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In the meantime we find he read continually. Indeed, about the only bad habit this man had was reading. He read to excess–he read everything and read all the time. He read novels, history, poetry, and dived deeply into the dead languages, reading Plutarch’s Lives twice in a year, and Euripides, Thucydides, Homer, Cicero, Caesar–all without special aim or end. Such a restless appetite for reading is apt to produce mental dyspepsia, and is not at all to be advised for average people; and the probabilities are that even in Macaulay’s case his time might often have been better spent in meditation.

In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven appeared in the “Review” the “Essay on Mill.” Like all of Macaulay’s articles it reveals a wealth of learning and bristles with information on many themes. It often seems as if Macaulay took a subject simply to execute a learned war-dance around it. The article on Mill is a good example of merely touching the central theme and then going off into by-lanes of economics, history and civil government, with endless allusions to literature, poetry, art and philosophy. It is all intensely interesting, closely woven, often gorgeous in its coloring; and “style” runs like a thread of gold through it all.

Shortly after this article appeared, Lord Lansdowne intimated to the young writer that he would like the honor of introducing him into public life, and if agreeable he could arrange for him to stand for Parliament in the vacant seat of Calne.

Calne was one of those vest-pocket boroughs, owned by a single man, of which England has so many. The people think they choose their representative, but they do not, any more than we do in America. The government by the Boss and for the Boss is no new institution. Macaulay presented himself and was elected without opposition. And so before his thirtieth year he found himself on the flood-tide of national politics.

Fifteen years before, if any one had expressed himself as plainly as Macaulay did on entering Parliament, he would have had a taste of jail, the hulks, or the pillory. So alert had the Government agents been for sedition that to stick one’s tongue in his cheek at a member of the Cabinet was considered fully as bad as poaching, both being heinous offenses before God and man. Persecution was in the air and tyranny stalked abroad.

But tyranny is self-limiting. If laws are too severe, there will surely come a time when they will not be observed, and history shows that the men who have introduced the guillotine ended their careers in its embrace.

A change had come in England. The Tories were being jostled from their seats, and the Whigs were just coming into power. Liberalism was abroad in the land, and surely the time had come when a strong man might speak his mind.

Macaulay was by nature a protester; he was “agin ’em”; and when he chose a subject for his maiden speech he was not only sincere, but exceeding politic. He guessed the lay of the land, and knew the direction of the wind. Heresy was popular.

His address was in favor of an act removing the legal disabilities of Jews. It was a plea for liberty, and such was the vigor, power and vivid personality he threw into the address that he astonished the House and brought in the loungers from the cloakrooms.

It was his only speech during the session. Efforts were made to get him on his feet again, but he was too wise to lend the battery of his mind to any commonplace theme. Only a subject such as might stir men’s souls could tempt him.

Wise Thomas Macaulay!

He had made a reputation as a writer by his first article, and after his maiden speech all London chanted his praises as an orator. He practised self-restraint and knew better than to dilute his fame by holding argument with small men on little topics.