Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–59) was an English historian, essayist, philanthropist, and Whig politician. He was a civil servant in India, where he founded a system of education and a new criminal code before returning to Britain and dedicating himself to literature and politics.
Born in Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, and educated at Trinity College-Cambridge, Macaulay was called to the Bar in 1826. He then mixed his legal career with writing. His article on John Milton in the August 1825 issue of the Edinburgh Review had gained him recognition. For nearly 20 years, he was one of the magazine’s most prolific and popular writers. He became MP for the borough of Caine in 1830 and took part in the Reform Bill debates.
Macaulay was a legal adviser to the Supreme Council of India (1834–38.) He is considered primarily responsible for introducing the British education system in India. Upon his return in 1839, Macaulay became MP for Edinburgh and later secretary of war under Home Secretary William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne.
Macaulay wrote extensively on contemporary and historical sociopolitical subjects. His History of England from the Accession of James II (5 vols., 1848–61) enjoyed unprecedented popularity for a work of its kind. Its literary style has remained an object of praise since its publication.
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Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly, as when they discuss it freely.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
There is no malice like the malice of the renegade.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Government
The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Religion
Alas for human nature, that the wounds of vanity should smart and bleed so much longer than the wounds of affection!
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Vanity
She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Religion
A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Knowledge
The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Integrity, Character, Virtues
Time advances: facts accumulate; doubts arise. Faint glimpses of truth begin to appear, and shine more and more unto the perfect day. The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn. They are bright, while the level below is still in darkness. But soon the light, which at first illuminated only the loftiest eminences, descends on the plain, and penetrates to the deepest valley. First come hints, then fragments of systems, then defective systems, then complete and harmonious systems. The sound opinion, held for a time by one bold speculator, becomes the opinion of a small minority, of a strong minority, of a majority of mankind. Thus, the great progress goes on.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Progress
We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary! The violence of these outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people: and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Revolution
History, is made up of the bad actions of extraordinary men and woman. All the most noted destroyers and deceivers of our species, all the founders of arbitrary governments and false religions have been extraordinary people; and nine tenths of the calamities that have befallen the human race had no other origin than the union of high intelligence with low desires.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: History, Historians
If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Progress
Both in individuals, and in masses, violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate what we have over-praised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Army, The Military, Navy
Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Christianity, Religion, Christians
Obscurity and affectation are the two great faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasoning.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Style
History has its foreground and its background, and it is principally in the management of its perspective that one artist differs from another. Some events must be represented on a large scale, others diminished; the great majority will be lost in the dimness of the horizon, and a general idea of their joint effect will be given by a few slight touches.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: History
The real object of the drama is the exhibition of the human character.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Will without power is like children playing at soldiers.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: One liners
And she (the Roman Catholic Church) may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Religion
He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Art, Painting, Painters
Children, look in those eyes, listen to that dear voice, notice the feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that gentle hand! Make much of it while yet you have that most precious of all good gifts, a loving mother. Read the unfathomable love of those eyes; the kind anxiety of that tone and look, however slight your pain. In after life you may have friends, fond, dear friends, but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you, which none but a mother bestows.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Mother
A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Men naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Party