Page images
PDF
EPUB

about that important social fact how far it was possible to pass from one station in life to another. The chapter remains a great achievement for a historian who was not also a special antiquarian, and who did not make even history his exclusive work; but it is far from being a complete sketch of the period.

(2.) There is, as already noticed, no principle of order-no endeavour to help the reader's memory. When we study the chapter, we can trace in the succession of subjects a certain train of association; but there is slight connection apparent upon the surface, and one's impression at the end of the whole is not a little confused. The population leads him to speak of the taxation as the only reliable means of getting at the population; the taxation suggests the public expenditure; the public expenditure the public resources, agriculture and mining; agriculture leads to rent; rent to the country squire; the squire to the clergyman,-and so on. On such a metho 1, or rather no-method, there could be nothing but intricacy and confusion.

Exposition.

We have already seen how far Macaulay possesses the gifts of an able expositor. With his mastery of language, he can repeat his statements in great variety of forms. In his love of antithesis

he often has recourse to the obverse form of repetition. He has an incomparable command of examples and illustrations. Thus, of all the four great arts of exposition he is a master.

Yet he cannot rank as an expositor with such a writer as Paley. This is partly on account of a deduction that must be made from his powers of accurate exposition. He is too fond of extreme and "sensational" examples, and of easy concrete illustrations not restricted to the relevant point. But the great detraction is, that he did not exhibit his powers, like Paley, on subjects of considerable inherent difficulty.

Macaulay's bent was naturally towards subjects of popular interest. Whatever he cared to master he could expound with the utmost clearness; but he had little inclination for hard abstract principles. His 'Notes on the Indian Penal Code' are hardly an exception. He has to support the provisions of the Code by general considerations, and his statement of these considerations is very clear and very interesting. But the subject is not naturally dry and repulsive. There is no greater temptation to make the Notes abstruse than there is to make a critical essay abstruse. He makes them interesting and animated by exactly the same arts of style as give such interest and animation to his essays. He mixes up the statement of the general principles with particular cases: sometimes, without stating the principle at all, he merely suggests it by saying that the particular provision he is defending

rests on the same principle as some familiar rule of English law. He finds ample scope for antithesis in contrasting other Penai Codes with the various provisions of the Code recommended for India. Not even paradoxes are wanting; he surprises us at times by finding unsuspected reasons for departing from some familiar practice such as the practice of allowing in certain cases an option between fine and imprisonment.

Persuasion.

Macaulay was a very popular orator. Soon after he entered Parliament, he spoke in the same debate with the late Lord Derby; and Sir James Mackintosh describes their speeches as "two of the finest speeches ever spoken in Parliament." And many men still living confess that their prejudices against the Reform Bill of 1832 were first overcome by his eloquent and perspicuous arguments.

His speeches are not the only evidence of his debating power. He is essentially a controversialist: it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he never makes a statement without attempting to prove it. His history is a protracted argument in favour of the Revolution. The "Third Chapter" is a broadside against the superiority of former days. When he has no real opponent to refute, no actual prejudice to overturn, he imagines all sorts of objections for the purpose of proving them to be groundless. His Notes on the Indian Penal Code' are defences against supposed objections. His Essay on Warren Hastings is a plea under the disguise of a judicial summing up. Not that he argues solely from the love of argument; always in earnest, he is eager to bring others round to his own views-ever bent upon convincing and converting.

This determination to persuade is at the root of his efforts to make himself understood by everybody, already noticed as the main cause of his simplicity of style. He is not content to utter an opinion in a form intelligible from his own point of view having constantly before him the desire to convince all classes of minds, he asks how the opinion will be regarded by people of opposite sentiments, and shapes his statement accordingly.

Knowledge of those addressed.-Macaulay's audience may be said to have been the whole English-speaking world. That he knew many favourite maxims and ways of looking at things, is sufficiently proved by his wide popularity.

He humoured in an especial manner two feelings that are said to be peculiarly English-love of the practical as opposed to the theoretical, and love of material progress. He "distrusts all general theories of government;" he was intensely inimical to

James Mill's Essay on Government. He loves gradual changes; he professes a horror of revolutions and a contempt for Radicals. And while a stanch friend to intellectual and moral progress, he is far from seeing any danger to either in the multiplication of physical comforts: he exults in the English "public credit fruitful of marvels;" and one of the ideals that he "wishes from his soul" to see realised is, "employment always plentiful, wages always high, food always cheap, and a large family considered not as an encumbrance, but as a blessing."

[ocr errors]

Another thing that could not fail to endear him is his outspoken pride of country. By the mixture of races in our island was formed, he says, a people inferior to none existing in the world." Englishmen were then, as they are still, a brave, proud, and high-spirited race, unaccustomed to defeat, to shame, or to servitude.'

[ocr errors]

66

Means of Persuasion. (1.) Always perfectly master of the facts of his subject, he displays the highest rhetorical ingenuity in giving happy turns to opposing arguments. This was one great secret of his success in the Reforming Parliaments of 1831 and 1832. Hardly an argument could be advanced but he turned it against the speaker-maintaining with all his paradoxical point that it was precisely the consideration that led him to advocate Reform. The Reformers were taunted with a leaning to universal suffrage. Every argument," returns Macaulay, "which would induce me to oppose universal suffrage, induces me to support the plan which is now before us. I am opposed to universal suffrage because I think that it would produce a destructive revolution. I support this plan because I am sure that it is our best security against a revolution." Again, in answer to the hackneyed appeal to the wisdom of our ancestors, he says, "We talk of the wisdom of our ancestors; and in one respect, at least, they were wiser than we. They legislated for their own times. They looked at the England which was before them. They did not think it necessary to give twice as many members to York as they gave to London, because York had been the capital of Britain in the time of Constantius Chlorus ;" and so on. Again, "It is precisely because our institutions are so good that we are not perfectly contented with them; for they have educated us into a capacity for enjoying still better institutions." Once more- -the promoters of the Anatomy Bill were accused of trying to make a law to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. "Sir," said Macaulay, "the fact is the direct reverse. This is a bill which tends especially to benefit the poor;" and he proceeded to prove his assertion by examples.

Another of the devices of his fertile ingenuity and perfect ac

quaintance with his subject is to accuse his Conservative opponents of holding dangerous principles. He carries the war into the enemy's country. "If," cries the Member for the University of Oxford-"If we pass this law, England will soon be a Republic. The Reformed House of Commons will, before it has sate ten years, depose the King and expel the Lords from their House." "Sir," returns Macaulay. "if my honourable friend could prove this, he would have succeeded in bringing an argument for democracy infinitely stronger than any that is to be found in the works of Paine. My honourable friend's proposition is in fact this: that our monarchical and aristocratical institutions have no hold on the public mind of England; that these institutions are regarded with aversion by a decided majority of the middle class. Now, sir, if I were convinced that the great body of the mi idle class in England look with aversion on monarchy and aristocracy, I should be forced, much against my will, to come to this conclusion, that monarchical and aristocratical institutions are unsuited to my country."

So when they opposed the disfranchisement of the Rotten Boroughs on the ground that it was spoliation of property, Macaulay warned them of the danger of such a principle:

"You bind up two very different things in the hope that they may stand together. Take heed that they do not fall together. You tell the people that it is as unjust to disfranchise a great lord's nomination borough as to confiscate his estate. Take heed that you do not succeed in convincing weak and ignorant minds that there is no more injustice in confiscating his estate than in disfranchising his borough."

(2.) His powers of drawing a strong and vivid picture are of great service in helping him to make out his case. In arguing on the Reform Bill, he was at great pains to make a powerful statement of the inequalities of the existing system of representation, and sketched with his best vigour the following strong example :—

"If, sir, I wished to make such a foreigner clearly understand what I consider as the great defects of our system, I would conduct him through that Immense city which lies to the north of Great Russell Street and Oxford Street-a city superior in size and in population to the capitals of many mighty kingdoms; and probably superior in opulence, intelligence, and general respectability to any city in the world. I would conduct him through that interminable succession of streets and squares, all consisting of wellbuilt and well-furnished houses. I would make him observe the brilliancy of the shops, and the crowd of well appointed equipages. I would show him that magnificent circle of palaces which surrounds the Regent's Park. I would tell him that the rental of this district was far greater than that of the whole kingdom of Scotland at the time of the Union. And then I would tell him that this was an unrepresented district."

To take another well-known instance. In answer to the common objection that the Reform Bill would not be final, he argued that finality was not to be expected-that a changed state of society might again call for a change in the representation. His manner of putting the possibilities of change was characteristic :-

The

“Another generation may find in the new representative system defects such as we find in the old representative system. Civilisation will proceed. Wealth will increase. Industry and trade will find out new seats. same causes which have turned so many villages into great towns, which have turned so many thousands of square miles of fir and heath into cornfields and orchards, will continue to operate. Who can say that a hundred years hence there may not be, on the shore of some desolate and silent bay in the Hebrides, another Liverpool with its docks and warehouses and endless forests of masts? Who can say that the huge chimneys of another Manchester may not rise in the wilds of Connemara? For our children we do not pretend to legislate."

(3.) His great powers of debate appear chiefly in refutation. He is critical rather than constructive. He takes delight in exposing false analogies and false generalities, and in showing that anticipa tions are not warranted by previous experience.

When he can put a doctrine upon the horns of a dilemma, he tosses it with great spirit. A good instance is his assault on primogeniture; which also illustrates his habit of referring all generalities to the fundamental particulars, and his favourite manner of retorting that the facts prove exactly the opposite of what is asserted:

"It is evident that this theory, though intended to strengthen the foundations of Government, altogether unsettles them. Did the divine and immutable law of primogeniture admit females or exclude them? On either supposition, half the sovereigns of Europe must be usurpers, reigning in defiance of the commands of heaven, and might be justly dispossessed by the rightful heirs. These absurd doctrines received no countenance from the Old Testament; for in the Old Testament we read that the chosen people were blamed and punished for desiring a king, and that they were afterwards commanded to withdraw their allegiance from him. Their whole history, far from favouring the notion that primogeniture is of divine institution, would rather seem to indicate that younger brothers are under the special protection of heaven. Isaac was not the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacob of Isaac, nor Judah of Jacob, nor David of Jesse, nor Solomon of David. deed, the order of seniority among children is seldom strictly regarded in countries where polygamy is practised."

In

Examples, actual cases, which he lays down in such numbers, often have the effect of a proof, being the actual foundation of the general proposition. His illustration in the debate on the Anatomy Bill of the assertion that the poor suffer more by bad surgery than the rich, has something of this effect :

"Who suffers by the bad state of the Russian school of surgery? The Emperor Nicholas? By no means. The whole evil falls on the peasantry. If the education of a surgeon should become very expensive, if the fees of surgeons should consequently rise, if the supply of regular surgeons should diminish, the sufferers would be, not the rich, but the poor in our country villages, who would again be left to mountebanks, and barbers, and old women, and charms, and quack medicines."

Perhaps the best example of his irresistible use of facts to enforce his views is to be seen in his speeches on the proposals to

« PreviousContinue »