Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay Part 17

We talked about timidity in speaking. Lord Althorp said that he had only just got over his apprehensions. "I was as much afraid," he said, "last year as when first I came into Parliament. But now I am forced to speak so often that I am quite hardened. Last Thursday I was up forty times."

I was not much surprised at this in Lord Althorp, as he is certainly one of the most modest men in existence. But I was surprised to hear Stanley say that he never rose without great uneasiness. "My throat and lips,"

he said, "when I am going to speak, are as dry as those of a man who is going to be hanged." Nothing can be more composed and cool than Stanley's manner. His fault is on that side. A little hesitation at the beginning of a speech is graceful; and many eminent speakers have practised it, merely in order to give the appearance of unpremeditated reply to prepared speeches; but Stanley speaks like a man who never knew what fear, or even modesty, was. Tierney, it is remarkable, who was the most ready and fluent debater almost ever known, made a confession similar to Stanley's. He never spoke, he said, without feeling his knees knock together when he rose.

My opinion of Lord Althorp is extremely high. In fact, his character is the only stay of the Ministry. I doubt whether any person has ever lived in England who, with no eloquence, no brilliant talents, no profound information, with nothing in short but plain good sense and an excellent heart, possessed so much influence both in and out of Parliament. His temper is an absolute miracle. He has been worse used than any Minister ever was in debate; and he has never said one thing inconsistent, I do not say with gentlemanlike courtesy, but with real benevolence. Lord North, perhaps, was his equal in suavity and good-nature; but Lord North was not a man of strict principles. His administration was not only an administration hostile to liberty, but it was supported by vile and corrupt means,--by direct bribery, I fear, in many cases. Lord Althorp has the temper of Lord North with the principles of Romilly. If he had the oratorical powers of either of those men, he might do anything. But his understanding, though just, is slow, and his elocution painfully defective. It is, however, only justice to him to say that he has done more service to the Reform Bill even as a debater than all the other Ministers together, Stanley excepted.

We are going,--by we I mean the Members of Parliament who are for reform,--as soon as the Bill is through the Commons, to give a grand dinner to Lord Althorp and Lord John Russell, as a mark of our respect.

Some people wished to have the other Cabinet Ministers included; but Grant and Palmerston are not in sufficiently high esteem among the Whigs to be honoured with such a compliment.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: September 9, 1835.

My dear Sister,--I scarcely know where to begin, or where to end, my story of the magnificence of yesterday. No pageant can be conceived more splendid. The newspapers will happily save me the trouble of relating minute particulars. I will therefore give you an account of my own proceedings, and mention what struck me most. I rose at six. The cannon awaked me; and, as soon as I got up, I heard the bells pealing on every side from all the steeples in London. I put on my court-dress, and looked a perfect Lovelace in it. At seven the gla.s.s coach, which I had ordered for myself and some of my friends, came to the door. I called in Hill Street for William Marshall, M.P. for Beverley, and in Cork Street for Strutt the Member for Derby, and Hawkins the Member for Tavistock.

Our party being complete, we drove through crowds of people, and ranks of horseguards in cuira.s.ses and helmets, to Westminster Hall, which we reached as the clock struck eight.

The House of Commons was crowded, and the whole a.s.sembly was in uniform.

After prayers we went out in order by lot, the Speaker going last. My county, Wiltshire, was among the first drawn; so I got an excellent place in the Abbey, next to Lord Mahon, who is a very great favourite of mine, and a very amusing companion, though a bitter Tory.

Our gallery was immediately over the great altar. The whole vast avenue of lofty pillars was directly in front of us. At eleven the guns fired, the organ struck up, and the procession entered. I never saw so magnificent a scene. All down that immense vista of gloomy arches there was one blaze of scarlet and gold. First came heralds in coats stiff with embroidered lions, unicorns, and harps; then n.o.bles bearing the regalia, with pages in rich dresses carrying their coronets on cushions; then the Dean and Prebendaries of Westminster in copes of cloth of gold; then a crowd of beautiful girls and women, or at least of girls and women who at a distance looked altogether beautiful, attending on the Queen. Her train of purple velvet and ermine was borne by six of these fair creatures. All the great officers of state in full robes, the Duke of Wellington with his Marshal's staff, the Duke of Devonshire with his white rod, Lord Grey with the Sword of State, and the Chancellor with his seals, came in procession. Then all the Royal Dukes with their trains borne behind them, and last the King leaning on two Bishops. I do not, I dare say, give you the precise order. In fact, it was impossible to discern any order. The whole abbey was one blaze of gorgeous dresses, mingled with lovely faces.

The Queen behaved admirably, with wonderful grace and dignity. The King very awkwardly. The Duke of Devonshire looked as if he came to be crowned instead of his master. I never saw so princely a manner and air.

The Chancellor looked like Mephistopheles behind Margaret in the church.

The ceremony was much too long, and some parts of it were carelessly performed. The Archbishop mumbled. The Bishop of London preached, well enough indeed, but not so effectively as the occasion required; and, above all, the bearing of the King made the foolish parts of the ritual appear monstrously ridiculous, and deprived many of the better parts of their proper effect. Persons who were at a distance perhaps did not feel this; but I was near enough to see every turn of his finger, and every glance of his eye. The moment of the crowning was extremely fine. When the Archbishop placed the crown on the head of the King, the trumpets sounded, and the whole audience cried out "G.o.d save the King." All the Peers and Peeresses put on their coronets, and the blaze of splendour through the Abbey seemed to be doubled. The King was then conducted to the raised throne, where the Peers successively did him homage, each of them kissing his cheek, and touching the crown. Some of them were cheered, which I thought indecorous in such a place, and on such an occasion. The Tories cheered the Duke of Wellington; and our people, in revenge, cheered Lord Grey and Brougham.

You will think this a very dull letter for so great a subject; but I have only had time to scrawl these lines in order to catch the post.

I have not a minute to read them over. I lost yesterday, and have been forced to work to-day. Half my article on Boswell went to Edinburgh the day before yesterday. I have, though I say it who should not say it, beaten Croker black and blue. Impudent as he is, I think he must be ashamed of the pickle in which I leave him. [Mr. Carlyle reviewed Croker's book in "Fraser's Magazine" a few months after the appearance of Macaulay's article in the "Edinburgh." The two Critics seem to have arrived at much the same conclusion as to the merits of the work.

"In fine," writes Mr. Carlyle, "what ideas Mr. Croker entertains of a literary _whole_, and the thing called _Book_, and how the very Printer's Devils did not rise in mutiny against such a conglomeration as this, and refuse to print it, may remain a problem.... It is our painful duty to declare, aloud, if that be necessary, that his gift, as weighed against the hard money which the booksellers demand for giving it you, is (in our judgment) very much the lighter. No portion, accordingly, of our small floating capital has been embarked in the business, or ever shall be. Indeed, were we in the market for such a thing, there is simply no edition of Boswell to which this last would seem preferable,"]

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: September 13, 1831.

My dear Sister,--I am in high spirits at the thought of soon seeing you all in London, and being again one of a family, and of a family which I love so much. It is well that one has something to love in private life; for the aspect of public affairs is very menacing;--fearful, I think, beyond what people in general imagine. Three weeks, however, will probably settle the whole, and bring to an issue the question, Reform or Revolution. One or the other I am certain that we must and shall have.

I a.s.sure you that the violence of the people, the bigotry of the Lords, and the stupidity and weakness of the Ministers, alarm me so much that even my rest is disturbed by vexation and uneasy forebodings; not for myself; for I may gain, and cannot lose; but for this n.o.ble country, which seems likely to be ruined without the miserable consolation of being ruined by great men. All seems fair as yet, and will seem fair for a fortnight longer. But I know the danger from information more accurate and certain than, I believe, anybody not in power possesses; and I perceive, what our men in power do not perceive, how terrible the danger is.

I called on Lord Lansdowne on Sunday. He told me distinctly that he expected the Bill to be lost in the Lords, and that, if it were lost, the Ministers must go out. I told him, with as much strength of expression as was suited to the nature of our connection, and to his age and rank, that, if the Ministers receded before the Lords, and hesitated to make Peers, they and the Whig party were lost; that nothing remained but an insolent oligarchy on the one side, and an infuriated people on the other; and that Lord Grey and his colleagues would become as odious and more contemptible than Peel and the Duke of Wellington. Why did they not think of all this earlier? Why put their hand to the plough, and look back? Why begin to build without counting the cost of finishing?

Why raise the public appet.i.te, and then baulk it? I told him that the House of Commons would address the King against a Tory Ministry. I feel a.s.sured that it would do so. I feel a.s.sured that, if those who are bidden will not come, the highways and hedges will be ransacked to get together a reforming Cabinet. To one thing my mind is made up. If n.o.body else will move an address to the Crown against a Tory Ministry, I will.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: October 17, 1831.

My dear Ellis,--I should have written to you before, but that I mislaid your letter and forgot your direction. When shall you be in London? Of course you do not mean to sacrifice your professional business to the work of numbering the gates, and telling the towers, of boroughs in Wales. [Mr. Ellis was one of the Commissioners appointed to arrange the boundaries of Parliamentary boroughs in connection with the Reform Bill.] You will come back, I suppose, with your head full of ten pound householders instead of eroes and of Caermarthen and Denbigh instead of Carians and Pelasgians. Is it true, by the bye, that the Commissioners are whipped on the boundaries of the boroughs by the beadles, in order that they may not forget the precise line which they have drawn? I deny it wherever I go, and a.s.sure people that some of my friends who are in the Commission would not submit to such degradation.

You must have been hard-worked indeed, and soundly whipped too, if you have suffered as much for the Reform Bill as we who debated it. I believe that there are fifty members of the House of Commons who have done irreparable injury to their health by attendance on the discussions of this session. I have got through pretty well, but I look forward, I confess, with great dismay to the thought of recommencing; particularly as Wetherell's cursed lungs seem to be in as good condition as ever.

I have every reason to be gratified by the manner in which my speeches have been received. To say the truth, the station which I now hold in the House is such that I should not be inclined to quit it for any place which was not of considerable importance. What you saw about my having a place was a blunder of a stupid reporter's. Croker was taunting the Government with leaving me to fight their battle, and to rally their followers; and said that the honourable and learned member for Calne, though only a practising barrister in t.i.tle, seemed to be in reality the most efficient member of the Government. By the bye, my article on Croker has not only smashed his book, but has. .h.i.t the Westminster Review incidentally. The Utilitarians took on themselves to praise the accuracy of the most inaccurate writer that ever lived, and gave as an instance of it a note in which, as I have shown, he makes a mistake of twenty years and more. John Mill is in a rage, and says that they are in a worse sc.r.a.pe than Croker; John Murray says that it is a d.a.m.ned nuisance; and Croker looks across the House of Commons at me with a leer of hatred, which I repay with a gracious smile of pity.

I am ashamed to have said so much about myself. But you asked for news about me. No request is so certain to be granted, or so certain to be a curse to him who makes it as that which you have made to me.

Ever yours

T. B. MACAULAY.

London: January 9, 1832.

Dear Napier,--I have been so much engaged by bankrupt business, as we are winding up the affairs of many estates, that I shall not be able to send off my article about Hampden till Thursday the 12th. It will be, I fear, more than forty pages long. As Pascal said of his eighteenth letter, I would have made it shorter if I could have kept it longer. You must indulge me, however; for I seldom offend in that way.

It is in part a narrative. This is a sort of composition which I have never yet attempted. You will tell me, I am sure with sincerity, how you think that I succeed in it. I have said as little about Lord Nugent's book as I decently could.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: January 19, 1832.

Dear Napier,--I will try the Life of Lord Burleigh, if you will tell Longman to send me the book. However bad the work may be, it will serve as a heading for an article on the times of Elizabeth. On the whole, I thought it best not to answer Croker. Almost all the little pamphlet which he published, (or rather printed, for I believe it is not for sale,) is made up of extracts from Blackwood; and I thought that a contest with your grog-drinking, c.o.c.k-fighting, cudgel-playing Professor of Moral Philosophy would be too degrading. I could have demolished every paragraph of the defence. Croker defended his thuetoi philoi by quoting a pa.s.sage of Euripides which, as every scholar knows, is corrupt; which is nonsense and false metre if read as he reads it; and which Markland and Matthiae have set right by a most obvious correction.

But, as n.o.body seems to have read his vindication, we can gain nothing by refuting it. ["Mr. Croker has favoured us with some Greek of his own. 'At the altar,' say Dr. Johnson. 'I recommended my th ph.'

'These letters,' says the editor, (which Dr. Strahan seems not to have understood,) probably mean _departed friends._' Johnson was not a first-rate Greek scholar; but he knew more Greek than most boys when they leave school; and no schoolboy could venture to use the word thuetoi in the sense which Mr. Croker ascribes to it without imminent danger of a flogging."--Macaulay's Review of Croker's Boswell.]

Ever yours

T. B. MACAULAY.

CHAPTER V. 1832-1834.

Macaulay is invited to stand for Leeds--The Reform bill pa.s.ses--Macaulay appointed Commissioner of the Board of Control--His life in office--Letters to his sisters-- Contested election at Leeds--Macaulay's bearing as a candidate--Canva.s.sing--Pledges--Intrusion of religion into politics--Placemen in Parliament--Liverpool--Margaret Macaulay's marriage--How it affected her brother--He is returned for Leeds--Becomes Secretary of the Board of Control--Letters to Hannah Macaulay--Session of 1832-- Macaulay's Speech on the India Bill--His regard for Lord Glenelg--Letters to Hannah Macaulay--The West Indian question--Macaulay resigns Office--He gains his point, and resumes his place--Emanc.i.p.ation of the Slaves--Death of Wilberforce--Macaulay is appointed Member of the Supreme Council of India--Letters to Hannah Macaulay, Lord Lansdowne, and Mr. Napier--Altercation between Lord Althorp and Mr. Shiel--Macaulay's appearance before the Committee of Investigation--He sails for India.

DURING the earlier half of the year 1832 the vessel of Reform was still labouring heavily; but, long before she was through the breakers, men had begun to discount the treasures which she was bringing into port.

The time was fast approaching when the country would be called upon to choose its first Reformed Parliament. As if the spectacle of what was doing at Westminster did not satisfy their appet.i.te for political excitement, the Const.i.tuencies of the future could not refrain from antic.i.p.ating the fancied pleasures of an electoral struggle. Impatient to exercise their privileges, and to show that they had as good an eye for a man as those patrons of nomination seats whose discernment was being vaunted nightly in a dozen speeches from the Opposition benches of the House of Commons, the great cities were vying with each other to seek representatives worthy of the occasion and of themselves. The Whigs of Leeds, already provided with one candidate in a member of the great local firm of the Marshalls, resolved to seek for another among the distinguished politicians of their party. As early as October 1831 Macaulay had received a requisition from that town, and had pledged himself to stand as soon as it had been elevated into a Parliamentary borough. The Tories, on their side, brought forward Mr. Michael Sadler, the very man on whose behalf the Duke of Newcastle had done "what he liked with his own" in Newark,--and, at the last general election, had done it in vain. Sadler, smarting from the lash of the Edinburgh Review, infused into the contest an amount of personal bitterness that for his own sake might better have been spared; and, during more than a twelvemonth to come, Macaulay lived the life of a candidate whose own hands are full of public work at a time when his opponent has nothing to do except to make himself disagreeable. But, having once undertaken to fight the battle of the Leeds Liberals, he fought it stoutly and cheerily; and he would have been the last to claim it as a merit, that, with numerous opportunities of a safe and easy election at his disposal, he remained faithful to the supporters who had been so forward to honour him with their choice.

The old system died hard; but in May 1832 came its final agony. The Reform Bill had pa.s.sed the Commons, and had been read a second time in the Upper House; but the facilities which Committee affords for maiming and delaying a measure of great magnitude and intricacy proved too much for the self-control of the Lords. The King could not bring himself to adopt that wonderful expedient by which the unanimity of the three branches of our legislature may, in the last resort, be secured.

Deceived by an utterly fallacious a.n.a.logy, his Majesty began to be persuaded that the path of concession would lead him whither it had led Louis the Sixteenth; and he resolved to halt on that path at the point where his Ministers advised him to force the hands of their lordships by creating peers. The supposed warnings of the French Revolution, which had been dinned into the ears of the country by every Tory orator from Peel to Sibthorpe, at last had produced their effect on the royal imagination. Earl Grey resigned, and the Duke of Wellington, with a loyalty which certainly did not stand in need of such an unlucky proof, came forward to meet the storm. But its violence was too much even for his courage and constancy. He could not get colleagues to a.s.sist him in the Cabinet, or supporters to vote with him in Parliament, or soldiers to fight for him in the streets; and it was evident that in a few days his position would be such as could only be kept by fighting.