stocratic surroundings.

Macaulay was not always consistent with his own theories, however. For
instance, he was a firm believer in the progress of society and of
civilization. He saw the enormous gulf between the ninth and the
nineteenth centuries, and the unmistakable advance which, since the
times of Hildebrand, the world had made in knowledge, in the arts, in
liberty, and in the comforts of life, although the tide of progress had
its ebb and flow in different ages and countries. Yet when he cast his
eye on America, where perhaps the greatest progress had been made in the
world's history within fifty years, he saw nothing but melancholy signs
of anarchy and decay,--signs portending the collapse of liberty and the
triumph of ignorance and crime. Thus he writes in 1857 to an American
correspondent:--

"As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land,
your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring
population of the Old World; but the time will come when wages will be
as low, and will fluctuate as much, with you as with us. Then your
institutions will fairly be brought to the test. Distress everywhere
makes the laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen
with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous
iniquity that one man should have a million, while another cannot get a
full meal. In bad years there is plenty of grumbling here, and sometimes
a little rioting; but it matters little, for here the sufferers are not
the rulers. The supreme power is in the hands of a class deeply
interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order;
accordingly the malcontents are restrained. But with you the majority is
the government, and has the rich, who are always in a minority,
absolutely at its mercy. The day will come when the multitude of people,
none of whom has had more than a half a breakfast, or expects to have
more than a half a dinner, will choose a legislature. Is it possible to
doubt what sort of legislature will be chosen? On the one side is a
statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict
observance of the public faith; and on the other a demagogue ranting
about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody
should be permitted to drink champagne and ride in a carriage, while
thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries: which of the two
candidates is likely to be preferred by a working-man