend the Neilgherries, through scenery which, for the benefit of
readers who had never seen the Pyrenees or the Italian slopes of
an Alpine pass, he likened to "the vegetation of Windsor Forest, or
Blenheim, spread over the mountains of Cumberland." After reaching
the summit of the table-land, he passed through a wilderness where for
eighteen miles together he met nothing more human than a monkey, until
a turn of the road disclosed the pleasant surprise of an amphitheatre
of green hills encircling a small lake, whose banks were dotted with
red-tiled cottages surrounding a pretty Gothic church. The whole station
presented "very much the look of a rising English watering-place. The
largest house is occupied by the Governor-General. It is a spacious
and handsome building of stone. To this I was carried, and immediately
ushered into his Lordship's presence. I found him sitting by a fire in a
carpeted library. He received me with the greatest kindness, frankness,
and hospitality. He is, as far as I can yet judge, all that I
have heard; that is to say, rectitude, openness, and good-nature,
personified." Many months of close friendship and common labours did
but confirm Macaulay in this first view of Lord William Bentinck. His
estimate of that singularly noble character survives in the closing
sentence of the essay on Lord Clive; and is inscribed on the base of
the statue which, standing in front of the Town Hall may be seen far
and wide over the great expanse of grass that serves as the park, the
parade-ground, and the race-course of Calcutta.
To Thomas Flower Ellis.
Ootacamund: July 1, 1834.
Dear Ellis,--You need not get your map to see where Ootacamund is; for
it has not found its way into the maps. It is a new discovery; a place
to which Europeans resort for their health, or, as it is called by the
Company's servants--blessings on their learning,--a _sanaterion_. It
lies at the height of 7,000 feet above the sea.
While London is a perfect gridiron, here am I, at 13 degrees North from
the equator, by a blazing wood fire, with my windows closed. My bed is
heaped with blankets, and my black servants are coughing round me in all
directions. One poor fellow in particular looks so miserably cold that,
unless the sun comes out, I am likely soon to see under my own roof
the spectacle which, according to Shakespeare, is so interesting to the
English,--a dead Indian. [The Tempest, act ii. scene 2.]
I travelled the whole four hundred miles between this and Madras on
men's shoulders. I had an agreeable journey on the whole. I was honoured
by an interview with the Rajah of Mysore, who insisted on showing me
all his wardrobe, and his picture gallery. He has six or seven coloured
English prints, not much inferior to those which I have seen in the
sanded parlour of a country inn; "Going to Cover," "The Death of the
Fox," and so forth. But the bijou of his gallery, of which he is as vain
as the Grand Duke can be of the Venus, or Lord Carlisle of the Three
Maries, is a head of the Duke of Wellington, which has, most certainly,
been on a sign-post in England.
Yet, after all, the Rajah was by no means the greatest fool whom I
found at Mysore. I alighted at a bungalow appertaining to the British
Residency. There I found an Englishman who, without any preface,
accosted me thus: "Pray, Mr. Macaulay, do not you think that Buonaparte
was the Beast?" "No, Sir, I cannot say that I do." "Sir, he was the
Beast. I can prove it. I have found the number 666 in his name. Why,
Sir, if he was not the Beast, who was?" This was a puzzling question,
and I am not a little vain of my answer. "Sir," said I, "the House of
Commons is the Beast. There are 658 members of the House; and these,
with their chief officers,--the three clerks, the Sergeant and his
deputy, the Chaplain, the doorkeeper, and the librarian,--make 666."
"Well, Sir, that is strange. But I can assure you that, if you write
Napoleon Buonaparte in Arabic, leaving out only two letters, it will
give 666." "And pray, Sir, what right have you to leave out two letters?
And, as St. John was writing Greek, and to Greeks, is it not likely that
he would use the Greek rather than the Arabic notation?" "But, Sir,"
said this learned divine, "everybody knows that the Greek letters were
never used to mark numbers." I answered with the meekest look and voice
possible: "I do not think that everybody knows that. Indeed I have
reason to believe that a different opinion,--erroneous no doubt,--is
universally embraced by all the small minority who happen to know any
Greek." So ended the controversy. The man looked at me as if he thought
me a very wicked fellow; and, I dare say, has by this time discovered
that, if you write my name in Tamul, leaving out T in Thomas, B
in Babington, and M in Macaulay, it will give the number of this
unfortunate Beast.
I am very comfortable here. The Governor-General is the frankest and
best-natured of men. The chief functionaries, who have attended him
hither, are clever people, but not exactly on a par as to general
attainments with the society to which I belonged in London. I thought,
however, even at Madras, that I could have formed a very agreeable
circle of acquaintance; and I am assured that at Calcutta I shall find
things far better. After all, the best rule in all parts of the world,
as in London itself, is to be independent of other men's minds. My power
of finding amusement without companions was pretty well tried on my
voyage. I read insatiably; the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil, Horace,
Caesar's Commentaries, Bacon de Augmentis, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto,
Tasso, Don Quixote, Gibbon's Rome, Mill's India, all the seventy volumes
of Voltaire, Sismondi's History of France, and the seven thick folios of
the Biographia Britannica. I found my Greek and Latin in good condition
enough. I liked the Iliad a little less, and the Odyssey a great deal
more than formerly. Horace charmed me more than ever; Virgil not quite
so much as he used to do. The want of human character, the poverty of
his supernatural machinery, struck me very strongly. Can anything be so
bad as the living bush which bleeds and talks, or the Harpies who
befoul Aeneas's dinner? It is as extravagant as Ariosto, and as dull
as Wilkie's Epigoniad. The last six books, which Virgil had not fully
corrected, pleased me better than the first six. I like him best on
Italian ground. I like his localities; his national enthusiasm; his
frequent allusions to his country, its history, its antiquities, and
its greatness. In this respect he often reminded me of Sir Walter Scott,
with whom, in the general character of his mind, he had very little
affinity. The Georgics pleased me better; the Eclogues best,--the second
and tenth above all. But I think the finest lines in the Latin language
are those five which begin,
"Sepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala--"
[Eclogue viii. 37.]
I cannot tell you how they struck me. I was amused to find that Voltaire
pronounces that passage to be the finest in Virgil.
I liked the Jerusalem better than I used to do. I was enraptured with
Ariosto; and I still think of Dante, as I thought when I first read him,
that he is a superior poet to Milton, that he runs neck and neck with
Homer, and that none but Shakespeare has gone decidedly beyond him.
As soon as I reach Calcutta I intend to read Herodotus again. By the
bye, why do not you translate him? You would do it excellently; and
a translation of Herodotus, well executed, would rank with original
compositions. A quarter of an hour a day would finish the work in five
years. The notes might be made the most amusing in the world. I wish you
would think of it. At all events, I hope you will do something which may
interest more than seven or eight people. Your talents are too great,
and your leisure time too small, to be wasted in inquiries so frivolous,
(I must call them,) as those in which you have of late been too much
engaged; whether the Cherokees are of the same race with the Chickasaws;
whether Van Diemen's Land was peopled from New Holland, or New Holland
from Van Diemen's land; what is the precise anode of appointing a
headman in a village in Timbuctoo. I would not give the worst page in
Clarendon or Fra Paolo for all that ever was, or ever will be, written
about the migrations of the Leleges and the laws of the Oscans.
I have already entered on my public functions, and I hope to do some
good. The very wigs of the judges in the Court of King's Bench would
stand on end if they knew how short a chapter my Law of Evidence will
form. I am not without many advisers. A native of some fortune in Madras
has sent me a paper on legislation. "Your honour must know," says this
judicious person, "that the great evil is that men swear falsely in this
country. No judge knows what to believe. Surely if your honour can make
men to swear truly, your honour's fame will be great, and the Company
will flourish. Now, I know how men may be made to swear truly; and I
will tell your honour for your fame, and for the profit of the Company.
Let your honour cut off the great toe of the right foot of every man
who swears falsely, whereby your honour's fame will be extended." Is not
this an exquisite specimen of legislative wisdom?
I must stop. When I begin to write to England, my pen runs as if it
would run on for ever.
Ever yours affectionately
T. B. M.
To Miss Fanny and Miss Selina Macaulay.
Ootacamund: August 10, 1834.
My dear Sisters,--I sent last month a full account of my journey hither,
and of the place, to Margaret, as the most stationary of our family;
desiring her to let you all see what I had written to her. I think that
I shall continue to take the same course. It is better to write one full
and connected narrative than a good many imperfect fragments.
Money matters seem likely to go on capitally. My expenses, I find, will
be smaller than I anticipated. The Rate of Exchange, if you know what
that means, is very favourable indeed; and, if I live, I shall get rich
fast. I quite enjoy the thought of appearing in the light of an old
hunks who knows on which side his bread is buttered; a warm man; a
fellow who will cut up well. This is not a character which the Macaulays
have been much in the habit of sustaining; but I can assure you that,
after next Christmas, I expect to lay up, on an average, about seven
thousand pounds a year, while I remain in India.
At Christmas I shall send home a thousand, or twelve hundred, pounds for
my father, and you all. I cannot tell you what a comfort it is to me
to find that I shall be able to do this. It reconciles me to all the
pains--acute enough, sometimes, God knows,--of banishment. In a few
years, if I live--probably in less than five years from the time at
which you will be reading this letter--we shall be again together in a
comfortable, though a modest, home; certain of a good fire, a good joint
of meat, and a good glass of wine; without owing obligations to anybody;
and perfectly indifferent, at least as far as our pecuniary interest is
concerned, to the changes of the political world. Rely on it, my dear
girls, that there is no chance of my going back with my heart cooled
towards you. I came hither principally to save my family, and I am not
likely while here to forget them.
Ever yours
T. B. M.
The months of July and August Macaulay spent on the Neilgherries, in a
climate equable as Madeira and invigorating as Braemar; where thickets
of rhododendron fill the glades and clothe the ridges; and where the
air is heavy with the scent of rose-trees of a size more fitted for an
orchard than a flower-bed, and bushes of heliotrope thirty paces round.
The glories of the forests and of the gardens touched him in spite of
his profound botanical ignorance, and he dilates more than once upon his
"cottage buried in laburnums, or something very like them, and geraniums
which grow in the open air." He had the more leisure for the natural
beauties of the place, as there was not much else to interest even a
traveller fresh from England.
"I have as yet seen little of the idolatry of India; and that little,
though excessively absurd, is not characterised by atrocity or
indecency. There is nothing of the sort at Ootacamund. I have not,
during the last six weeks, witnessed a single circumstance from which
you would have inferred that this was a heathen country. The bulk of the
natives here are a colony from the plains below, who have come up hither
to wait on the European visitors, and who seem to trouble themselves
very little about caste or religion. The Todas, the aboriginal
population of these hills, are a very curious race. They had a grand
funeral a little while ago. I should have gone if it had not been a
Council day; but I found afterwards that I had lost nothing. The whole
ceremony consisted in sacrificing bullocks to the manes of the defunct.
The roaring of the poor victims was horrible. The people stood talking
and laughing till a particular signal was made, and immediately all
the ladies lifted up their voices and wept. I have not lived three and
thirty years in this world without learning that a bullock roars when he
is knocked down, and that a woman can cry whenever she chooses.
"By all that I can learn, the Catholics are the most respectable portion
of the native Christians. As to Swartz's people in the Tanjore, they are
a perfect scandal to the religion which they profess. It would have been
thought something little short of blasphemy to say this a year ago; but
now it is considered impious to say otherwise, for they have got into a
violent quarrel with the missionaries and the Bishop. The missionaries
refused to recognise the distinctions of caste in the administration of
the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and the Bishop supported them in
the refusal. I do not pretend to judge whether this was right or wrong.
Swartz and Bishop Heber conceived that the distinction of caste, however
objectionable politically, was still only a distinction of rank;
and that, as in English churches the gentlefolks generally take the
Sacrament apart from the poor of the parish, so the high-caste natives
might be allowed to communicate apart from the Pariahs.
"But, whoever was first in the wrong, the Christians of Tanjore took
care to be most so. They called in the interposition of Government, and
sent up such petitions and memorials as I never saw before or since;
made up of lies, invectives, bragging, cant, bad grammar of the most
ludicrous kind, and texts of Scripture quoted without the smallest
application. I remember one passage by heart, which is really only a
fair specimen of the whole: 'These missionaries, my Lord, loving only
filthy lucre, bid us to eat Lord-supper with Pariahs as lives ugly,
handling dead men, drinking rack and toddy, sweeping the streets, mean
fellows altogether, base persons, contrary to that which Saint Paul
saith: I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him
crucified.'
"Was there ever a more appropriate quotation? I believe that nobody on
either side of the controversy found out a text so much to the purpose
as one which I cited to the Council of India, when we were discussing
this business: 'If this be a question of words, and names, and of your
law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters.' But though,
like Gallio, I drove them and their petitions from my judgment seat,
I could not help saying to one of the missionaries, who is here on the
Hills, that I thought it a pity to break up the Church of Tanjore on
account of a matter which such men as Swartz and Heber had not been
inclined to regard as essential. 'Sir,' said the reverend gentleman,
'the sooner the Church of Tanjore is broken up the better. You can form
no notion of the worthlessness of the native Christians there.' I could
not dispute this point with him; but neither could I help thinking,
though I was too polite to say so, that it was hardly worth the while
of so many good men to come fifteen thousand miles over sea and land in
order to make proselytes, who, their very instructors being judges, were
more children of hell than before."
Unfortunately Macaulay's stay on the Neilgherries coincided with the
monsoon. "The rain streamed down in floods. It was very seldom that I
could see a hundred yards in front of me. During a month together I did
not get two hours' walking." He began to be bored, for the first and
last time in his life; while his companions, who had not his resources,
were ready to hang themselves for very dulness. The ordinary amusements
with which, in the more settled parts of India, our countrymen beguile
the rainy season, were wanting in a settlement that had only lately been
reclaimed from the desert; in the immediate vicinity of which you still
ran the chance of being "trod into the shape of half a crown by a wild
elephant, or eaten by the tigers, which prefer this situation to the
plains below for the same reason that takes so many Europeans to India;
they encounter an uncongenial climate for the sake of what they can
get." There were no books in the place except those that Macaulay had
brought with him, among which, most luckily, was Clarissa Harlowe. Aided
by the rain outside, he soon talked his favourite romance into general
favour. The reader will consent to put up with one or two slight
inaccuracies in order to have the story told by Thackeray.
"I spoke to him once about Clarissa. 'Not read Clarissa!' he cried out.
'If you have once read Clarissa, and are infected by it, you can't leave
it. When I was in India I passed one hot season in the Hills; and there
were the Governor-General, and the Secretary of Government, and the
Commander-in-Chief, and their wives. I had Clarissa with me; and,
as soon as they began to read, the whole station was in a passion of
excitement about Miss Harlowe, and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly
Lovelace. The Governor's wife seized the book; the Secretary waited for
it; the Chief justice could not read it for tears.' He acted the whole
scene; he paced up and down the Athenaeum library. I dare say he could
have spoken pages of the book; of that book, and of what countless piles
of others!"
An old Scotch doctor, a Jacobin and a free-thinker, who could only be
got to attend church by the positive orders of the Governor-General,
cried over the last volume until he was too ill to appear at dinner.
[Degenerate readers of our own day have actually been provided with an
abridgment of Clarissa, itself as long as an ordinary novel. A wiser
course than buying the abridgment would be to commence the original
at the Third volume. In the same way, if anyone, after obtaining the
outline of Lady Clementina's story from a more adventurous friend,
will read Sir Charles Grandison, skipping all letters from Italians,
to Italians, and about Italians, he will find that he has got hold of
a delightful, and not unmanageable, book.] The Chief
Secretary,--afterwards, as Sir William Macnaghten, the hero and the
victim of the darkest episode in our Indian history,--declared that
reading this copy of Clarissa, under the inspiration of its owner's
enthusiasm, was nothing less than an epoch in his life. After the lapse
of thirty years, when Ootacamund had long enjoyed the advantage of a
book-club and a circulating library, the tradition of Macaulay and
his novel still lingered on with a tenacity most unusual in the
ever-shifting society of an Indian station.
"At length Lord William gave me leave of absence. My bearers were posted
along the road; my palanquins were packed; and I was to start next day;
when an event took place which may give you some insight into the state
of the laws, morals, and manners among the natives.
"My new servant, a Christian, but such a Christian as the missionaries
make in this part of the world, had been persecuted most unmercifully
for his religion by the servants of some other gentlemen on the Hills.
At last they contrived to excite against him (whether justly or
unjustly I am quite unable to say) the jealousy of one of Lord William's
under-cooks. We had accordingly a most glorious tragi-comedy; the part
of Othello by the cook aforesaid; Desdemona by an ugly, impudent Pariah
girl, his wife; Iago by Colonel Casement's servant; and Michael Cassio
by my rascal. The place of the handkerchief was supplied by a small
piece of sugar-candy which Desdemona was detected in the act of sucking,
and which had found its way from my canisters to her fingers. If I
had any part in the piece, it was, I am afraid, that of Roderigo, whom
Shakespeare describes as a 'foolish gentleman,' and who also appears to
have had 'money in his purse.'
"On the evening before my departure my bungalow was besieged by a mob
of blackguards. The Native judge came with them. After a most prodigious
quantity of jabbering, of which I could not understand one word, I
called the judge, who spoke tolerable English, into my room, and learned
from him the nature of the case. I was, and still am, in doubt as to the
truth of the charge. I have a very poor opinion of my man's morals,
and a very poor opinion also of the veracity of his accusers. It was,
however, so very inconvenient for me to be just then deprived of my
servant that I offered to settle the business at my own expense. Under
ordinary circumstances this would have been easy enough, for the Hindoos
of the lower castes have no delicacy on these subjects. The husband
would gladly have taken a few rupees, and walked away; but the
persecutors of my servant interfered, and insisted that he should be
brought to trial in order that they might have the pleasure of smearing
him with filth, giving him a flogging, beating kettles before him, and
carrying him round on an ass with his face to the tail.
"As the matter could not be accommodated, I begged the Judge to try the
case instantly; but the rabble insisted that the trial should not take
place for some days. I argued the matter with them very mildly, and told
them that I must go next day, and that, if my servant were detained,
guilty or innocent, he must lose his situation. The gentle and reasoning
tone of my expostulations only made them impudent. They are, in truth,
a race so accustomed to be trampled on by the strong that they always
consider humanity as a sign of weakness. The Judge told me that he never
heard a gentleman speak such sweet words to the people. But I was now
at an end of my sweet words. My blood was beginning to boil at the
undisguised display of rancorous hatred and shameless injustice. I sate
down, and wrote a line to the Commandant of the station, begging him to
give orders that the case might be tried that very evening. The Court
assembled, and continued all night in violent contention. At last the
judge pronounced my servant not guilty. I did not then know, what I
learned some days after, that this respectable magistrate had received
twenty rupees on the occasion.
"The husband would now gladly have taken the money which he refused the
day before; but I would not give him a farthing. The rascals who had
raised the disturbance were furious. My servant was to set out at eleven
in the morning, and I was to follow at two. He had scarcely left the
door when I heard a noise. I looked forth, and saw that the gang had
pulled him out of his palanquin, torn off his turban, stripped him
almost naked, and were, as it seemed, about to pull him to pieces. I
snatched up a sword-stick, and ran into the middle of them. It was all
I could do to force my way to him, and, for a moment, I thought my own
person was in danger as well as his. I supported the poor wretch in my
arms; for, like most of his countrymen, he is a chickenhearted fellow,
and was almost fainting away. My honest barber, a fine old soldier in
the Company's service, ran off for assistance, and soon returned with
some police officers. I ordered the bearers to turn round, and proceeded
instantly to the house of the Commandant. I was not long detained here.
Nothing can be well imagined more expeditious than the administration of
justice in this country, when the judge is a Colonel, and the plaintiff
a Councillor. I told my story in three words. In three minutes the
rioters were marched off to prison, and my servant, with a sepoy to
guard him, was fairly on his road and out of danger."
Early next morning Macaulay began to descend the pass.
"After going down for about an hour we emerged from the clouds and
moisture, and the plain of Mysore lay before us--a vast ocean of foliage
on which the sun was shining gloriously. I am very little given to cant
about the beauties of nature, but I was moved almost to tears. I jumped
off the palanquin, and walked in front of it down the immense declivity.
In two hours we descended about three thousand feet. Every turning in
the road showed the boundless forest below in some new point of view. I
was greatly struck with the resemblance which this prodigious jungle, as
old as the world and planted by nature, bears to the fine works of the
great English landscape gardeners. It was exactly a Wentworth Park, as
large as Devonshire. After reaching the foot of the hills, we travelled
through a succession of scenes which might have been part of the garden
of Eden. Such gigantic trees I never saw. In a quarter of an hour I
passed hundreds the smallest of which would bear a comparison with any
of those oaks which are shown as prodigious in England. The grass, the
weeds, and the wild flowers grew as high as my head. The sun, almost
a stranger to me, was now shining brightly; and, when late in the
afternoon I again got out of my palanquin and looked back, I saw the
large mountain ridge from which I had descended twenty miles behind me,
still buried in the same mass of fog and rain in which I had been living
for weeks.
"On Tuesday, the 16th" (of September), "I went on board at Madras. I
amused myself on the voyage to Calcutta with learning Portuguese, and
made myself almost as well acquainted with it as I care to be. I
read the Lusiad, and am now reading it a second time. I own that I am
disappointed in Camoens; but I have so often found my first impressions
wrong on such subjects that I still hope to be able to join my voice to
that of the great body of critics. I never read any famous foreign book,
which did not, in the first perusal, fall short of my expectations;
except Dante's poem, and Don Quixote, which were prodigiously superior
to what I had imagined. Yet in these cases I had not pitched my
expectations low."
He had not much time for his Portuguese studies. The run was unusually
fast, and the ship only spent a week in the Bay of Bengal, and
forty-eight hours in the Hooghly. He found his sister comfortably
installed in Government House, where he himself took up his quarters
during the next six weeks; Lady William Bentinck having been prepared
to welcome him as her guest by her husband's letters, more than one
of which ended with the words "e un miracolo." Towards the middle of
November, Macaulay began housekeeping for himself; living, as he always
loved to live, rather more generously than the strict necessities of his
position demanded. His residence, then the best in Calcutta, has long
since been converted into the Bengal Club.
To Macvey Napier, Esq.
Calcutta: December 10, 1834.
Dear Napier,--First to business. At length I send you the article on
Mackintosh; an article which has the merit of length, whatever it may be
deficient in. As I wished to transmit it to England in duplicate, if not
in triplicate, I thought it best to have two or three copies coarsely
printed here under the seal of strict secresy. The printers at Edinburgh
will, therefore, have no trouble in deciphering my manuscript, and the
corrector of the press will find his work done to his hands.
The disgraceful imbecility, and the still more disgraceful malevolence,
of the editor have, as you will see, moved my indignation not a little.
I hope that Longman's connection with the Review will not prevent you
from inserting what I have said on this subject. Murray's copy writers
are unsparingly abused by Southey and Lockhart in the Quarterly; and it
would be hard indeed if we might not in the Edinburgh strike hard at an
assailant of Mackintosh.
I shall now begin another article. The subject I have not yet fixed
upon; perhaps the romantic poetry of Italy, for which there is an
excellent opportunity; Panizzi's reprint of Boiardo; perhaps the little
volume of Burnet's Characters edited by Bishop Jebb. This reminds me
that I have to acknowledge the receipt of a box from Longman, containing
this little book; and other books of much greater value, Grimm's
Correspondence, Jacquemont's Letters, and several foreign works on
jurisprudence. All that you have yet sent have been excellently chosen.
I will mention, while I am on this subject, a few books which I want,
and which I am not likely to pick up here--Daru's Histoire de Venise;
St. Real's Conjuration de Venise; Fra Paolo's works; Monstrelet's
Chronicle; and Coxe's book on the Pelhams. I should also like to have a
really good edition of Lucian.
My sister desires me to send you her kind regards. She remembers her
visit to Edinburgh, and your hospitality, with the greatest pleasure.
Calcutta is called, and not without some reason, the city of palaces;
but I have seen nothing in the East like the view from the Castle Rock,
nor expect to see anything like it till we stand there together again.
Kindest regards to Lord Jeffrey.
Yours most truly
T. B. MACAULAY.
To Mrs. Cropper.
Calcutta: December 7, 1834.
Dearest Margaret,--I rather suppose that some late letters from Nancy
may have prepared you to learn what I am now about to communicate. She
is going to be married, and with my fullest and warmest approbation. I
can truly say that, if I had to search India for a husband for her,
I could have found no man to whom I could with equal confidence have
entrusted her happiness. Trevelyan is about eight and twenty. He was
educated at the Charter-house, and then went to Haileybury, and came out
hither. In this country he has distinguished himself beyond any man
of his standing by his great talent for business; by his liberal
and enlarged views of policy; and by literary merit, which, for his
opportunities, is considerable. He was at first placed at Delhi under
----, a very powerful and a very popular man, but extremely corrupt.
This man tried to initiate Trevelyan in his own infamous practices.
But the young fellow's spirit was too noble for such things. When only
twenty-one years of age he publicly accused ----, then almost at the
head of the service, of receiving bribes from the natives. A perfect
storm was raised against the accuser. He was almost everywhere abused,
and very generally cut. But with a firmness and ability scarcely ever
seen in any man so young, he brought his proofs forward, and, after an
inquiry of some weeks, fully made out his case. ---- was dismissed in
disgrace, and is now living obscurely in England. The Government here
and the Directors at home applauded Trevelyan in the highest terms; and
from that tithe he has been considered as a man likely to rise to the
very top of the service. Lord William told him to ask for anything that
he wished for. Trevelyan begged that something might be done for his
elder brother, who is in the Company's army. Lord William told him
that he had richly earned that or anything else, and gave Lieutenant
Trevelyan a very good diplomatic employment. Indeed Lord William, a man
who makes no favourites, has always given to Trevelyan the strongest
marks, not of a blind partiality, but of a thoroughly well-grounded and
discriminating esteem.
Not long ago Trevelyan was appointed by him to the Under Secretaryship
for foreign affairs, an office of a very important and confidential
nature. While holding the place he was commissioned to report to
Government on the operation of the Internal Transit duties of India.
About a year ago his Report was completed. I shall send to England a
copy or two of it by the first safe conveyance; for nothing that I
can say of his abilities, or of his public spirit, will be half so
satisfactory. I have no hesitation in affirming that it is a perfect
masterpiece in its kind. Accustomed as I have been to public affairs, I
never read an abler State paper; and I do not believe that there is, I
will not say in India, but in England, another man of twenty-seven who
could have written it. Trevelyan is a most stormy reformer. Lord William
said to me, before anyone had observed Trevelyan's attentions to Nancy:
"That man is almost always on the right side in every question; and it
is well that he is so, for he gives a most confounded deal of trouble
when he happens to take the wrong one." [Macaulay used to apply to his
future brother-in-law the remark which Julius Caesar made with regard
to his young friend Brutus: "Magni refert hic quid velit; sed quidquid
volet, valde volet."] He is quite at the head of that active party among
the younger servants of the Company who take the side of improvement. In
particular, he is the soul of every scheme for diffusing education among
the natives of this country. His reading has been very confined; but to
the little that he has read he has brought a mind as active and restless
as Lord Brougham's, and much more judicious and honest.
As to his person, he always looks like a gentleman, particularly on
horseback. He is very active and athletic, and is renowned as a great
master in the most exciting and perilous of field sports, the spearing
of wild boars. His face has a most characteristic expression of ardour
and impetuosity, which makes his countenance very interesting to me.
Birth is a thing that I care nothing about; but his family is one of the
oldest and best in England.
During the important years of his life, from twenty to twenty-five,
or thereabouts, Trevelyan was in a remote province of India, where his
whole time was divided between public business and field sports, and
where he seldom saw a European gentleman and never a European lady. He
has no small talk. His mind is full of schemes of moral and political
improvement, and his zeal boils over in his talk. His topics, even
in courtship, are steam navigation, the education of the natives, the
equalisation of the sugar duties, the substitution of the Roman for the
Arabic alphabet in the Oriental languages.
I saw the feeling growing from the first; for, though I generally pay
not the smallest attention to those matters, I had far too deep an
interest in Nancy's happiness not to watch her behaviour to everybody
who saw much of her. I knew it, I believe, before she knew it herself;
and I could most easily have prevented it by merely treating Trevelyan
with a little coldness, for he is a man whom the smallest rebuff would
completely discourage. But you will believe, my dearest Margaret, that
no thought of such base selfishness ever passed through my mind. I
would as soon have locked my dear Nancy up in a nunnery as have put the
smallest obstacle in the way of her having a good husband. I therefore
gave every facility and encouragement to both of them. What I have
myself felt it is unnecessary to say. My parting from you almost broke
my heart. But when I parted from you I had Nancy; I had all my other
relations; I had my friends; I had my country. Now I have nothing except
the resources of my own mind, and the consciousness of having acted not
ungenerously. But I do not repine. Whatever I suffer I have brought on
myself. I have neglected the plainest lessons of reason and experience.
I have staked my happiness without calculating the chances of the dice.
I have hewn out broken cisterns; I have leant on a reed; I have built on
the sand; and I have fared accordingly. I must bear my punishment as
I can; and, above all, I must take care that the punishment does not
extend beyond myself.
Nothing can be kinder than Nancy's conduct has been. She proposes that
we should form one family; and Trevelyan, (though, like most lovers, he
would, I imagine, prefer having his goddess to himself,) consented with
strong expressions of pleasure. The arrangement is not so strange as
it might seem at home. The thing is often done here; and those quarrels
between servants, which would inevitably mar any such plan in England,
are not to be apprehended in an Indian establishment. One advantage
there will be in our living together of a most incontestable sort; we
shall both be able to save more money. Trevelyan will soon be entitled
to his furlough; but he proposes not to take it till I go home.
I shall write in a very different style from this to my father. To him I
shall represent the marriage as what it is, in every respect except its
effect on my own dreams of happiness--a most honourable and happy event;
prudent in a worldly point of view; and promising all the felicity
which strong mutual affection, excellent principles on both sides,
good temper, youth, health, and the general approbation of friends can
afford. As for myself, it is a tragical denouement of an absurd plot.
I remember quoting some nursery rhymes, years ago, when you left me in
London to join Nancy at Rothley Temple or Leamington, I forget which.
Those foolish lines contain the history of my life.
"There were two birds that sat on a stone;
One flew away, and there was but one.
The other flew away, and then there was none;
And the poor stone was left all alone."
Ever, my dearest Margaret, yours
T. B. MACAULAY.
A passage from a second letter to the same person deserves to be quoted,
as an instance of how a good man may be unable to read aright his own
nature, and a wise man to forecast his own future. "I feel a growing
tendency to cynicism and suspicion. My intellect remains; and is likely,
I sometimes think, to absorb the whole man. I still retain, (not only
undiminished, but strengthened by the very events which have deprived
me of everything else,) my thirst for knowledge; my passion for holding
converse with the greatest minds of all ages and nations; any power of
forgetting what surrounds me, and of living with the past, the future,
the distant, and the unreal. Books are becoming everything to me. If
I had at this moment my choice of life, I would bury myself in one of
those immense libraries that we saw together at the universities,
and never pass a waking hour without a book before me." So little was
Macaulay aware that, during the years which were to come, his thoughts
and cares would be less than ever for himself, and more for others,
and that his existence would be passed amidst a bright atmosphere of
affectionate domestic happiness, which, until his own death came, no
accident was thenceforward destined to overcloud.
But, before his life assumed the equable and prosperous tenor in which
it continued to the end, one more trouble was in store for him. Long
before the last letters to his sister Margaret had been written, the
eyes which were to have read them had been closed for ever. The fate
of so young a wife and mother touched deeply all who had known her, and
some who knew her only by name. [Moultrie made Mrs. Cropper's death
the subject of some verses on which her relatives set a high value. He
acknowledges his little poem to be the tribute of one who had been a
stranger to her whom it was written to commemorate:
"And yet methinks we are not strange: so many claims there be
Which seem to weave a viewless band between my soul and thee.
Sweet sister of my early friend, the kind, the singlehearted,
Than whose remembrance none more bright still gilds the days departed!
Beloved, with more than sister's love, by some whose love to me
Is now almost my brightest gem in this world's treasury."]
When the melancholy news arrived in India, the young couple were
spending their honeymoon in a lodge in the Governor-General's park
at Barrackpore. They immediately returned to Calcutta, and, under the
shadow of a great sorrow, began their sojourn in their brother's house,
who, for his part, did what he might to drown his grief in floods of
official work. ["April 8. Lichfield. Easter Sunday. After the service
was ended we went over the Cathedral. When I stood before the famous
children by Chantrey, I could think only of one thing; that, when last I
was there, in 1832, my dear sister Margaret was with me and that she was
greatly affected. I could not command my tears and was forced to leave
our party, and walk about by myself."--Macaulay's Journal for the year
1849.]
The narrative of that work may well be the despair of Macaulay's
biographer. It would be inexcusable to slur over what in many important
respects was the most honourable chapter of his life; while, on the
other hand, the task of interesting Englishmen in the details of Indian
administration is an undertaking which has baffled every pen except his
own. In such a dilemma the safest course is to allow that pen to
tell the story for itself; or rather so much of the story as, by
concentrating the attention of the reader upon matters akin to those
which are in frequent debate at home, may enable him to judge whether
Macaulay, at the council-board and the bureau, was the equal of Macaulay
in the senate and the library.
Examples of his Minute-writing may with some confidence be submitted to
the criticism of those whose experience of public business has taught
them in what a Minute should differ from a Despatch, a Memorial, a
Report, and a Decision. His method of applying general principles to the
circumstances of a special case, and of illustrating those principles
with just as much literary ornament as would place his views in a
pictorial form before the minds of those whom it was his business to
convince, is strikingly exhibited in the series of papers by means of
which he reconciled his colleagues in the Council, and his masters
in Leadenhall Street, to the removal of the modified Censorship which
existed in India previously to the year 1835.
"It is difficult," he writes, "to conceive that any measures can be more
indefensible than those which I propose to repeal. It has always been
the practice of politic rulers to disguise their arbitrary measures
under popular forms and names. The conduct of the Indian Government with
respect to the Press has been altogether at variance with this trite
and obvious maxim. The newspapers have for years been allowed as ample a
measure of practical liberty as that which they enjoy in England. If any
inconveniences arise from the liberty of political discussion, to those
inconveniences we are already subject. Yet while our policy is thus
liberal and indulgent, we are daily reproached and taunted with the
bondage in which we keep the Press. A strong feeling on this subject
appears to exist throughout the European community here; and the loud
complaints which have lately been uttered are likely to produce a
considerable effect on the English people, who will see at a glance
that the law is oppressive, and who will not know how completely it is
inoperative.
"To impose strong restraints on political discussion is an intelligible
policy, and may possibly--though I greatly doubt it--be in some
countries a wise policy. But this is not the point at issue. The
question before us is not whether the Press shall be free, but whether,
being free, it shall be called free. It is surely mere madness in a
Government to make itself unpopular for nothing; to be indulgent, and
yet to disguise its indulgence under such outward forms as bring on it
the reproach of tyranny. Yet this is now our policy. We are exposed
to all the dangers--dangers, I conceive, greatly over-rated--of a free
Press; and at the same time we contrive to incur all the opprobrium of
a censorship. It is universally allowed that the licensing system, as
at present administered, does not keep any man who can buy a press from
publishing the bitterest and most sarcastic reflections on any public
measure, or any public functionary. Yet the very words 'license to
print' have a sound hateful to the ears of Englishmen in every part
of the globe. It is unnecessary to inquire whether this feeling be
reasonable; whether the petitioners who have so strongly pressed this
matter on our consideration would not have shown a better judgment if
they had been content with their practical liberty, and had reserved
their murmurs for practical grievances. The question for us is not what
they ought to do, but what we ought to do; not whether it be wise in
them to complain when they suffer no injury, but whether it be wise in
us to incur odium unaccompanied by the smallest accession of security or
of power.
"One argument only has been urged in defence of the present system. It
is admitted that the Press of Bengal has long been suffered to enjoy
practical liberty, and that nothing but an extreme emergency could
justify the Government in curtailing that liberty. But, it is said, such
an emergency may arise, and the Government ought to retain in its hands
the power of adopting, in that event, the sharp, prompt, and decisive
measures which may be necessary for the preservation of the Empire. But
when we consider with what vast powers, extending over all classes of
people, Parliament has armed the Governor-General in Council, and, in
extreme cases, the Governor-General alone, we shall probably be inclined
to allow little weight to this argument. No Government in the world
is better provided with the means of meeting extraordinary dangers by
extraordinary precautions. Five persons, who may be brought together in
half an hour, whose deliberations are secret, who are not shackled by
any of those forms which elsewhere delay legislative measures, can, in a
single sitting, make a law for stopping every press in India. Possessing
as we do the unquestionable power to interfere, whenever the safety of
the State array require it, with overwhelming rapidity and energy, we
surely ought not, in quiet times, to be constantly keeping the offensive
form and ceremonial of despotism before the eyes of those whom,
nevertheless, we permit to enjoy the substance of freedom."
Eighteen months elapsed; during which the Calcutta Press found occasion
to attack Macaulay with a breadth and ferocity of calumny such as few
public men, in any age or country, have ever endured, and none, perhaps,
have ever forgiven. There were many mornings when it was impossible for
him to allow the newspapers to lie about his sister's drawing-room.
The Editor of the Periodical which called itself, and had a right to
call itself, the "Friend of India," undertook to shame his brethren
by publishing a collection of their invectives; but it was very soon
evident that no decent journal could venture to foul its pages by
reprinting the epithets, and the anecdotes, which constituted the daily
greeting of the literary men of Calcutta to their fellow-craftsman of
the Edinburgh Review. But Macaulay's cheery and robust common sense
carried him safe and sound through an ordeal which has broken down
sterner natures than his, and embittered as stainless lives. The
allusions in his correspondence, all the more surely because they are
brief and rare, indicate that the torrent of obloquy to which he was
exposed interfered neither with his temper nor with his happiness; and
how little he allowed it to disturb his judgment or distort his public
spirit is proved by the tone of a State paper, addressed to the Court of
Directors in September 1836, in which he eagerly vindicates the freedom
of the Calcutta Press, at a time when the writers of that Press, on the
days when they were pleased to be decent, could find for him no milder
appellations than those of cheat, swindler, and charlatan.
"I regret that on this, or on any subject, my opinion should differ from
that of the Honourable Court. But I still conscientiously think that we
acted wisely when we passed the law on the subject of the Press; and
I am quite certain that we should act most unwisely if we were now to
repeal that law.
"I must, in the first place, venture to express an opinion that the
importance of that question is greatly over-rated by persons, even the
best informed and the most discerning, who are not actually on the spot.
It is most justly observed by the Honourable Court that many of the
arguments which may be urged in favour of a free Press at home do not
apply to this country. But it is, I conceive, no less true that scarcely
any of those arguments which have been employed in Europe to defend
restrictions on the Press apply to a Press such as that of India.
"In Europe, and especially in England, the Press is an engine of
tremendous power, both for good and for evil. The most enlightened
men, after long experience both of its salutary and of its pernicious
operation, have come to the conclusion that the good on the whole
preponderates. But that there is no inconsiderable amount of evil to be
set off against the good has never been disputed by the warmest friend
to freedom of discussion.
"In India the Press is comparatively a very feeble engine. It does far
less good and far less harm than in Europe. It sometimes renders
useful services to the public. It sometimes brings to the notice of
the Government evils the existence of which would otherwise have been
unknown. It operates, to some extent, as a salutary check on public
functionaries. It does something towards keeping the administration
pure. On the other hand, by misrepresenting public measures, and by
flattering the prejudices of those who support it, it sometimes produces
a slight degree of excitement in a very small portion of the community.
"How slight that excitement is, even when it reaches its greatest
height, and how little the Government has to fear from it, no person
whose observation has been confined to European societies will readily
believe. In this country the number of English residents is very small,
and, of that small number, a great proportion are engaged in the service
of the State, and are most deeply interested in the maintenance of
existing institutions. Even those English settlers who are not in the
service of the Government have a strong interest in its stability. They
are few; they are thinly scattered among a vast population, with whom
they have neither language, nor religion, nor morals, nor manners, nor
colour in common; they feel that any convulsion which should overthrow
the existing order of things would be ruinous to themselves. Particular
acts of the Government--especially acts which are mortifying to the
pride of caste naturally felt by an Englishman in India--are often
angrily condemned by these persons. But every indigo-planter in Tirhoot,
and every shopkeeper in Calcutta, is perfectly aware that the downfall
of the Government would be attended with the destruction of his fortune,
and with imminent hazard to his life.
"Thus, among the English inhabitants of India, there are no fit subjects
for that species of excitement which the Press sometimes produces
at home. There is no class among them analogous to that vast body of
English labourers and artisans whose minds are rendered irritable by
frequent distress and privation, and on whom, therefore, the sophistry
and rhetoric of bad men often produce a tremendous effect. The English
papers here might be infinitely more seditious than the most seditious
that were ever printed in London without doing harm to anything but
their own circulation. The fire goes out for want of some combustible
material on which to seize. How little reason would there be to
apprehend danger to order and property in England from the most
inflammatory writings, if those writings were read only by Ministers of
State, Commissioners of the Customs and Excise, Judges and Masters in
Chancery, upper clerks in Government offices, officers in the army,
bankers, landed proprietors, barristers, and master manufacturers! The
most timid politician would not anticipate the smallest evil from the
most seditious libels, if the circulation of those libels were confined
to such a class of readers; and it is to such a class of readers that
the circulation of the English newspapers in India is almost entirely
confined."
The motive for the scurrility with which Macaulay was assailed by a
handful of sorry scribblers was his advocacy of the Act familiarly known
as the Black Act, which withdrew from British subjects resident in the
provinces their so-called privilege of bringing civil appeals before the
Supreme Court at Calcutta. Such appeals were thenceforward to be tried
by the Sudder Court, which was manned by the Company's judges, "all of
them English gentlemen of liberal education; as free as even the judges
of the Supreme Court from any imputation of personal corruption,
and selected by the Government from a body which abounds in men as
honourable and as intelligent as ever were employed in the service of
any state." The change embodied in the Act was one of little practical
moment; but it excited an opposition based upon arguments and assertions
of such a nature that the success or failure of the proposed measure
became a question of high and undeniable importance.
"In my opinion," writes Macaulay, "the chief reason for preferring the
Sudder Court is this--that it is the court which we have provided to
administer justice, in the last resort, to the great body of the people.
If it is not fit for that purpose, it ought to be made so. If it is fit
to administer justice to the great body of the people, why should we
exempt a mere handful of settlers from its jurisdiction? There certainly
is, I will not say the reality, but the semblance of partiality and
tyranny in the distinction made by the Charter Act of 1813. That
distinction seems to indicate a notion that the natives of India may
well put up with something less than justice, or that Englishmen in
India have a title to something more than justice. If we give our own
countrymen an appeal to the King's Courts, in cases in which all others
are forced to be contented with the Company's Courts, we do in fact cry
down the Company's Courts. We proclaim to the Indian people that there
are two sorts of justice--a coarse one, which we think good enough for
then, and another of superior quality, which we keep for ourselves. If
we take pains to show that we distrust our highest courts, how can we
expect that the natives of the country will place confidence in them?
"The draft of the Act was published, and was, as I fully expected,
not unfavourably received by the British in the Mofussil. [The term
"Mofussil" is used to denote the provinces of the Bengal Presidency, as
opposed to the Capital.] Seven weeks have elapsed since the notification
took place. Time has been allowed for petitions from the furthest
corners of the territories subject to this Presidency. But I have heard
of only one attempt in the Mofussil to get up a remonstrance; and the
Mofussil newspapers which I have seen, though generally disposed to
cavil at all the acts of the Government, have spoken favourably of this
measure.
"In Calcutta the case has been somewhat different; and this is a
remarkable fact. The British inhabitants of Calcutta are the only
British-born subjects in Bengal who will not be affected by the proposed
Act; and they are the only British subjects in Bengal who have expressed
the smallest objection to it. The clamour, indeed, has proceeded from
a very small portion of the society of Calcutta. The objectors have not
ventured to call a public meeting, and their memorial has obtained
very few signatures. But they have attempted to make up by noise and
virulence for what has been wanting in strength. It may at first sight
appear strange that a law, which is not unwelcome to those who are to
live under it, should excite such acrimonious feelings among people who
are wholly exempted from its operation. But the explanation is simple.
Though nobody who resides at Calcutta will be sued in the Mofussil
courts, many people who reside at Calcutta have, or wish to have,
practice in the Supreme Court. Great exertions have accordingly been
made, though with little success, to excite a feeling against this
measure among the English inhabitants of Calcutta.
"The political phraseology of the English in India is the same with the
political phraseology of our countrymen at home; but it is never to be
forgotten that the same words stand for very different things at London
and at Calcutta. We hear much about public opinion, the love of liberty,
the influence of the Press. But we must remember that public opinion
means the opinion of five hundred persons who have no interest, feeling,
or taste in common with the fifty millions among whom they live; that
the love of liberty means the strong objection which the five hundred
feel to every measure which can prevent them from acting as they choose
towards the fifty millions, that the Press is altogether supported by
the five hundred, and has no motive to plead the cause of the fifty
millions.
"We know that India cannot have a free Government. But she may have
the next best thing--a firm and impartial despotism. The worst state in
which she can possibly be placed is that in which the memorialists would
place her. They call on us to recognise them as a privileged order of
freemen in the midst of slaves. It was for the purpose of averting
this great evil that Parliament, at the same time at which it suffered
Englishmen to settle in India, armed us with those large powers which,
in my opinion, we ill deserve to possess, if we have, not the spirit to
use them now."
Macaulay had made two mistakes. He had yielded to the temptation of
imputing motives, a habit which the Spectator newspaper has pronounced
to be his one intellectual vice, finely adding that it is "the vice
of rectitude;" and he had done worse still, for he had challenged his
opponents to a course of agitation. They responded to the call. After
preparing the way by a string of communications to the public journals,
in to which their objections to the Act were set forth at enormous
length, and with as much point and dignity as can be obtained by
a copious use of italics and capital letters, they called a public
meeting, the proceedings at which were almost too ludicrous for
description. "I have seen," said one of the speakers, "at a Hindoo
festival, a naked dishevelled figure, his face painted with grotesque
colours, and his long hair besmeared with dirt and ashes. His tongue was
pierced with an iron bar, and his breast was scorched by the fire from
the burning altar which rested on his stomach. This revolting figure,
covered with ashes, dirt, and bleeding voluntary wounds, may the next
moment ascend the Sudder bench, and in a suit between a Hindoo and an
Englishman think it an act of sanctity to decide against law in favour
of the professor of the true faith." Another gentleman, Mr. Longueville
Clarke, reminded "the tyrant" that
There yawns the sack, and yonder rolls the sea.
"Mr. Macaulay may treat this as an idle threat; but his knowledge of
history will supply him with many examples of what has occurred when
resistance has been provoked by milder instances of despotism than the
decimation of a people." This pretty explicit recommendation to lynch a
Member of Council was received with rapturous applause.
At length arose a Captain Biden, who spoke as follows: "Gentlemen, I
come before you in the character of a British seaman, and on that ground
claim your attention for a few moments. Gentlemen, there has been
much talk during the evening of laws, and regulations, and rights,
and liberties; but you all seem to have forgotten that this is the
anniversary of the glorious Battle of Waterloo. I beg to propose, and I
call on the statue of Lord Cornwallis and yourselves to join me in
three cheers for the Duke of Wellington and the Battle of Waterloo." The
audience, who by this time were pretty well convinced that no grievance
which could possibly result under the Black Act could equal the horrors
of a crowd in the Town Hall of Calcutta during the latter half of June,
gladly caught at the diversion, and made noise enough to satisfy even
the gallant orator. The business was brought to a hurried close, and the
meeting was adjourned till the following week.
But the luck of Macaulay's adversaries pursued them still. One of the
leading speakers at the adjourned meeting, himself a barrister, gave
another barrister the lie, and a tumult ensued which Captain Biden
in vain endeavoured to calm by his favourite remedy. "The opinion at
Madras, Bombay, and Canton," said he,--and in so saying he uttered the
only sentence of wisdom which either evening had produced,--"is that
there is no public opinion at Calcutta but the lawyers. And now,--who
has the presumption to call it a burlesque?--let's give three cheers for
the Battle of Waterloo, and then I'll propose an amendment which shall
go into the whole question." The Chairman, who certainly had earned
the vote of thanks for "his very extraordinary patience," which Captain
Biden was appropriately selected to move, contrived to get resolutions
passed in favour of petitioning Parliament and the Home Government
against the obnoxious Act.
The next few weeks were spent by the leaders of the movement in
squabbling over the preliminaries of duels that never came off, and
applying for criminal informations for libel against each other, which
their beloved Supreme Court very judiciously refused to grant; but in
the course of time the petitions were signed, and an agent was selected,
who undertook to convey them to England. On the 22nd of March, 1838, a
Committee of inquiry into the operation of the Act was moved for in the
House of Commons; but there was nothing in the question which tempted
Honourable Members to lay aside their customary indifference with regard
to Indian controversies, and the motion fell through without a division.
The House allowed the Government to have its own way in the matter; and
any possible hesitation on the part of the Ministers was borne down by
the emphasis with which Macaulay claimed their support. "I conceive," he
wrote, "that the Act is good in itself, and that the time for passing it
has been well chosen. The strongest reason, however, for passing it is
the nature of the opposition which it has experienced. The organs of
that opposition repeated every day that the English were the conquerors,
and the lords of the country, the dominant race; the electors of the
House of Commons, whose power extends both over the Company at home,
and over the Governor-General in Council here. The constituents of the
British Legislature, they told us, were not to be bound by laws made by
any inferior authority. The firmness with which the Government withstood
the idle outcry of two or three hundred people, about a matter with
which they had nothing to do, was designated as insolent defiance of
public opinion. We were enemies of freedom, because we would not suffer
a small white aristocracy to domineer over millions. How utterly at
variance these principles are with reason, with justice, with the honour
of the British Government, and with the dearest interests of the Indian
people, it is unnecessary for me to point out. For myself, I can only
say that, if the Government is to be conducted on such principles, I am
utterly disqualified, by all my feelings and opinions, from bearing any
part in it, and cannot too soon resign my place to some person better
fitted to hold it."
It is fortunate for India that a man with the tastes, and the training,
of Macaulay came to her shores as one vested with authority, and that
he came at the moment when he did; for that moment was the very
turning-point of her intellectual progress. All educational action had
been at a stand for some time back, on account of an irreconcilable
difference of opinion in the Committee of Public Instruction; which was
divided, five against five, on either side of a controversy,--vital,
inevitable, admitting of neither postponement nor compromise, and
conducted by both parties with a pertinacity and a warmth that was
nothing but honourable to those concerned. Half of the members were
for maintaining and extending the old scheme of encouraging Oriental
learning by stipends paid to students in Sanscrit, Persian, and Arabic;
and by liberal grants for the publication of works in those languages.
The other half were in favour of teaching the elements of knowledge
in the vernacular tongues, and the higher branches in English. On his
arrival, Macaulay was appointed President of the Committee; but he
declined to take any active part in its proceedings until the Government
had finally pronounced on the question at issue. Later in January 1835
the advocates of the two systems, than whom ten abler men could not be
found in the service, laid their opinions before the Supreme Council;
and, on the and of February, Macaulay, as a member of that Council,
produced a minute in which he adopted and defended the views of the
English section in the Committee.
"How stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present
be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some
foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary
to recapitulate. It stands preeminent even among the languages of the
West. It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest
which Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of every species of
eloquence; with historical compositions, which, considered merely
as narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as
vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equalled;
with just and lively representations of human life and human nature;
with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals, government,
jurisprudence, and trade; with full and correct information respecting
every experimental science which tends to preserve the health, to
increase the comfort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows
that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which
the the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the
course of ninety generations. It may safely be said that the literature
now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the
literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages
of the world together. Nor is this all. In India, English is the
language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by the higher class of
natives at the seats of government. It is likely to become the language
of commerce throughout the seas of the East. It is the language of two
great European communities which are rising, the one in the south of
Africa, the other in Australasia; communities which are every year
becoming more important, and more closely connected with our Indian
Empire. Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature or at
the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest
reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that
which would be the most useful to our native subjects.
"The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power
to teach this language, we shall teach languages in which, by universal
confession, there are no books on any subject which deserve to be
compared to our own; whether, when we can teach European science, we
shall teach systems which, by universal confession, whenever they differ
from those of Europe, differ for the worse; and whether, when we can
patronise sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance, at
the public expense, medical doctrines, which would disgrace an English
furrier--astronomy, which would move laughter in the girls at an English
boarding-school--history, abounding with kings thirty feet high, and
reigns thirty thousand years long--and geography made up of seas of
treacle and seas of butter.
"We are not without experience to guide us. History furnishes several
analogous cases, and they all teach the same lesson. There are in modern
times, to go no further, two memorable instances of a great impulse
given to the mind of a whole society--of prejudice overthrown--of
knowledge diffused--of taste purified--of arts and sciences planted in
countries which had recently been ignorant and barbarous.
"The first instance to which I refer is the great revival of letters
among the western nations at the close of the fifteenth and the
beginning of the sixteenth century. At that time almost everything that
was worth reading was contained in the writings of the ancient
Greeks and Romans. Had our ancestors acted as the Committee of Public
Instruction has hitherto acted; had they neglected the language of
Cicero and Tacitus; had they confined their attention to the old
dialects of our own island; had they printed nothing, and taught nothing
at the universities, but chronicles in Anglo-Saxon, and romances in
Norman French, would England have been what she now is? What the Greek
and Latin were to the contemporaries of More and Ascham, our tongue is
to the people of India. The literature of England is now more valuable
than that of classical antiquity. I doubt whether the Sanscrit
literature be as valuable as that of our Saxon and Norman progenitors.
In some departments--in history, for example--I am certain that it is
much less so.
"Another instance may be said to be still before our eyes. Within the
last hundred and twenty years a nation which had previously been in
a state as barbarous as that in which our ancestors were before the
Crusades has gradually emerged from the ignorance in which it was sunk,
and has taken its place among civilised communities. I speak of Russia.
There is now in that country a large educated class, abounding with
persons fit to serve the state in the highest functions, and in no way
inferior to the most accomplished men who adorn the best circles of
Paris and London. There is reason to hope that this vast Empire, which
in the time of our grandfathers was probably behind the Punjab, may, in
the time of our grandchildren, be pressing close on France and Britain
in the career of improvement. And how was this change effected? Not by
flattering national prejudices; not by feeding the mind of the young
Muscovite with the old woman's stories which his rude fathers had
believed; not by filling his head with lying legends about St. Nicholas;
not by encouraging him to study the great question, whether the world
was or was not created on the 13th of September; not by calling him 'a
learned native,' when he has mastered all these points of knowledge; but
by teaching him those foreign languages in which the greatest mass of
information had been laid up, and thus putting all that information
within his reach. The languages of western Europe civilised Russia. I
cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo what they have done for
the Tartar."
This Minute, which in its original shape is long enough for an article
in a quarterly review, and as businesslike as a Report of a Royal
Commission, set the question at rest at once and for ever. On the 7th of
March, 1835, Lord William Bentinck decided that "the great object of the
British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and
science among the natives of India;" two of the Orientalists retired
from the Committee of Public Instruction; several new members, both
English and native, were appointed; and Macaulay entered upon the
functions of President with an energy and assiduity which in his case
was an infallible proof that his work was to his mind.
The post was no sinecure. It was an arduous task to plan, found, and
construct, in all its grades, the education of such a country as
India. The means at Macaulay's disposal were utterly inadequate for the
undertaking on which he was engaged. Nothing resembling an organised
staff was as yet in existence. There were no Inspectors of Schools.
There were no training colleges for masters. There were no boards of
experienced managers. The machinery consisted of voluntary committees
acting on the spot, and corresponding directly with the superintending
body at Calcutta. Macaulay rose to the occasion, and threw himself
into the routine of administration and control with zeal sustained
by diligence and tempered by tact. "We were hardly prepared," said a
competent critic, "for the amount of conciliation which he evinces in
dealing with irritable colleagues and subordinates, and for the strong,
sterling, practical common sense with which he sweeps away rubbish, or
cuts the knots of local and departmental problems." The mastery which a
man exercises over himself, and the patience and forbearance displayed
in his dealings with others, are generally in proportion to the value
which he sets upon the objects of his pursuit. If we judge Macaulay by
this standard, it is plain that he cared a great deal more for providing
our Eastern Empire with an educational outfit that would work and wear
than he ever cared for keeping his own seat in Parliament or pushing his
own fortunes in Downing Street. Throughout his innumerable Minutes, on
all subjects from the broadest principle to the narrowest detail, he
is everywhere free from crotchets and susceptibilities; and everywhere
ready to humour any person who will make himself useful, and to adopt
any appliance which can be turned to account.
"I think it highly probable that Mr. Nicholls may be to blame, because I
have seldom known a quarrel in which both parties were not to blame. But
I see no evidence that he is so. Nor do I see any evidence which tends
to prove that Mr. Nicholls leads the Local Committee by the nose. The
Local Committee appear to have acted with perfect propriety, and
I cannot consent to treat them in the manner recommended by Mr.
Sutherland. If we appoint the Colonel to be a member of their body,
we shall in effect pass a most severe censure on their proceedings. I
dislike the suggestion of putting military men on the Committee as
a check on the civilians. Hitherto we have never, to the best of my
belief, been troubled by any such idle jealousies. I would appoint the
fittest men without caring to what branch of the service they belonged,
or whether they belonged to the service at all." [This, and the
following extracts, are taken from a volume of Macaulay's Minutes, "now
first collected from Records in the Department of Public instruction, by
H. Woodrow, Esq., M.A., Inspector of Schools at Calcutta, and formerly
Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge." The collection was published in
India.]
Exception had been taken to an applicant for a mastership, on the ground
that he had been a preacher with a strong turn for proselytising.
"Mr. ---- seems to be so little concerned about proselytising, that he
does not even know how to spell the word; a circumstance which, if I did
not suppose it to be a slip of the pen, I should think a more serious
objection than the 'Reverend' which formerly stood before his name. I am
quite content with his assurances."
In default of better, Macaulay was always for employing the tools
which came to hand. A warm and consistent advocate of appointment by
competitive examination, wherever a field for competition existed, he
was no pedantic slave to a theory. In the dearth of schoolmasters, which
is a feature in every infant educational system, he refused to reject
a candidate who mistook "Argos for Corinth," and backed the claims of
aspirants of respectable character who could "read, write, and work a
sum."
"By all means accept the King of Oude's present; though, to be sure,
more detestable maps were never seen. One would think that the revenues
of Oude, and the treasures of Saadut Ali, might have borne the expense
of producing something better than a map in which Sicily is joined on
to the toe of Italy, and in which so important an eastern island as Java
does not appear at all."
"As to the corrupting influence of the zenana, of which Mr. Trevelyan
speaks, I may regret it; but I own that I cannot help thinking that the
dissolution of the tie between parent and child is as great a moral evil
as can be found in any zenana. In whatever degree infant schools relax
that tie they do mischief. For my own part, I would rather hear a boy
of three years old lisp all the bad words in the language than that he
should have no feelings of family affection--that his character should
be that which must be expected in one who has had the misfortune of
having a schoolmaster in place of a mother."
"I do not see the reason for establishing any limit as to the age of
scholars. The phenomena are exactly the same which have always been
found to exist when a new mode of education has been rising into
fashion. No man of fifty now learns Greek with boys; but in the
sixteenth century it was not at all unusual to see old Doctors of
Divinity attending lectures side by side with young students."
"With respect to making our College libraries circulating libraries,
there is much to be said on both sides. If a proper subscription is
demanded from those who have access to them, and if all that is raised
by this subscription is laid out in adding to the libraries, the
students will be no losers by the plan. Our libraries, the best of them
at least, would be better than any which would be readily accessible at
an up-country station; and I do not know why we should grudge a young
officer the pleasure of reading our copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson
or Marmontel's Memoirs, if he is willing to pay a few rupees for the
privilege."
These utterances of cultured wisdom or homely mother-wit are sometimes
expressed in phrases almost as amusing, though not so characteristic, as
those which Frederic the Great used to scrawl on the margin of reports
and despatches for the information of his secretaries.
"We are a little too indulgent to the whims of the people in our employ.
We pay a large sum to send a master to a distant station. He dislikes
the place. The collector is uncivil; the surgeon quarrels with him;
and he must be moved. The expenses of the journey have to be defrayed.
Another man is to be transferred from a place where he is comfortable
and useful. Our masters run from station to station at our cost, as
vapourised ladies at home run about from spa to spa. All situations have
their discomforts; and there are times when we all wish that our lot had
been cast in some other line of life, or in some other place."
With regard to a proposed coat of arms for Hooghly College, he says
"I do not see why the mummeries of European heraldry should be
introduced into any part of our Indian system. Heraldry is not a
science which has any eternal rules. It is a system of arbitrary canons,
originating in pure caprice. Nothing can be more absurd and grotesque
than armorial bearings, considered in themselves. Certain recollections,
certain associations, make them interesting in many cases to an
Englishman; but in those recollections and associations the natives of
India do not participate. A lion, rampant, with a folio in his paw, with
a man standing on each side of him, with a telescope over his head,
and with a Persian motto under his feet, must seem to them either very
mysterious, or very absurd."
In a discussion on the propriety of printing some books of Oriental
science, Macaulay writes
"I should be sorry to say anything disrespectful of that liberal
and generous enthusiasm for Oriental literature which appears in Mr.
Sutherland's minute; but I own that I cannot think that we ought to be
guided in the distribution of the small sum, which the Government has
allotted for the purpose of education, by considerations which seem
a little romantic. That the Saracens a thousand years ago cultivated
mathematical science is hardly, I think, a reason for our spending any
money in translating English treatises on mathematics into Arabic. Mr.
Sutherland would probably think it very strange if we were to urge the
destruction of the Alexandrian Library as a reason against patronising
Arabic literature in the nineteenth century. The undertaking may be, as
Mr. Sutherland conceives, a great national work. So is the breakwater at
Madras. But under the orders which we have received from the Government,
we have just as little to do with one as with the other."
Now and then a stroke, aimed at Hooghly College, hits nearer home. That
men of thirty should be bribed to continue their education into mature
life "seems very absurd. Moghal Jan has been paid to learn something
during twelve years. We are told that he is lazy and stupid; but there
are hopes that in four years more he will have completed his course
of study. We have had quite enough of these lazy, stupid schoolboys of
thirty."
"I must frankly own that I do not like the list of books. Grammars of
rhetoric and grammars of logic are among the most useless furniture of
a shelf. Give a boy Robinson Crusoe. That is worth all the grammars of
rhetoric and logic in the world. We ought to procure such books as are
likely to give the children a taste for the literature of the West; not
books filled with idle distinctions and definitions, which every man
who has learned them makes haste to forget. Who ever reasoned better for
having been taught the difference between a syllogism and an enthymeme?
Who ever composed with greater spirit and elegance because he could
define an oxymoron or an aposiopesis? I am not joking, but writing quite
seriously, when I say that I would much rather order a hundred copies
of Jack the Giant-killer for our schools than a hundred copies of any
grammar of rhetoric or logic that ever was written."
"Goldsmith's Histories of Greece and Rome are miserable performances,
and I do not at all like to lay out 50 pounds on them, even after they
have received all Mr. Pinnock's improvements. I must own too, that I
think the order for globes and other instruments unnecessarily large.
To lay out 324 pounds at once on globes alone, useful as I acknowledge
those articles to be, seems exceedingly profuse, when we have only about
3,000 pounds a year for all purposes of English education. One 12-inch
or 18-inch globe for each school is quite enough; and we ought not, I
think, to order sixteen such globes when we are about to establish only
seven schools. Useful as the telescopes, the theodolites, and the other
scientific instruments mentioned in the indent undoubtedly are, we
must consider that four or five such instruments run away with a year's
salary of a schoolmaster, and that, if we purchase them, it will be
necessary to defer the establishment of schools."
At one of the colleges at Calcutta the distribution of prizes was
accompanied by some histrionic performances on the part of the pupils.
"I have no partiality," writes Macaulay, "for such ceremonies. I think
it a very questionable thing whether, even at home, public spouting and
acting ought to form part of the system of a place of education. But
in this country such exhibitions are peculiarly out of place. I can
conceive nothing more grotesque than the scene from the Merchant of
Venice, with Portia represented by a little black boy. Then, too, the
subjects of recitation were ill chosen. We are attempting to introduce a
great nation to a knowledge of the richest and noblest literature in
the world. The society of Calcutta assemble to see what progress we are
making; and we produce as a sample a boy who repeats some blackguard
doggerel of George Colman's, about a fat gentleman who was put to bed
over an oven, and about a man-midwife who was called out of his bed by
a drunken man at night. Our disciple tries to hiccup, and tumbles and
staggers about in imitation of the tipsy English sailors whom he has
seen at the punch houses. Really, if we can find nothing better worth
reciting than this trash, we had better give up English instruction
altogether."
"As to the list of prize books, I am not much better satisfied. It
is absolutely unintelligible to me why Pope's Works and my old friend
Moore's Lalla Rookh should be selected from the whole mass of English
poetry to be prize books. I will engage to frame, currente calamo, a
better list. Bacon's Essays, Hume's England, Gibbon's Rome, Robertson's
Charles V., Robertson's Scotland, Robertson's America, Swift's Gulliver,
Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare's Works, Paradise Lost, Milton's smaller
poems, Arabian Nights, Park's Travels, Anson's Voyage, the Vicar of
Wakefield, Johnson's Lives, Gil Blas, Voltaire's Charles XII., Southey's
Nelson, Middleton's Life of Cicero.
"This may serve as a specimen. These are books which will amuse and
interest those who obtain them. To give a boy Abercrombie on the
Intellectual Powers, Dick's Moral Improvement, Young's Intellectual
Philosophy, Chalmers's Poetical Economy!!! (in passing I may be allowed
to ask what that means?) is quite absurd. I would not give orders at
random for books about which we know nothing. We are under no necessity
of ordering at haphazard. We know Robinson Crusoe, and Gulliver, and
the Arabian Nights, and Anson's Voyage, and many other delightful works
which interest even the very young, and which do not lose their interest
to the end of our lives. Why should we order blindfold such books as
Markham's New Children's Friend, the juvenile Scrap Book, the Child's
Own Book, Niggens's Earth, Mudie's Sea, and somebody else's Fire and
Air?--books which, I will be bound for it, none of us ever opened.
"The list ought in all its parts to be thoroughly recast. If Sir
Benjamin Malkin will furnish the names of ten or twelve works of a
scientific kind, which he thinks suited for prizes, the task will not
be difficult; and, with his help, I will gladly undertake it. There is a
marked distinction between a prize book and a school book. A prize book
ought to be a book which a boy receives with pleasure, and turns over
and over, not as a task, but spontaneously. I have not forgotten my own
school-boy feelings on this subject. My pleasure at obtaining a prize
was greatly enhanced by the knowledge that my little library would
receive a very agreeable addition. I never was better pleased than when
at fourteen I was master of Boswell's Life of Johnson, which I had long
been wishing to read. If my master had given me, instead of Boswell, a
Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, or a Geographical Class book, I should
have been much less gratified by my success."
The idea had been started of paying authors to write books in the
languages of the country. On this Macaulay remarks
"To hire four or five people to make a literature is a course which
never answered and never will answer, in any part of the world.
Languages grow. They cannot be built. We are now following the slow but
sure course on which alone we can depend for a supply of good books in
the vernacular languages of India. We are attempting to raise up a large
class of enlightened natives. I hope that, twenty years hence, there
will be hundreds, nay thousands, of natives familiar with the best
models of composition, and well acquainted with Western science. Among
them some persons will be found who will have the inclination and the
ability to exhibit European knowledge in the vernacular dialects. This
I believe to be the only way in which we can raise up a good vernacular
literature in this country."
These hopeful anticipations have been more than fulfilled. Twice twenty
years have brought into existence, not hundreds or thousands, but
hundreds of thousands, of natives who can appreciate European knowledge
when laid before them in the English language, and can reproduce it in
their own. Taking one year with another, upwards of a thousand works of
literature and science are published annually in Bengal alone, and
at least four times that number throughout the entire continent. Our
colleges have more than six thousand students on their books, and two
hundred thousand boys are receiving a liberal education in schools of
the higher order. For the improvement of the mass of the people, nearly
seven thousand young men are in training as Certificated Masters. The
amount allotted in the budget to the item of Public Instruction has
increased more than seventy-fold since 1835; and is largely supplemented
by the fees which parents of all classes willingly contribute when once
they have been taught the value of a commodity the demand for which is
created by the supply. During many years past the generosity of wealthy
natives has to a great extent been diverted from the idle extravagance
of pageants and festivals, to promote the intellectual advancement of
their fellow-countrymen. On several different occasions, at a single
stroke of the pen, our Indian universities have been endowed with twice,
three times, four times the amount of the slender sum which Macaulay
had at his command. But none the less was he the master-engineer, whose
skill and foresight determined the direction of the channels, along
which this stream of public and private munificence was to flow for the
regeneration of our Eastern Empire.