"As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the Old World; but the time will come when wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much, with you as with us. Then your institutions will fairly be brought to the test. Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million, while another cannot get a full meal. In bad years there is plenty of grumbling here, and sometimes a little rioting; but it matters little, for here the sufferers are not the rulers. The supreme power is in the hands of a class deeply interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order; accordingly the malcontents are restrained. But with you the majority is the government, and has the rich, who are always in a minority, absolutely at its mercy. The day will come when the multitude of people, none of whom has had more than a half a breakfast, or expects to have more than a half a dinner, will choose a legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of legislature will be chosen? On the one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of the public faith; and on the other a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink champagne and ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries: which of the two candidates is likely to be preferred by a working-man who hears his children cry for more bread? There will be, I fear, spoliation. The spoliation will increase the distress; the distress will produce fresh spoliation. There is nothing to stop you; your Constitution is all sail and no anchor. Either civilization or liberty will perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth."
I do not deny that there is great force in Macaulay's reasoning and prophecy. History points to decline and ruin when public virtue has fled and government is in the hands of demagogues; for their reign has ever been succeeded by military usurpers who have preserved civilization indeed, but at the expense of liberty. Yet this reasoning applies not only to America but to England as well,--especially since, by the Reform Bill and subsequent enactments of Parliament, she has opened the gates to an increase of suffrage, which now threatens to become universal. The enfranchisement of the people--the enlarged powers of the individual under the protection and control of the commonwealth--is the Anglo-Saxon contribution to progress. It is dangerous. So is all power until its use is learned. But there is no backward step possible; the tremendous experiment must go forward, for England and America alike.
Macaulay himself was one of the most prominent of English statesmen and orators, in 1830, 1831, and 1832, to advocate the extension of the right of suffrage and the increase of popular liberties. All his writings are on the side of liberty in England; and all are in opposition to the Toryism which was so triumphant during the reign of George III. Why did he have faith in the English people of England, and yet show so little in the English people of America? He believed in political and social progress for his own countrymen; why should he doubt the utility of the same in other countries? If vandalism is to be the fate of America, where education, the only truly conservative element, is more diffused than in England, why should it not equally triumph in that country when the masses have gained political power, as they surely will at some time, and even speedily, if the policy inaugurated by Gladstone is to triumph? For England Macaulay had unbounded hope, because he believed in progress,--in liberty, in education, in the civilizing influence of machinery, in the increasing comforts of life through the constant increase of wealth among the middle classes, and especially through the power of Christianity, in spite of the dissensions of sects, the attacks of crude philosophers, socialists, anarchists, scientists, and atheists, from one end of Christendom to the other. Why should he not have equal faith in American civilization, which, in spite of wars and strikes and commercial distresses and political corruption, has yet made a marked progress from the time of Jefferson, the apostle of equality, down to our day,--as seen especially in the multiplication of schools and colleges, in an untrammelled and watchful press, and in the active benevolence of the rich in the foundation of every kind of institution to relieve misery and want? The truth is that he, in common with most educated Englishmen of his day,--and of too many even of our own day,--cherished a silent contempt for Americans, for their literature and their institutions; and hence he was not only inconsistent in the principles which he advocated, but showed that he was not emancipated, with all his learning, from prejudices of which he ought to have been ashamed.
As time made inroads on Macaulay's strong constitution, he gave up both politics and society in the absorbing interest which he took in his History, confining himself to his library, and sometimes allowing months to pass without accepting any invitation whatever to a social gathering. No man was ever more disenchanted with society. He begrudged his time even when tempted by the calls of friendship. When visitors penetrated to his den, he bowed them out with ironical politeness. He had no favors to ask from friends or foes, for he declined political office, and was as independent as wealth or fame could make him. In 1849 he was made Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, and the acclamations following his address were prodigious. Lord John Russell gave to Macaulay's brother John a living worth £1100. Macaulay himself was offered the professorship of History at Cambridge. In one year he received for the first edition of his third and fourth volumes of the History, published in 1855, £20,000 in a single check from Longman. At the age of forty-nine, he writes in his diary: "I have no cause for complaint,--tolerable health, competence, liberty, leisure, dear relatives and friends, and a very great literary reputation."
With all this prosperity, Macaulay now naturally set up his carriage. He dined often with the Queen, and was a great man, according to English notions, more even from his wealth and social position than from his success in letters. Lord John Russell pressed him to accept a seat in his cabinet, but "I told him," Macaulay writes, "that I should be of no use,--that I was not a debater; that it was too late to become one; that my temper, taste, and literary habits alike prevented." He was, however, induced to become again a member of Parliament, and in 1852 was elected once more for Edinburgh, which had repented of its rejection of him in 1847. But he insisted on perfect independence to vote as he pleased. He regarded this re-entrance into public life as a great personal sacrifice, since it might postpone the appearance of his next two volumes of the History. His election, however, was received with great acclamation. Even Professor Wilson, the most conservative of Scotch Tories, voted for him. It was not a party victory, but purely a personal triumph.
A serious illness now follows,--a weakness of the heart, from the effects of which Macaulay died a few years afterwards. He retires to Clifton, and gives himself up to getting well, visiting Barley Wood, and driving in his private carriage among the most interesting scenery in the west of England. But he was never perfectly well again, although he continued to work on his History. His intimate friends saw the change in him with sadness, but he himself was serene and uncomplaining. Although he suffered from an oppression of the chest, he still on great occasions addressed the House. His mind was clear, but his voice was faint. The last speech he made was in behalf of the independence of the Scottish Church. The strain of the House of Commons proved to be too great for his now enfeebled constitution. "Nor could he conceal from himself and his friends," says Trevelyan, "that it was a grievous waste, while the reign of Anne still remained unwritten, for him to consume his scanty stock of vigor in the tedious and exhaustive routine of political existence; waiting whole evenings for the vote, and then ... trudging home at three in the morning through the slush of a February thaw." He therefore spared himself as a member of Parliament, and carefully husbanded his powers in order to work upon his book. He gave himself more time for his annual vacation, yet would write when he could on the subjects which engrossed his life. His labors were too severe for his strength, but he worked on, and even harder and harder.
At length on the 25th of November, 1855, Macaulay sent to the printer the last twenty pages of his History, and an edition of twenty-five thousand was ordered. Within a generation one hundred and forty thousand copies of the work were sold in the United Kingdom alone. Six rival translators were engaged in turning it into German; and it was published in the Polish, the Danish, the Swedish, the Italian, the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Hungarian, the Russian, and the Bohemian languages, to say nothing of its immense circulation in the United States. Such extraordinary literary popularity was accompanied by great honors. In 1857 Macaulay was created a British Peer and elected Lord High Steward of the borough of Cambridge. The academies of Utrecht, Munich, and Turin elected him to honorary membership. The King of Prussia made him a member of the Order of Merit. Oxford conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, and he was elected president of the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh. He could have little more in the way of academic and governmental honors.
The failing health of Macaulay now compelled him to resign his seat in the House of Commons. It was also thought desirable for him to vacate his apartments at The Albany, which he had occupied for fifteen years, that he might be more retired and perhaps more comfortable. His friends, at the suggestion of Dean Milman, selected a house in Kensington, the rooms of which were small, except the library, which opened upon a beautiful lawn, adorned with flowers and shrubs; it was called Holly Lodge, and was very secluded and attractive. Here his latter days were spent, in the society of his nieces and a few devoted friends, and in dispensing simple hospitalities. His favorite form of entertainment was the breakfast, at which his guests would linger till twelve, enchanted by his conversation, for his mind showed no signs of decay.
From this charming retreat Lord Macaulay very seldom appeared in London society. Years passed without his even accepting invitations. An occasional night at a friend's house in the country, one or two nights at Windsor Castle, and one or two visits to Lord Stanhope's seat in Kent in order to consult his magnificent library, were the only visits which Macaulay made in the course of the year. He always had a dislike of visiting in private houses, much preferring hotels, where he could be free from conventional life.
Macaulay was always careful in his expenditures, wasting nothing that he might enjoy the pleasure of charity,--for he gave liberally, especially to needy and unfortunate men of letters. Once he gave £100 to a total stranger who implored his aid. In his household he was revered, for he was the kindest and most considerate of masters, while his relatives absolutely worshipped him. At home he made no claim to the privileges of genius; he had few eccentricities; he never interfered with the pleasures of others; he never obtruded his advice, or demanded that his own views or tastes should be consulted; he was especially careful not to wound the feelings of those with whom he lived. Children were his delight and solace. Over them he seemed to have unbounded influence. He would spend the half of a busy day in playing with them, and in inventing new games for their diversion. One of his pleasures was to take them to see the sights of London. His sympathies were quick and generous; although apparently so cynical in his opinions of books, he was always affected at any touches of pathos, even to tears.