Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay Part 10

Lord Kerry seems to me to be going on well. He has been in very good condition, he says, this week; and hopes to be at the election, and at the subsequent dinner. I do not know when I have taken so much to so young a man. In general my intimacies have been with my seniors; but Lord Kerry is really quite a favourite of mine,--kind, lively, intelligent, modest, with the gentle manners which indicate a long intimacy with the best society, and yet without the least affectation.

We have oceans of beer, and mountains of potatoes, for dinner. Indeed, Lady Lansdowne drank beer most heartily on the only day which she pa.s.sed with us, and, when I told her laughing that she set me at ease on a point which had given me much trouble, she said that she would never suffer any dandy novelist to rob her of her beer or her cheese.

The question between law and politics is a momentous one. As far as I am myself concerned, I should not hesitate; but the interest of my family is also to be considered. We shall see, however, before long what my chance of success as a public man may prove to be. At present it would clearly be wrong in me to show any disposition to quit my profession.

I hope that you will be on your guard as to what you may say to Brougham about this business. He is so angry at it that he cannot keep his anger to himself. I know that he has blamed Lord Lansdowne in the robing-room of the Court of King's Bench. The seat ought, he says, to have been given to another man. If he means Denman, I can forgive, and even respect him, for the feeling which he entertains.

Believe me ever yours most affectionately

T. B. M.

CHAPTER IV. 1830-1832.

State of public affairs when Macaulay entered Parliament-- His maiden speech--The French Revolution of July 1830-- Macaulay's letters from Paris--The Palais Royal--Lafayette-- Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia--The new Parliament meets-- Fall of the Duke of Wellington--Scene with Croker--The Reform Bill--Political success--House of Commons life-- Macaulay's party spirit--Loudon Society--Mr. Thomas Flower Ellis--Visit to Cambridge--Rothley Temple--Margaret Macaulay's Journal--Lord Brougham--Hopes of Office--Macaulay as a politician--Letters to Hannah Macaulay, Mr. Napier, and Mr. Ellis.

THROUGHOUT the last two centuries of our history there never was a period when a man conscious of power, impatient of public wrongs, and still young enough to love a fight for its own sake, could have entered Parliament with a fairer prospect of leading a life worth living, and doing work that would requite the pains, than at the commencement of the year 1830.

In this volume, which only touches politics in order to show to what extent Macaulay was a politician, and for how long, controversies cannot appropriately be started or revived. This is not the place to enter into a discussion on the vexed question as to whether Mr. Pitt and his successors, in pursuing their system of repression, were justified by the necessities of the long French war. It is enough to a.s.sert, what few or none will deny, that, for the s.p.a.ce of more than a generation from 1790 onwards, our country had, with a short interval, been governed on declared reactionary principles. We, in whose days Whigs and Tories have often exchanged office, and still more often interchanged policies, find it difficult to imagine what must have been the condition of the kingdom, when one and the same party almost continuously held not only place, but power, throughout a period when, to an unexampled degree, "public life was exasperated by hatred, and the charities of private life soured by political aversion." [These expressions occur in Lord c.o.c.kburn's Memorials of his Time.] Fear, religion, ambition, and self-interest,--everything that could tempt and everything that could deter,--were enlisted on the side of the dominant opinions. To profess Liberal views was to be excluded from all posts of emolument, from all functions of dignity, and from all opportunities of public usefulness.

The Whig leaders, while enjoying that security for life and liberty which even in the worst days of our recent history has been the reward of eminence, were powerless in the Commons and isolated in the Lords. No motive but disinterested conviction kept a handful of veterans steadfast round a banner which was never raised except to be swept contemptuously down by the disciplined and overwhelming strength of the ministerial phalanx. Argument and oratory were alike unavailing under a const.i.tution which was indeed a despotism of privilege. The county representation of England was an anomaly, and the borough representation little better than a scandal. The const.i.tuencies of Scotland, with so much else that of right belonged to the public, had got into Dundas's pocket. In the year 1820 all the towns north of Tweed together contained fewer voters than are now on the rolls of the single burgh of Hawick, and all the counties together contained fewer voters than are now on the register of Roxburghs.h.i.+re. So small a band of electors was easily manipulated by a party leader who had the patronage of India at his command. The three Presidencies were flooded with the sons and nephews of men who were lucky enough to have a seat in a Town Council, or a superiority in a rural district; and fortunate it was for our empire that the responsibilities of that n.o.blest of all careers soon educated young Indian Civil Servants into something higher than mere adherents of a political party.

While the will of the nation was paralysed within the senate, effectual care was taken that its voice should not be heard without. The press was gagged in England, and throttled in Scotland. Every speech, or sermon, or pamphlet, the substance of which a Crown lawyer could torture into a semblance of sedition, sent its author to the jail, the hulks, or the pillory. In any place of resort where an informer could penetrate, men spoke their minds at imminent hazard of ruinous fines, and protracted imprisonment. It was vain to appeal to Parliament for redress against the tyranny of packed juries, and panic-driven magistrates. Sheridan endeavoured to retain for his countrymen the protection of Habeas Corpus; but he could only muster forty-one supporters. Exactly as many members followed Fox into the lobby when he opposed a bill, which, interpreted in the spirit that then actuated our tribunals, made attendance at an open meeting summoned for the consideration of Parliamentary Reform a service as dangerous as night-poaching, and far more dangerous than smuggling. Only ten more than that number ventured to protest against the introduction of a measure, still more inquisitorial in its provisions and ruthless in its penalties, which rendered every citizen who gave his attention to the removal of public grievances liable at any moment to find himself in the position of a criminal;--that very measure in behalf of which Bishop Horsley had stated in the House of Peers that he did not know what the ma.s.s of the people of any country had to do with the laws, except to obey them.

Amidst a population which had once known freedom, and was still fit to be entrusted with it, such a state of matters could not last for ever.

Justly proud of the immense success that they had bought by their resolution, their energy, and their perseverance, the Ministers regarded the fall of Napoleon as a party triumph which could only serve to confirm their power. But the last cannon-shot that was fired on the 18th of June, was in truth the death-knell of the golden age of Toryism.

When the pa.s.sion and ardour of the war gave place to the discontent engendered by a protracted period of commercial distress, the opponents of progress began to perceive that they had to reckon, not with a small and disheartened faction, but with a clear majority of the nation led by the most enlightened, and the most eminent, of its sons. Agitators and incendiaries retired into the background, as will always be the case when the country is in earnest; and statesmen who had much to lose, but were not afraid to risk it, stepped quietly and firmly to the front.

The men, and the sons of the men, who had so long endured exclusion from office, embittered by unpopularity, at length reaped their reward. Earl Grey, who forty years before had been hooted through the streets of North s.h.i.+elds with cries of "No Popery," lived to bear the most respected name in England; and Brougham, whose opinions differed little from those for expressing which Dr. Priestley in 1791 had his house burned about his ears by the Birmingham mob, was now the popular idol beyond all comparison or compet.i.tion.

In the face of such unanimity of purpose, guided by so much worth and talent, the Ministers lost their nerve, and, like all rulers who do not possess the confidence of the governed, began first to make mistakes, and then to quarrel among themselves. Throughout the years of Macaulay's early manhood the ice was breaking fast. He was still quite young when the concession of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation gave a moral shock to the Tory party from which it never recovered until the old order of things had finally pa.s.sed away. [Macaulay was fond of repeating an answer made to him by Lord Clarendon in the year 1829. The young men were talking over the situation, and Macaulay expressed curiosity as to the terms in which the Duke of Wellington would recommend the Catholic Relief Bill to the Peers. "Oh," said the other, "it will be easy enough. He'll say 'My lords! Attention! Right about face! March!'"] It was his fortune to enter into other men's labours after the burden and heat of the day had already been borne, and to be summoned into the field just as the season was at hand for gathering in a ripe and long-expected harvest of beneficent legislation.

On the 5th of April, 1830, he addressed the House of Commons on the second reading of Mr. Robert Grant's bill for the Removal of Jewish Disabilities. Sir James Mackintosh rose with him, but Macaulay got the advantage of the preference that has always been conceded to one who speaks for the first time after gaining his seat during the continuance of a Parliament;--a privilege which, by a stretch of generosity, is now extended to new members who have been returned at a general election.

Sir James subsequently took part in the debate; not, as he carefully a.s.sured his audience, "to supply any defects in the speech of his honourable friend, for there were none that he could find, but princ.i.p.ally to absolve his own conscience." Indeed, Macaulay, addressing himself to his task with an absence of pretension such as never fails to conciliate the goodwill of the House towards a maiden speech, put clearly and concisely enough the arguments in favour of the bill;--arguments which, obvious, and almost common-place, as they appear under his straightforward treatment, had yet to be repeated during a s.p.a.ce of six and thirty years before they commended themselves to the judgment of our Upper Chamber.

"The power of which you deprive the Jew consists in maces, and gold chains, and skins of parchment with pieces of wax dangling from their edges. The power which you leave the Jew is the power of princ.i.p.al over clerk, of master over servant, of landlord over tenant. As things now stand, a Jew may be the richest man in England. He may possess the means of raising this party and depressing that; of making East Indian directors; of making members of Parliament. The influence of a Jew may be of the first consequence in a war which shakes Europe to the centre.

His power may come into play in a.s.sisting or thwarting the greatest plans of the greatest princes; and yet, with all this confessed, acknowledged, undenied, you would have him deprived of power! Does not wealth confer power? How are we to permit all the consequences of that wealth but one? I cannot conceive the nature of an argument that is to bear out such a position. If we were to be called on to revert to the day when the warehouses of Jews were torn down and pillaged, the theory would be comprehensible. But we have to do with a persecution so delicate that there is no abstract rule for its guidance. You tell us that the Jews have no legal right to power, and I am bound to admit it; but in the same way, three hundred years ago they had no legal right to be in England, and six hundred years ago they had no legal right to the teeth in their heads. But, if it is the moral right we are to look at, I hold that on every principle of moral obligation the Jew has a right to political power."

He was on his legs once again, and once only, during his first Session; doing more for future success in Parliament by his silence than he could have effected by half a dozen brilliant perorations. A crisis was rapidly approaching when a man gifted with eloquence, who by previous self-restraint had convinced the House that he did not speak for speaking's sake, might rise almost in a day to the very summit of influence and reputation. The country was under the personal rule of the Duke of Wellington, who had gradually squeezed out of his Cabinet every vestige of Liberalism, and even of independence, and who at last stood so completely alone that he was generally supposed to be in more intimate communication with Prince Polignac than with any of his own colleagues. The Duke had his own way in the Lords; and on the benches of the Commons the Opposition members were unable to carry, or even visibly to improve their prospect of carrying, the measures on which their hearts were set. The Reformers were not doing better in the division lobby than in 1821; and their question showed no signs of having advanced since the day when it had been thrown over by Pitt on the eve of the French Revolution.

But the outward aspect of the situation was very far from answering to the reality. While the leaders of the popular party had been spending themselves in efforts that seemed each more abortive than the last,--dividing only to be enormously outvoted, and vindicating with calmness and moderation the first principles of const.i.tutional government only to be stigmatised as the apostles of anarchy,--a mighty change was surely but imperceptibly effecting itself in the collective mind of their fellow-countrymen.

"For, while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main."

Events were at hand, which unmistakably showed how different was the England of 1830 from the England of 1790. The King died; Parliament was dissolved on the 24th of July; and in the first excitement and bustle of the elections, while the candidates were still on the roads and the writs in the mailbags, came the news that Paris was in arms. The troops fought as well as Frenchmen ever can be got to fight against the tricolour; but by the evening of the 29th it was all over with the Bourbons. The Minister, whose friends.h.i.+p had reflected such unpopularity on our own Premier, succ.u.mbed to the detestation of the victorious people, and his sacrifice did not save the dynasty. What was pa.s.sing among our neighbours for once created sympathy, and not repulsion, on this side the Channel. One French Revolution had condemned English Liberalism to forty years of subjection, and another was to be the signal which launched it on as long a career of supremacy. Most men said, and all felt, that Wellington must follow Polignac; and the public temper was such as made it well for the stability of our throne that it was filled by a monarch who had attracted to himself the hopes and affection of the nation, and who shared its preferences and antipathies with regard to the leading statesmen of the day.

One result of political disturbance in any quarter of the globe is to fill the scene of action with young members of Parliament, who follow Revolutions about Europe as a.s.siduously as Jew brokers attend upon the movements of an invading army. Macaulay, whose re-election for Calne had been a thing of course, posted off to Paris at the end of August, journeying by Dieppe and Rouen, and eagerly enjoying a first taste of continental travel. His letters during the tour were such as, previously to the age of railroads, brothers who had not been abroad before used to write for the edification of sisters who expected never to go abroad at all. He describes in minute detail manners and inst.i.tutions that to us are no longer novelties, and monuments which an educated Englishman of our time knows as well as Westminster Abbey, and a great deal better than the Tower. Everything that he saw, heard, ate, drank, paid, and suffered, was noted down in his exuberant diction to be read aloud and commented on over the breakfast table in Great Ormond Street.

"At Rouen," he says, "I was struck by the union of venerable antiquity with extreme liveliness and gaiety. We have nothing of the sort in England. Till the time of James the First, I imagine, our houses were almost all of wood, and have in consequence disappeared. In York there are some very old streets; but they are abandoned to the lowest people, and the gay shops are in the newly-built quarter of the town. In London, what with the fire of 1666, and what with the natural progress of demolition and rebuilding, I doubt whether there are fifty houses that date from the Reformation. But in Rouen you have street after street of lofty stern-looking ma.s.ses of stone, with Gothic carvings. The buildings are so high, and the ways so narrow, that the sun can scarcely reach the pavements. Yet in these streets, monastic in their aspect, you have all the glitter of Regent Street or the Burlington Arcade. Rugged and dark, above, below they are a blaze of ribands, gowns, watches, trinkets, artificial flowers; grapes, melons, and peaches such as Covent Garden does not furnish, filling the windows of the fruiterers; showy women swimming smoothly over the uneasy stones, and stared at by national guards swaggering by in full uniform. It is the Soho Bazaar transplanted into the gloomy cloisters of Oxford."

He writes to a friend just before he started on his tour: "There is much that I am impatient to see, but two things specially,--the Palais Royal, and the man who called me the Aristarchus of Edinburgh." Who this person might be, and whether Macaulay succeeded in meeting him, are questions which his letters leave unsolved; but he must have been a constant visitor at the Palais Royal if the hours that he spent in it bore any relation to the number of pages which it occupies in his correspondence.

The place was indeed well worth a careful study; for in 1830 it was not the orderly and decent bazaar of the Second Empire, but was still that compound of Parna.s.sus and Bohemia which is painted in vivid colours in the "Grand Homme de Province" of Balzac,--still the paradise of such ineffable rascals as Diderot has drawn with terrible fidelity in his "Neveu de Rameau."

"If I were to select the spot in all the earth in which the good and evil of civilisation are most strikingly exhibited, in which the arts of life are carried to the highest perfection, and in which all pleasures, high and low, intellectual and sensual, are collected in the smallest s.p.a.ce, I should certainly choose the Palais Royal. It is the Covent Garden Piazza, the Paternoster Row, the Vauxhall, the Albion Tavern, the Burlington Arcade, the Crockford's the Finish, the Athenaeum of Paris all in one. Even now, when the first dazzling effect has pa.s.sed off, I never traverse it without feeling bewildered by its magnificent variety.

As a great capital is a country in miniature, so the Palais Royal is a capital in miniature,--an abstract and epitome of a vast community, exhibiting at a glance the politeness which adorns its higher ranks, the coa.r.s.eness of its populace, and the vices and the misery which lie underneath its brilliant exterior. Everything is there, and everybody.

Statesmen, wits, philosophers, beauties, dandies, blacklegs, adventurers, artists, idlers, the king and his court, beggars with matches crying for charity, wretched creatures dying of disease and want in garrets. There is no condition of life which is not to be found in this gorgeous and fantastic Fairyland."

Macaulay had excellent opportunities for seeing behind the scenes during the closing acts of the great drama that was being played out through those summer months. The Duc de Broglie, then Prime Minister, treated him with marked attention, both as an Englishman of distinction, and as his father's son. He was much in the Chamber of Deputies, and witnessed that strange and pathetic historical revival when, after an interval of forty such years as mankind had never known before, the aged La Fayette again stood forth, in the character of a disinterested dictator, between the hostile cla.s.ses of his fellow-countrymen.

"De La Fayette is so overwhelmed with work that I scarcely knew how to deliver even Brougham's letter, which was a letter of business, and should have thought it absurd to send him Mackintosh's, which was a mere letter of introduction, I fell in with an English acquaintance who told me that he had an appointment with La Fayette, and who undertook to deliver them both. I accepted his offer, for, if I had left them with the porter, ten to one they would never have been opened. I hear that hundreds of letters are lying in the lodge of the hotel. Every Wednesday morning, from nine to eleven, La Fayette gives audience to anybody who wishes to speak with him; but about ten thousand people attend on these occasions, and fill, not only the house, but all the courtyard and half the street. La Fayette is Commander in Chief of the National Guard of France. The number of these troops in Paris alone is upwards of forty thousand. The Government find a musket and bayonet; but the uniform, which costs about ten napoleons, the soldiers provide themselves. All the shopkeepers are enrolled, and I cannot sufficiently admire their patriotism. My landlord, Meurice, a man who, I suppose, has realised a million francs or more, is up one night in four with his firelock doing the duty of a common watchman.

"There is, however, something to be said as an explanation of the zeal with which the bourgeoisie give their time and money to the public. The army received so painful a humiliation in the battles of July that it is by no means inclined to serve the new system faithfully. The rabble behaved n.o.bly during the conflict, and have since shown rare humanity and moderation. Yet those who remember the former Revolution feel an extreme dread of the ascendency of mere mult.i.tude and there have been signs, trifling in themselves, but such as may naturally alarm people of property. Workmen have struck. Machinery has been attacked. Inflammatory handbills have appeared upon the walls. At present all is quiet; but the thing may happen, particularly if Polignac and Peyronnet should not be put to death. The Peers wish to save them. The lower orders, who have had five or six thousand of their friends and kinsmen butchered by the frantic wickedness of these men, will hardly submit. 'Eh! eh!' said a fierce old soldier of Napoleon to me the other day. 'L'on dit qu'ils seront deportes: mais ne m'en parle pas. Non! non! Coupez-leur le cou.

Sacre! Ca ne pa.s.sera pas comme ca.'"

"This long political digression will explain to you why Monsieur De La Fayette is so busy. He has more to do than all the Ministers together.

However, my letters were presented, and he said to my friend that he had a soiree every Tuesday, and should be most happy to see me there.

I drove to his house yesterday night. Of the interest which the common Parisians take in politics you may judge by this. I told my driver to wait for me, and asked his number. 'Ah! monsieur, c'est un beau numero.

C'est un brave numero. C'est 221.' You may remember that the number of deputies who voted the intrepid address to Charles the Tenth, which irritated him into his absurd coup d'etat, was 221. I walked into the hotel through a crowd of uniforms, and found the reception-rooms as full as they could hold. I was not able to make my way to La Fayette; but I was glad to see him. He looks like the brave, honest, simple, good-natured man that he is."

Besides what is quoted above, there is very little of general interest in these journal letters; and their publication would serve no purpose except that of informing the present leader of the Monarchists what his father had for breakfast and dinner during a week of 1830, and of enabling him to trace changes in the disposition of the furniture of the De Broglie hotel. "I believe," writes Macaulay, "that I have given the inventory of every article in the Duke's salon. You will think that I have some intention of turning upholsterer."

His thoughts and observations on weightier matters he kept for an article on the State of Parties in France which he intended to provide for the October number of the Edinburgh Review. While he was still at Paris, this arrangement was rescinded by Mr. Napier in compliance with the wish, or the whim, of Brougham; and Macaulay's surprise and annoyance vented itself in a burst of indignant rhetoric strong enough to have upset a Government. [See on page 142 the letter to Mr. Napier of September 16, 1831.] His wrath,--or that part of it, at least, which was directed against the editor,--did not survive an interchange of letters; and he at once set to work upon turning his material into the shape of a volume for the series of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, under the t.i.tle of "The History of France, from the Restoration of the Bourbons to the Accession of Louis Philippe." Ten years ago proofs of the first eighty-eight pages were found in Messrs. Spottiswoode's printing office, with a note on the margin to the effect that most of the type was broken up before the sheets had been pulled. The task, as far as it went, was faithfully performed; but the author soon arrived at the conclusion that he might find a more profitable investment for his labour. With his head full of Reform, Macaulay was loth to spend in epitomising history the time and energy that would be better employed in helping to make it.

When the new Parliament met on the 26th of October it was already evident that the Government was doomed. Where the elections were open, Reform had carried the day. Brougham was returned for Yorks.h.i.+re, a const.i.tuency of tried independence, which before 1832 seldom failed to secure the triumph of a cause into whose scale it had thrown its enormous weight. The counties had declared for the Whigs by a majority of eight to five, and the great cities by a majority of eight to one.

Of the close boroughs in Tory hands many were held by men who had not forgotten Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, and who did not mean to pardon their leaders until they had ceased to be Ministers.

In the debate on the Address the Duke of Wellington uttered his famous declaration that the Legislature possessed, and deserved to possess, the full and entire confidence of the country; that its existing const.i.tution was not only practically efficient but theoretically admirable; and that, if he himself had to frame a system of representation, he should do his best to imitate so excellent a model, though he admitted that the nature of man was incapable at a single effort of attaining to such mature perfection. His bewildered colleagues could only a.s.sert in excuse that their chief was deaf, and wish that everybody else had been deaf too. The second ministerial feat was of a piece with the first. Their Majesties had accepted an invitation to dine at Guildhall on the 9th of November. The Lord Mayor elect informed the Home Office that there was danger of riot, and the Premier, (who could not be got to see that London was not Paris because his own political creed happened to be much the same as Prince Polignac's,) advised the King to postpone his visit to the City, and actually talked of putting Lombard Street and Cheapside in military occupation. Such a step taken at such a time by such a man had its inevitable result. Consols, which the Duke's speech on the Address had brought from 84 to 80, fell to 77 in an hour and a half; jewellers and silversmiths sent their goods to the banks; merchants armed their clerks and barricaded their warehouses; and, when the panic subsided, fear only gave place to the shame and annoyance which a loyal people, whose loyalty was at that moment more active than ever, experienced from the reflection that all Europe was discussing the reasons why our King could not venture to dine in public with the Chief Magistrate of his own capital. A strong Minister, who sends the funds down seven per cent. in as many days, is an anomaly that no nation will consent to tolerate; the members of the Cabinet looked forward with consternation to a scheme of Reform which, with the approbation of his party, Brougham had undertaken to introduce on the 15th of November; and when, within twenty-four hours of the dreaded debate, they were defeated on a motion for a committee on the Civil List, their relief at having obtained an excuse for retiring at least equalled that which the country felt at getting rid of them.

Earl Grey came in, saying, (and meaning what he said,) that the principles on which he stood were "amelioration of abuses, promotion of economy, and the endeavour to preserve peace consistently with the honour of the country." Brougham, who was very sore at having been forced to postpone his notice on Reform on account of the ministerial crisis, had gratuitously informed the House of Commons on two successive days that he had no intention of taking office. A week later on he accepted the Chancellors.h.i.+p with an inconsistency which his friends readily forgave, for they knew that, when he resolved to join the Cabinet, he was thinking more of his party than of himself; a consideration that naturally enough only sharpened the relish with which his adversaries pounced upon this first of his innumerable sc.r.a.pes. When the new writ for Yorks.h.i.+re was moved, Croker commented sharply on the position in which the Chancellor was placed, and remarked that he had often heard Brougham declare that "the characters of public men formed part of the wealth of England;"--a reminiscence which was delivered with as much gravity and unction as if it had been Mackintosh discoursing on Romilly. Unfortunately for himself, Croker ruined his case by referring to a private conversation, an error which the House of Commons always takes at least an evening to forgive; and Macaulay had his audience with him as he vindicated the absent orator with a generous warmth, which at length carried him so far that he was interrupted by a call to order from the Chair. "The n.o.ble Lord had but a few days for deliberation, and that at a time when great agitation prevailed, and when the country required a strong and efficient Ministry to conduct the government of the State. At such a period a few days are as momentous as months would be at another period. It is not by the clock that we should measure the importance of the changes that might take place during such an interval.

I owe no allegiance to the n.o.ble Lord who has been transferred to another place; but as a member of this House I cannot banish from my memory the extraordinary eloquence of that n.o.ble person within these walls,--an eloquence which has left nothing equal to it behind; and when I behold the departure of the great man from amongst us, and when I see the place in which he sat, and from which he has so often astonished us by the mighty powers of his mind, occupied this evening by the honourable member who has commenced this debate, I cannot express the feelings and emotions to which such circ.u.mstances give rise."

Parliament adjourned over Christmas; and on the 1st of March 1831 Lord John Russell introduced the Reform Bill amidst breathless silence, which was at length broken by peals of contemptuous laughter from the Opposition benches, as he read the list of the hundred and ten boroughs which were condemned to partial or entire disfranchis.e.m.e.nt. Sir Robert Inglis led the attack upon a measure that he characterised as Revolution in the guise of a statute. Next morning as Sir Robert was walking into town over Westminster Bridge, he told his companion that up to the previous night he had been very anxious, but that his fears were now at an end, inasmuch as the shock caused by the extravagance of the ministerial proposals would infallibly bring the country to its senses.

On the evening of that day Macaulay made the first of his Reform speeches. When he sat down the Speaker sent for him, and told him that in all his prolonged experience he had never seen the House in such a state of excitement. Even at this distance of time it is impossible to read aloud the last thirty sentences without an emotion which suggests to the mind what must have been their effect when declaimed by one who felt every word that he spoke, in the midst of an a.s.sembly agitated by hopes and apprehensions such as living men have never known, or have long forgotten. ["The question of Parliamentary Reform is still behind.

But signs, of which it is impossible to misconceive the import, do most clearly indicate that, unless that question also be speedily settled, property, and order, and all the inst.i.tutions of this great monarchy, will be exposed to fearful peril. Is it possible that gentlemen long versed in high political affairs cannot read these signs? Is it possible that they can really believe that the Representative system of England, such as it now is, will last to the year 1860? If not, for what would they have us wait? Would they have us wait, merely that we may show to all the world how little we have profited by our own recent experience?

Would they have us wait, that we may once again hit the exact point where we can neither refuse with authority, nor concede with grace?

Would they have us wait, that the numbers of the discontented party may become larger, its demands higher, its feelings more acrimonious, its organisation more complete? Would they have us wait till the whole tragicomedy of 1827 has been acted over again? till they have been brought into office by a cry of 'No Reform,' to be reformers, as they were once before brought into office by a cry of 'No Popery', to be emanc.i.p.ators? Have they obliterated from their minds--gladly, perhaps, would some among them obliterate from their minds--the transactions of that year? And have they forgotten all the transactions of the succeeding year? Have they forgotten how the spirit of liberty in Ireland, debarred from its natural outlet, found a vent by forbidden pa.s.sages? Have they forgotten how we were forced to indulge the Catholics in all the license of rebels, merely because we chose to withhold from them the liberties of subjects? Do they wait for a.s.sociations more formidable than that of the Corn Exchange, for contributions larger than the Rent, for agitators more violent than those who, three years ago, divided with the King and the Parliament the sovereignty of Ireland? Do they wait for that last and most dreadful paroxysm of popular rage, for that last and most cruel test of military fidelity? Let them wait, if their past experience shall induce them to think that any high honour or any exquisite pleasure is to be obtained by a policy like this. Let them wait, if this strange and fearful infatuation be indeed upon them, that they should not see with their eyes, or hear with their ears, or understand with their heart. But let us know our interest and our duty better. Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve. Now, therefore, while everything at home and abroad forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle against the spirit of the age, now, while the crash of the proudest throne of the Continent is still resounding in our ears, now, while the roof of a British palace affords an ignominious shelter to the exiled heir of forty kings, now, while we see on every side ancient inst.i.tutions subverted, and great societies dissolved, now, while the heart of England is still sound, now, while old feelings and old a.s.sociations retain a power and a charm which may too soon pa.s.s away, now, in this your accepted time, now, in this your day of salvation, take counsel, not of prejudice, not of party spirit, not of the ignominious pride of a fatal consistency, but of history, of reason, of the ages which are past, of the signs of this most portentous time. p.r.o.nounce in a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great debate has been antic.i.p.ated, and of the long remembrance which it will leave behind.

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

Save the mult.i.tude, endangered by its own ungovernable pa.s.sions.

Save the aristocracy, endangered by its own unpopular power. Save the greatest, the fairest, and most highly civilised community that ever existed, from calamities which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of so many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible.

The time is short. If this bill should be rejected, I pray to G.o.d that none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their votes with unavailing remorse, amidst the wreck of laws, the confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the dissolution of social order."] Sir Thomas Denman, who rose later on in the discussion, said, with universal acceptance, that the orator's words remained tingling in the ears of all who heard them, and would last in their memories as long as they had memories to employ. That sense of proprietors.h.i.+p in an effort of genius, which the House of Commons is ever ready to entertain, effaced for a while all distinctions of party. "Portions of the speech,"

said Sir Robert Peel, "were as beautiful as anything I have ever heard or read. It reminded one of the old times." The names of Fox, Burke, and Canning were during that evening in everybody's mouth; and Macaulay overheard with delight a knot of old members ill.u.s.trating their criticisms by recollections of Lord Plunket. He had reason to be pleased; for he had been thought worthy of the compliment which the judgment of Parliament reserves for a supreme occasion. In 1866, on the second reading of the Franchise Bill, when the crowning oration of that memorable debate had come to its close amidst a tempest of applause, one or two veterans of the lobby, forgetting Macaulay on Reform,--forgetting, it may be, Mr. Gladstone himself on the Conservative Budget of 1852,--p.r.o.nounced, amidst the willing a.s.sent of a younger generation, that there had been nothing like it since Plunket.

The unequivocal success of the first speech into which he had thrown his full power decided for some time to come the tenor of Macaulay's career.

During the next three years he devoted himself to Parliament, rivalling Stanley in debate, and Hume in the regularity of his attendance. He entered with zest into the animated and manysided life of the House of Commons, of which so few traces can ordinarily be detected in what goes by the name of political literature. The biographers of a distinguished statesman too often seem to have forgotten that the subject of their labours pa.s.sed the best part of his waking hours, during the half of every year, in a society of a special and deeply marked character, the leading traits of which are at least as well worth recording as the fas.h.i.+onable or diplomatic gossip that fills so many volumes of memoirs and correspondence. Macaulay's letters sufficiently indicate how thoroughly he enjoyed the ease, the freedom, the hearty good-fellows.h.i.+p, that reign within the precincts of our national senate; and how entirely he recognised that spirit of n.o.ble equality, so prevalent among its members, which takes little or no account of wealth, or t.i.tle, or indeed of reputation won in other fields, but which ranks a man according as the value of his words, and the weight of his influence, bear the test of a standard which is essentially its own.

In February 1831 he writes to Whewell: "I am impatient for Praed's debut. The House of Commons is a place in which I would not promise success to any man. I have great doubts even about Jeffrey. It is the most peculiar audience in the world. I should say that a man's being a good writer, a good orator at the bar, a good mob-orator, or a good orator in debating clubs, was rather a reason for expecting him to fail than for expecting him to succeed in the House of Commons. A place where Walpole succeeded and Addison failed; where Dundas succeeded and Burke failed; where Peel now succeeds and where Mackintosh fails; where Erskine and Scarlett were dinner-bells; where Lawrence and Jekyll, the two wittiest men, or nearly so, of their time, were thought bores, is surely a very strange place. And yet I feel the whole character of the place growing upon me. I begin to like what others about me like, and to disapprove what they disapprove. Canning used to say that the House, as a body, had better taste than the man of best taste in it, and I am very much inclined to think that Canning was right."

The readers of Macaulay's letters will, from time to time, find reason to wish that the young Whig of 1830 had more frequently practised that studied respect for political opponents, which now does so much to correct the intolerance of party among men who can be adversaries without ceasing to regard each other as colleagues. But this honourable sentiment was the growth of later days; and, at an epoch when the system of the past and the system of the future were night after night in deadly wrestle on the floor of St. Stephen's, the combatants were apt to keep their kindliness, and even their courtesies, for those with whom they stood shoulder to shoulder in the fray. Politicians, Conservative and Liberal alike, who were themselves young during the Sessions of 1866 and 1867, and who can recall the sensations evoked by a contest of which the issues were far less grave and the pa.s.sions less strong than of yore, will make allowances for one who, with the imagination of a poet and the temperament of an orator, at thirty years old was sent straight into the thickest of the tumult which then raged round the standard of Reform, and will excuse him for having borne himself in that battle of giants as a determined and a fiery partisan.

If to live intensely be to live happily, Macaulay had an enviable lot during those stirring years; and, if the old songwriters had reason on their side when they celebrated the charms of a light purse, he certainly possessed that element of felicity. Among the earliest economical reforms undertaken by the new Government was a searching revision of our Bankruptcy jurisdiction, in the course of which his Commissioners.h.i.+p was swept away, without leaving him a penny of compensation. "I voted for the Bankruptcy Court Bill," he said in answer to an inquisitive const.i.tuent. "There were points in that Bill of which I did not approve, and I only refrained from stating those points because an office of my own was at stake." When this source fell dry he was for a while a poor man; for a member of Parliament, who has others to think of besides himself, is anything but rich on sixty or seventy pounds a quarter as the produce of his pen, and a college income which has only a few more months to run. At a time when his Parliamentary fame stood at its highest he was reduced to sell the gold medals which he had gained at Cambridge; but he was never for a moment in debt; nor did he publish a line prompted by any lower motive than the inspiration of his political faith, or the instinct of his literary genius. He had none but pleasant recollections connected with the period when his fortunes were at their lowest. From the secure prosperity of after life he delighted in recalling the time when, after cheering on the fierce debate for twelve or fifteen hours together, he would walk home by daylight to his chambers, and make his supper on a cheese which was a present from one of his Wilts.h.i.+re const.i.tuents, and a gla.s.s of the audit ale which reminded him that he was still a fellow of Trinity.