The Press.
London, England, 1853-12-31 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

like Burke and Sheridan showed when, in
various instances, trey refused to be dragged
after their ►arty. We often thought it a mis-
fortune in Mr. Macaulay's ease that he started in
political life on the crutches of patronage.
His stride would have been more manly, his
part inure resolute, if he had not been so much
the follower of the great Whig families, whom
he holds, as he himself says, "in reverence
and honour." Whatever the Duke of Bedford,
the Marquis of Lansdowne, and other great
Whig magnates have resolved to do will never
be opposed by Mr. Macaulay. It is very cu
lions, while England was heaving with agita-
tion on the occasion of the Papal aggression,
that Mr. Macaulay held his tongue. He never
uttered his "yea " or "nay." Every other
]►ublic character of note proclaimed his opinion,
hut Mr. Macaulay held his peace. Would a
man of strong volition and decided convic
tions have been content to allow the passions of
the country to be excited without his express-
ing his opinion one way or the other?
Turning from these circumstances to the
speeches " corrected by himself," we arc sur-
prised tA) find Mr. Macaulay so excessively bit-
ter in his mode of referring to the first pub-
lishers of his speeches. He says :

Unhappily an net for which the law affords no redress,
but which I have no hesitation in pronouncing to be a
gross injury to me and a gross fraud on the public, has
compelled me to do what l should never have done wit-
lingly. A bookseller, hawed Vizetelly, who seems to as-
pire to that sort of distinct' which Curll enjoyed a hun-
dred and twenty years ago, thought fit, without asking my
consent, without even giving me stay notice, to announce
an edition of toy speeches, and was not ashamed to tell
the world in his advertisement that be published them by
special licence.
- - - - -- •

There is too much wounded feeling in this
passage, and we certainly agree with those
who have termed it " undignified." Were not
the speeches of Chatham, Burke, Fox, Pitt,
Sheridan, Curran, Grattan, published to the
world without their permission ? Sheridan
was offered a thousand pounds for a copy of
the Begum speech " corrected by himself;"
but he never gave his own version, and spu-
rious copies have been for years. even to the
present day, in circulation. The right to
print speeches is undoubted, and for obvious
reasons. If a man be elected by the people
to discharge a public trust, him speeches deli-
vered in that capacity are clearly pro bow
publico. It would be a most unjust supposi-
tion to think that they were made for personal
purposes. The maker of the speeches is re-
compensed at the time by the applause be-
stowed on him, and the consideration given
to him. On the present question, Mr. Vize-
telly, the original publisher, has issued a cir-
cular from which we extract the following pas-
sage :

• * I ask your permission to be allowed to point out
to you that Mr. Macaulay's indignation is based upon the
misrepresentation that. I had undertaken to edit the edition
of his speeches which was printed by me from "Ranstults
Parliamentary Debates." From the titlepage and preface
to this edition, which I enclose, yon will see that I do not
apwar in any capacity, nor indeed does the edition profess
tote anything beyond a mere reprint from " liansord;"
consequently Mr. Macaulay's attack should have been di•
meted against the editor of "Hansard," if against any,
rather than myself. • • With regard to the übserva-
thins of a more personal character shielt Mr. Macaulay has
thought fit to indulge in, these I shall leave to be dealt
with, as advised, by a court of law.

We cannot, however, excuse Mr. Vizetelly for
having originally published advertisements
with the words "by xpecial penniasion," which
were calculated to mislead. But we appre-
hend that he will not again experiment in
printing the speeches of public men, People
will now wait for the " corrected " editions, so
that the " trade " will probably allow states-
men the custody of their own oratorical fame.

Of Mr. Macau !al.'s own " corrected" edition
we must say, that he has not given us a very
candid record of his speeches. We cannot
charge him with any alteration of what he has
spoken, but he is certainly obnoxious to the
imputation of having only " selected" such
speeches as would not be unpalatable to the
Earl of Aberdeen. Was it. fair in him to re-
print his personal invective against the Earl
of Ellenborough, and omit those severe and
galling attacks which he delivered against
Sir James Graham in the Post-oflice letter-
opening eases? We find in Vizetelly's edi-
tion a passage which we recollect ourselves
having heard, and we have a vivid recollection

SATURDAY,

of the expression of Sir James Graham's face
while it WuS being delivered:—
Some unhappy foreigner has come to our free land
and, relying upon the supposed good faith of the English
Post•ottice, writes to his friends with greater freedom than
he world otherwise have done, or than he would ever do
abroad. Then came the secretary of some foreign em-
bassy to the Secretary for the Home Department, applies
for information as to the contents of the letters of ter.
taro parties, which, on receiving, he sends over to the
native tiovernment of the unhappy foreigner, who carefully
lays it by. No evil consecrences result to the unfortunate
writer whilst he remains in this country ; but, at length,
unconscious of what awaits him, he goes back to his
native land—he actually walks into the lion's month, in
land where there is no jury to protect him ; and, upon
evidence got up in this manner, he is consigned, perhaps,
to the inside of a dungeon for life.

We remember also how Mr. Macaulay re-
turned again and again to the knout, and we
find him reported:—" I now say that there
is a wide difference between the conduct of
the right honourable baronet and that
of any persons who have
_preceded him"—
(Vizetelly, vol. ii., p. 107.) We find him also
omitting his zealous speech in 1833 advo-
cating the " Irish Coercion Bill," where ho
talked of " Experimentum in corpore vili."
We must. however, admit that he has faith-
fully reproduced his galling disparagement of
the late Sir Robert Peel. It is not too much
to say that the often-invoked personage, " an
intelligent foreigner," would, on reading Mr.
Macaulay's speeches, entertain a most odious
view of the late member for Tamworth. Again
and again he charges him with degrading con-
duct and disingenuous practices. We have
a lively recollection of those poignant articles
in which Air. Fonblanque so often branded
Sir Robert Peel as Joseph Surface and 3laster
; but Mr. Macaulay is still more bitter
in his charges. Observe the intense viru-
lence with which he records the silence of Sir
Robert Peel upon the question of the slave
trade :

I am sure that the right honourable baronet the First
Lord of the Treasury would think that I was speaking
ironically if I were to compliment him on his zeal for the
liberty of the negro race. Never once, dining the whole of
the long and obstinate conflict which ended in the abolition
of shivery in our colonies, (lid he give one word, one sign, of
encouragement to those who buttered and laboured for the
good cause. The whole weight of his great abilities and in-
fluence was in the other scale. I well remember that,so late
as 1833, he declared in this house that he could give his as-
sen t neither to the plan of immediate emancipation proposed
by my noble friend who now represents Sunderland, nor to
the plan of gradual emancipation proposed by Lord Grey's
Government. I well remember that he said. " I shallclaim
no credit hereafter on acconnt of this bill; nil that I desire
is to be alsa dyed from the responsibility." As to the other two
right honourable gentlemen whom I have mentioned, they
are West Indiana ; and their conduct wan that of West In-
dians. Ido not wish to give them pain, or to throw any
disgraceful imputation on them.
Observe, these are the words of the " cor-
rected" edition, and mark the contrasted force
in the last sentence—" throw any disgraceful im-
putation on them." While the " Uncle Tom's
Cabin" feverwas at its height, we should like to
have asked the subscribers to the Peel statues,
did they approve of Sir Robert's insensibility
to the sufferings of the dusky tribes of Africa ?
hut we pass on to other of the " disgraceful
imputations" which Mr. Macaulay so plenti-
fully showered upon Sir Robert Peel. We
will take them from the " corrected " edition.
Mr. Macaulay thus records the manner in
which Mr. Canning was " worried to death":—

Lord Grey and Lord Grenville endeavoured to do but a
very small part of what Mr. Pitt had thought right and ex
pedient ; and they were driven from office. Mr. Canning
took the same side ; and his reward was to be worried to
death by the party of which he was the brightest ornament.
At length,when he was gone, the Roman Catholics began to
look, not to Cabinets and Parliaments, but to themselves.
They displayed a formidable array of physical force, and
yet kept within, just within, the limits of the law. The
consequence was, that, in two year►. more than any pru-
dent friend had ventured to demand fro• them was granted
to them by their enemies. Yes ; within two years after
Mr. Canning had been laid in the transept near us. all
that he would have done, and more than he could have
done, was done by his persecutors. Bow was it possible
that the whole Roman Catholic population of Ireland
should not take up the notion that from England, or at.
least from the party which then governed and which now
governs England, nothing is to be got by reason, by en-
treaty, by patient endurance, but everything by intimidation ?

The Tory party must not be identified with
his " persecutors, ' or with having yielded to - in-
timidation. " Elsewhere Mr. Macaulay (p. 400)
sketches the political character of the member
for Tam worth :

The right honourable baronet will come down to make a
proposition conceived in the very spi►it of the motions