Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English essays
up before the regular vacation from mere want of food. Let us lodge
them; but let their lodging be one in which they may be packed like pigs
in a stye, and be punished for their heterodoxy by feeling the snow and
the wind through the broken panes." Is it possible to conceive anything
more absurd or more disgraceful? Can anything be clearer than this, that
whatever it is lawful to do it is lawful to do well? If it be right that
we should keep up this college at all, it must be right that we should
keep it up respectably. Our national dignity is concerned. For this
institution, whether good or bad, is, beyond all dispute, a very
important institution. Its office is to form the character of those who
are to form the character of millions. Whether we ought to extend any
patronage to such an institution is a question about which wise and
honest men may differ. But that, as we do extend our patronage to such
an institution, our patronage ought to be worthy of the object, and
worthy of the greatness of our country, is a proposition from which I am
astonished to hear any person dissent.
It is, I must say, with a peculiarly bad grace that one of the members
for the University to which I have the honour to belong (The Honourable
Charles Law, Member for the University of Cambridge.), a gentleman who
never thought himself bound to say a word or to give a vote against
the grant of nine thousand pounds, now vehemently opposes the grant
of twenty-six thousand pounds as exorbitant. When I consider how
munificently the colleges of Cambridge and Oxford are endowed, and with
what pomp religion and learning are there surrounded; when I call to
mind the long streets of palaces, the towers and oriels, the venerable
cloisters, the trim gardens, the organs, the altar pieces, the solemn
light of the stained windows, the libraries, the museums, the galleries
of painting and sculpture; when I call to mind also the physical
comforts which are provided both for instructors and for pupils; when I
reflect that the very sizars and servitors are far better lodged and fed
than those students who are to be, a few years hence, the priests and
bishops of the Irish people; when I think of the spacious and stately
mansions of the heads of houses, of the commodious chambers of the
fellows and scholars, of the refectories, the combination rooms, the
bowling greens, the stabling, of the state and luxury of the great feast
days, of the piles of old plate on the tables, of the savoury steam of
the kitchens, of the multitudes of geese and capons which turn at once
on the spits, of the oceans of excellent ale in the butteries; and when
I remember from whom all this splendour and plenty is derived; when I
remember what was the faith of Edward the Third and of Henry the Sixth,
of Margaret of Anjou and Margaret of Richmond, of William of Wykeham and
William of Waynefleet, of Archbishop Chicheley and Cardinal Wolsey; when
I remember what we have taken from the Roman Catholics, King's College,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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