MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON (1800–59)

MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON (1800–59)

The English historian, Thomas Babington Macaulay, was born in Leicestershire in 1800. He is best known for The History of England from the Accession of James II (1849–61), published in five volumes, but he was also an essayist, a poet and a Whig cabinet minister. He served as an MP three times (1830–4, 1839–7, 1852–6) and was made a peer, Lord Macaulay of Rothley, in 1857. The rest of this entry outlines his career in greater detail, discusses his political and literary ideas, and comments upon his famous ‘Whig interpretation of history’. Macaulay assumed that (in general) material, moral and scientific progress was ongoing, provided politicians avoided extremist policies that confused anarchy with liberty, and despotism with civil order.

Thomas Macaulay was the son of Zachary Macaulay, a wealthy Scottish merchant, and Selina Mills Macaulay, the daughter of a prosperous Bristol bookseller. In 1802, the family moved to Clapham, where Zachary, a prominent evangelical campaigner against slavery, could liaise more readily with fellow members of the campaign—the so-called ‘Clapham sect’—such as William Wilberforce, Charles Grant and Henry Thornton. In this pious, but rationalistic, context, Thomas Macaulay emerged as a child prodigy, composing a ‘Compendium of Universal History’ when he was a 7-year-old. However, unlike his slightly younger contemporary, JOHN STUART MILL, Macaulay was sent to boarding school (1812–18) and later to Cambridge University (1818–24). His undergraduate career was chequered, but he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity Hall, which he held until 1831, despite a number of reservations about the academic life.

Indeed, Macaulay’s greatest successes before 1830 were qualifying as a barrister in 1826 (although he never practised seriously) and the initiation of his literary career through a series of well-received essays in The Edinburgh Review, beginning with ‘Milton’ (1825). Macaulay also wrote on political issues, acquired political connections and was elected as a Whig MP in 1830. He was a prominent figure in the Reform debate of 1831–2 and upheld the family commitment to the cause of anti-slavery. In 1832, Macaulay became a member of the Board of Control for India (which supervised the work of the East India Company) and was soon promoted to the post of secretary of the Board. Shortly after (in 1834), he undertook a new position as a member of the recently created Supreme Council of India, which had taken over many of the Company’s political functions. He voyaged to the subcontinent and played a leading role in creating an Anglophone education system for the native Indian elites, in defending the freedom of the

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press and in drafting a penal code that stressed the equality of Indians and Europeans before the law and the right of a woman to property in her own person—a right not recognized in England until 1882.

Macaulay returned to London in 1838, was re-elected to Parliament and became Secretary for War (1839–41). In a subsequent Whig government, he served as Paymaster- General (1846–7) but his literary and historical interests came to dominate his career. Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome was publishedin 1842 and Critical and Historical Essays in 1843. Four volumes of The History of England appeared during his lifetime (two in 1848, two in 1855) while the fifth was published posthumously (as edited by his sister, Hannah Macaulay Trevelyan) in 1861. The work was intended to explain the history of England and Britain from 1688 until 1820, but it was written on a scale so extravagant that it only reached the year 1702. Nevertheless, it was generally well received and sold many thousands of copies. At the height of his fame, Macaulay died of heart disease in 1859.

Macaulay’s liberalism emphasized individual freedom and the rule of law; he was sceptical of the political ambitions of generals, capitalists and democrats, and—like many nineteenth-century Whigs—he usually argued that a reforming aristocracy (in alliance with a ‘decent’ middle class) was the best available prophylactic against Jacobinism. Although Macaulay rejected the Calvinist version of ‘Original Sin’, he was no perfectibilist and assumed a universal need for law and government. His 1824 article on ‘Mitford’s History of Greece’ argued that an ideal society would educate all of its members to exercise political power, but in practice a governing elite was normal. Macaulay’s politics, taken as a whole, stressed the benefits of non-intervention, economy in legislation and moderate, proportional punishment whenever discipline proved necessary. A regime of personal freedom was liable to generate socio-economic ‘improvements’, which could be disseminated, not only within Britain (with its particular ‘genius’ for political moderation) but also around the world, to the general benefit of mankind. Thus, Macaulay was a free trader, but no pacifist. He was sensible of the economic benefits of empire to both the home country and its colonies, while in the 1850s he gave unambiguous, patriotic support to the Crimean War. However, he also recognized a religious and humanitarian obligation to ‘improve’ colonial peoples—so that they might one day achieve self-government—although this could be couched in the language of self-interest: ‘To trade with civilized men is infinitely more profitable than to govern savages’ (1833).

In his youth, the greatest single affront to Macaulay’s principles was the continuation of legal slavery (and the associated doctrine of Negro inferiority, which he polemicized against in the Edinburgh Review of 1827), but he failed to recognize the parallels between this form of political oppression and the constitutional policies of Britain’s own government—he was by no means alone in this. In the 1820s and 1830s, Macaulay argued against procedural discrimination against Jews, Catholics and Nonconformists (the ‘Emancipation’ debates) and for the abolition of the relative privilege of landowners (when compared with other property holders), but insisted hat a pecuniary qualification for the suffrage was a necessary means of excluding ‘the uneducated’ from a sovereignty that they were bound to abuse if ‘universal’ suffrage was enacted. The classic statements of Macaulay’s case against adult male suffrage were three essays written in 1829 (‘Mill on Government’, ‘Bentham’s Defence of Mill’ and ‘The Utilitarian Theory of

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Government’), which attacked JAMES MILL’S democratic version of ‘Philosophic Radicalism’. Macaulay contended that, since Mill’s case was the product of an abstract and excessively rationalist method of studying human nature, it failed to recognize the specific, historically contingent threat of a revolution in Britain if universal suffrage was adopted. Although Macaulay favoured both the education of workers and the material improvement of their lives, he set no specific criteria whereby the suffrage might be extended at a future date and he opposed ‘protective legislation’, such as the Factory Acts, until 1847 (when he was persuaded to vote in Parliament for a Ten Hours Bill).

During his sojourn in India, Macaulay published an essay on ‘Bacon’ (1837), which praised modern European science at the expense of Ancient Greek philosophy, but he was also a humanist and a great admirer of Dante, Shakespeare and Milton. In the 1820s, Macaulay supported the foundation of London University and many of his literary works strove to popularize esoteric scholarship for the benefit of those who had no access to higher education. Perhaps the most famous example of this was the prefaces to Lays of Ancient Rome, in which each of the four poems was linked to the idea of the ‘lost ballads’ of the early Romans, a hypothesis of Niebuhr. More generally, Macaulay prized conciseness and clarity of language in both his works of imaginative literature and his historical works, while, at the same time, he sought to enlist his reader’s imagination with strong, pictorial imagery. Macaulay was a great admirer of Walter Scott (1771–1832) and, as early as 1808, he composed a narrative poem (in the style of Scott’s Marmion) entitled ‘The Battle of Cheviot’. As an adult, Macaulay composed poetry in a variety of styles, and on a variety of topics, such as the ‘Battle of Naseby’ (1824) and ‘The Armada’ (1831). Although he frequently expressed antipathy towards Wordsworth and the Lake Poets (because of their democratic sympathies and mystical attitude towards ‘transcendental’ Nature), Macaulay remained an admirer of Scott (and responded favourably to Byron) on the grounds that feeling and imagination were distinctive human qualities that should be celebrated appropriately and which could contribute to human happiness and development.

The combined weight of these generalizations, and the readily available model of Walter Scott’s historical novels, can explain certain aspects of Macaulay’s historiography—a topic that will be examined more systematically in subsequent paragraphs. In particular, his emphasis upon characterization (albeit sometimes simplified) and biographical anecdotes (as means of ‘interesting the affections’ of his readers) help to explain his prolixity; a phenomenon referred to by critics as ‘excess of ornament’. Moreover, the presentation of various historical incidents sequentially, and as—in effect—literary scenes, strengthened the parallels between The History and a Scottian novel (or a play). An intention to instruct can also be inferred from a vigorous, ‘masculine’ style that sought to make a strong first impression through the use of emphatic words and hyperbole.

In his review of ‘Hallam’s Constitutional History’ (1827), Macaulay proposed an ideal type for historical writing: a ‘compound of poetry and philosophy’, whereby ‘vivid representation’ of the particular—the sphere of historical romance—would be combined with analytical discussions that traced ‘the connection of causes and effects’ and drew ‘general lessons of moral and political wisdom’ that, until that date, had been the province of a separate school of historical essayists. Subsequently, the general preface to Lays of Ancient Rome stressed the importance of entertaining (as well as instructing)

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readers, and Macaulay’s success in achieving this goal was recognized by reviewers of The History such as BAGEHOT and MATTHEW ARNOLD. Nevertheless, many passages in The History were argumentative, and marshalled numerous corroborative examples in favour of the author’s interpretation—a stock-in-trade technique of Macaulay, the political orator and essayist. The reader, once pleased, could often be persuaded, but Macaulay famously misjudged his audience when criticising the Quaker, William Penn (1644–1718), who remained a hero to many Victorians.

In 1828, Macaulay had negotiated unsuccessfully with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge regarding a proposal for a popular history of Stuart England. It seems that this plan was the kernel of The History, although he did not begin to write the book until 1839. As early as 1824, he had argued that a ‘perfectly written’ history of Ancient Greece would involve a ‘complete record’ of Greek poetry, philosophy and arts as well as ‘salutary inventions and discoveries’ that improved the lives of ordinary people. By implication, the same held true for early-modern Britain, but in The History only one chapter out of twenty-five took this agenda seriously. The early chapters charted British history from Roman to Stuart times, before discussing the reign of Charles II and the state of English society in 1685. Subsequently, ‘high politics’ was dominant and five chapters were devoted to the reign of James II, eight to the revolution of 1688 and subsequent civil war, and nine to the reign of William III. Although Macaulay read widely in the political literature of the period, visited the sites of many significant events and was a pioneer in his use of ‘oral history’—see Edwards (1988)—he was no student of ‘scientific’ or ‘documentary’ history, despite writing a review of ‘Ranke’s History of the Popes’ in 1840. Instead, as noted above, most commentators agree that both Macaulay’s essays and The History placed much greater stress on the artistic dimension of historical writing.

In the light of this, it may be argued that this artistic emphasis was ‘convenient’ from the viewpoint of Macaulay’s ‘Whig interpretation of history’—his alleged tendency to give unjustified praise to Whigs and Protestants, and his assumption that late seventeenth-century England had seen the birth of an ‘auspicious union of order and freedom’, which was a unique contribution to human civilization—because it allowed him to ignore ‘facts’ that were ‘inconvenient’ for the interpretation. Nevertheless, although Macaulay did indeed make a number of empirically inaccurate statements in The History, it seems unlikely that the explanation for this was entirely ideological and not, in some respects, methodological. It seems equally plausible that his habit of relying on secondary sources (particularly notable in his early survey chapters) led him to repeat the errors of earlier historians, as well as reiterating a number of judgements made during the eighteenth century, when the animosities associated with 1688 (and its aftermath) were still widespread and politically significant. Furthermore, it is by no means certain that the adjective ‘Whig’ is itself a fair description of Macaulay’s perspective, as the following arguments show.

A common defence of Macaulay in the nineteenth century (given charges of political partisanship) was that The History honoured the principled conduct of dissident bishops—such as Thomas Ken (1637–1711)—and of other Tories; and that, consequently, the text was Williamite, that is anti-Stuart, and not a ‘Whig’ history at all. On the other hand, twentieth-century scholars (notably Joseph Hamburger) have argued that Macaulay did not celebrate Whiggism for slightly different reasons. Instead, The History has been presented as a vindication of ‘trimming’ (the seventeenth-century term

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for balancing the claims of political parties in the national interest) by stressing the role within the narrative of George Savile, Marquess of Halifax (1633–95). Moreover, the theme of ‘balance’ can also be identified in the first chapter of The History, in which ‘great national crimes and follies’ were acknowledged—with reference to the history of the USA and Ireland—as well as favourable references being made to domestic political harmony, commercial success and the ‘splendid’ Indian empire.

It is at a more philosophical level, however, that it seems impossible to deny Macaulay’s Whiggism, provided that this term is understood to refer to a generalized ‘Enlightenment’ optimism. For example, in the same introductory chapter of The History noted above, Macaulay claimed that British history (over the preceding 160 years) was ‘eminently the history of physical, of moral and of intellectual improvement’. Taken as a whole, it seems that his works were a form of special pleading for the superiority of English bourgeois culture and British parliamentary liberalism, and, by treating the events of the 1680s and 1690s as more significant for nineteenth-century Britain than those of the 1640s, he may well have done his compatriots a disservice. Although Macaulay had read the great Scottish historians of the eighteenth century (and discussed their conceptions of ‘rude’ and ‘refined’ societies in the 1820s) his works often neglected ‘sociological’ and ‘economic’ factors in history, while at the same time failing to demonstrate the ‘autonomy’ of politics.