Thomas Babington Macaulay

Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) was an English essayist and historian, born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, son of Zachary Macaulay the philanthropist, and so of Scottish descent. He graduated at Cambridge 1822, proving a brilliant debater in the Union, and became Fellow of Trinity in 1824. He was called to the bar in 1826, however, he preferred to follow literature, having already gained a footing by some poems in Knight's Quarterly and by his essay on "Milton" in the Edinburgh Review in 1825. In 1830, he entered Parliament for a pocket-borough, took an honourable part in the Reform debates, and in the new Parliament sat for Leeds. His family were now in straitened circumstances, and to be able to help them he went out to India as legal adviser to the Supreme Council. To his credit chiefly belongs the Indian Penal Code.

Returning in 1838, he represented Edinburgh in the Commons with five years' interval till 1856. The "Lays of Ancient Rome" appeared in 1842, his collected "Essays" in 1843, two years later he ceased writing for the Edinburgh. He was now working hard at his "History," of which the first two volumes attained a quite unprecedented success in 1848. Next year he was chosen Lord Rector of Glasgow University. The year 1855 saw the third and fourth volumes of his "History". In 1857, he was made a peer, and many other honours were showered upon him. With a tendency to too much declamation in style, a point of view not free from bias, and a lack of depth and modesty in his thinking, he yet attained a remarkable amount and variety of knowledge, great intellectual energy, and unrivalled lucidity in narration.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Everybody's business is nobody's business.

- attributed

• In every age, the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues.

- History of England

• The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.

- Hallam's Constitutional History in Historical Essays

• Then out spake brave Horatius,

The Captain of the Gate:
'To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods?'
- Horatius in Lays of Ancient Rome

• We have heard it said that five per cent is the natural interest of money.

- Southey's Colloquies on Society

• A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read.

- Gladstone on Church and State

John Henry Newman