And if the soul
of man is subject to other laws, is liable to sin, to sleep, to
anarchism or to suicide, then all sciences including politics may fall
as sterile and lie as fallow as before man's reason was made. Macaulay
seemed sometimes to talk as if clocks produced clocks, or guns had
families of little pistols, or a penknife littered like a pig. The other
view he held was the more or less utilitarian theory of toleration; that
we should get the best butcher whether he was a Baptist or a
Muggletonian, and the best soldier whether he was a Wesleyan or an
Irvingite. The compromise worked well enough in an England Protestant in
bulk; but Macaulay ought to have seen that it has its limitations. A
good butcher might be a Baptist; he is not very likely to be a Buddhist.
A good soldier might be a Wesleyan; he would hardly be a Quaker. For the
rest, Macaulay was concerned to interpret the seventeenth century in
terms of the triumph of the Whigs as champions of public rights; and he
upheld this one-sidedly but not malignantly in a style of rounded and
ringing sentences, which at its best is like steel and at its worst like
tin.
Pages:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34