Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English essays
One gentleman tells us that it has
been produced by the late events in France and Belgium; another, that
it is the effect of seditious works which have lately been published.
If this feeling be of origin so recent, I have read history to little
purpose. Sir, this alarming discontent is not the growth of a day or of
a year. If there be any symptoms by which it is possible to distinguish
the chronic diseases of the body politic from its passing inflammations,
all those symptoms exist in the present case. The taint has been
gradually becoming more extensive and more malignant, through the whole
lifetime of two generations. We have tried anodynes. We have tried cruel
operations. What are we to try now? Who flatters himself that he can
turn this feeling back? Does there remain any argument which escaped the
comprehensive intellect of Mr Burke, or the subtlety of Mr Windham? Does
there remain any species of coercion which was not tried by Mr Pitt and
by Lord Londonderry? We have had laws. We have had blood. New treasons
have been created. The Press has been shackled. The Habeas Corpus Act
has been suspended. Public meetings have been prohibited. The event has
proved that these expedients were mere palliatives. You are at the end
of your palliatives. The evil remains. It is more formidable than ever.
What is to be done?
Under such circumstances, a great plan of reconciliation, prepared by
the Ministers of the Crown, has been brought before us in a manner which
gives additional lustre to a noble name, inseparably associated during
two centuries with the dearest liberties of the English people. I will
not say, that this plan is in all its details precisely such as I might
wish it to be; but it is founded on a great and a sound principle. It
takes away a vast power from a few. It distributes that power through
the great mass of the middle order. Every man, therefore, who thinks as
I think is bound to stand firmly by Ministers who are resolved to
stand or fall with this measure. Were I one of them, I would sooner,
infinitely sooner, fall with such a measure than stand by any other
means that ever supported a Cabinet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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