The Sun.
London, England, 1862-11-28 00:00:00

BLACKWOOD ON MACAULAY.

Tickler—" You will laugh when I say it, but do you
know it is a plain, simple fact that this Tom Macaulay put
me much more in mind of the Jeffrey of ten years ago than
did the Jeffrey tpsissimus of hodie."
North—" You pay Mr. Macaulay a high compliment—
the highest, I think, he has ever met with,"
Tickler—" Not quite ' • for it is the fashion, among a cer-
tain coterie at least, to talk of him as 'the Burke of our
age.' However, he is certainly a very clever fellow, the
cleverest declaimer by far on that side of the house; and,
had he happened to be a somebody, we should, no doubt,
have seen Tom in high places ere now."
North—" A son of old Zachary, I believe ? Is he like
the papa ?"
Tickler—" So I have heard, But I never saw the senior,
of whom some poetical planter has so unjustifiably sung :
" ' How smooth, persuasive, plausible and glib,
From holy lips has dropped the precious fib.'
The son is an ugly, cross-made, splay-footed, shapeless
little dumpling of a fellow, with a featureless face, too—
except, indeed, a good expansive forehead—sleek, puritani-
cal, sandy hair; large glimmering eyes, and a mouth from
ear to ear. He has a lisp and a burr, moreover, and
speaks thickly and huskily for several minutes before he
gets into the swing of his discourse ; but after that
nothing can be more dazzling than his execution. What
he says is substantially, of course, mere stuff and nonsense ;
but it is so well worded and so volubly and forcibly deli-
vered—there is such an endless string of epigrams and
antitheses—such a flashing of epithets, such an accumula-
tion of images ; and the voice is so trumpet-like, and the
action so grotesquely emphatic, that you might hear a pin
drop in the house. Manners Sutton himself listens. It is
obvious that he has got the main parts, at least, by heart ;
but for this I give him the more praise and glory. Alto-
gether the impression on my mind was very much beyond
what I had been prepared for ; so much so that I can
honestly and sincerely say I felt for his situation most
deeply when Peel was skinning him alive the next even-
ing, and the sweat of agony kept pouring down his well-
bronzed cheeks under the merciless infliction."

North—" The feeling does credit to your heart. Have
you read his article on Byron in the Edinburgh ?"
Tickler—" Not I. I wonder how many articles on Byron
we ate expected to read. Is there to be no end to this jab-
ber—this brainless botheration about a case as plain as a
pike-staff, and that lies, too, in a nutshell ?"
North—" Macaulay's paper is, however, an exceedingly
clever thing, and you ought to glance your eye over it. The
Edinburgh has had nothing so good these many years past.
In fact, it reads very like a paper in one of their early num-
bers ; much the same sort of excellence; the smart, rapid,
popgun impertinence; the brisk,airy, new-set truisms, min-
gled with cold, shallow, heartless sophistries ; the conceited
phlegm, the affected abruptness, the unconscious audacity of
impudence ; the whole lively and amusing, and much com-
mended among the dowagers."

On the passing of the Reform Bill he was, after a severe
contest, returned for. Leeds, when he assumed an extremely
independent tone. In one of his letters during that period
we find the following remarks on

"BEGGING FOR VOTES."

"My dear am truly happy to find that the opinion
of my friends at Leeds on the subject of canvassing agrees
with that which I have long entertained. The practice of
begging for votes is, as it seems to me absurd, pernicious,
and altogether at variance with the true principles of repre-
sentative government. 'The suffrage of an elector ought
not to be asked or to be given as a personal favour. It is
as much for the interest of constituents to choose well as it
can be for the interest of a candidate to be chosen. To re-
quest an honest man to vote according to his conscience is
superfluous. To request him to vote against his conscience
is an insult."

He was now made Secretary to the Board of Control,with a
salary of £l,BOO a year, and on the appointment of a law
commission to inquire into the jurisdiction, fige., of existing
courts of justice and police establishments in India, he was
made ordinary Member of the Council and President of the
Law Commission with a salary of £lO,OOO a year. In India,
where his fame had preceded him, his arrival created a
great sensation, though his legislative powers were ques-
tioned, and his career there seems, upon the whole, to have
been by no means a popular one. One law, however, met
with general approval—the establishment of one universal
system of Indian coinage; but some of his measures were
severely reprobated. At length, however, the labours of
the Law Commission came to an end, and the Penal Code
in 26 chapters, with numerous illustrations, was produced.
Some of the latter the writer gives, premising that they
"certainly appear too trivial and absurd for serious
legislation :"