The essay on Milton was followed at brief intervals by that remarkable series on Machiavelli, Dryden, Hallam, Hampden, Ranke, and others, which has been the delight and inspiration of so many students in England and America. Macaulay studied law, but we never hear that his literary labors were disturbed by clients. The prices which his articles commanded in the market of the Reviews enabled him to gratify his tastes; and he seems never to have had any inclination to push himself into an active practice of his profession. One of the peculiar merits claimed for the old borough system by its friends was that it enabled young men of great promise to find an easy way into the House of Commons. Pitt, Channing, and Brougham had first been appointed from pocket boroughs, and now Macaulay was to receive a similar favor. In 1830, the very year when the Whigs, after a long exclusion from office, came into power under Lord Grey, Macaulay, through the favor of Lord Lansdowne, entered the House, as the Member for Calne. Though he afterward boasted that, while sitting as the nominee of Lord Lansdowne, he was as independent as when at a later period he represented the popular constituencies of Leeds and Edinburgh, it is worthy of note that from the first he was an ardent and unqualified supporter of the Whigs. In the great question of Representative Reform his sympathies were thoroughly enlisted on the side of Earl Grey; and his speeches on the subject, four in number, contributed not a little to the final triumph of that great movement. Some of his letters, given by Trevelyan, reveal in the most graphic light the intensity of public feeling while the contest was going on. In the reformed Parliament of 1834 he took a seat as a member from Leeds; but in that same year his place was made vacant by his appointment as one of the Government Council for India. For this position he was amply qualified. His essays on the “Utilitarian Theory of Government” and “Dumont’s Recollections of Mirabeau” showed that he had studied jurisprudence as a science, and even that he considered the province of a jurist as superior to that of a statesman. Moreover he had made an especial study of India. In July of 1833 the Government brought forward its new India Bill, and Macaulay’s speech on the measure left perhaps even a deeper impression than had been made by either of his speeches on the Reform Bill. Jeffrey, who happened to be present, wrote to one of his correspondents: “Mack is a marvellous person. He made the very best speech that has been made this session on India. The Speaker, who is a severe judge, says he rather thinks it the best speech he ever heard.”