e conservatism. Strong affections are so admirable a
quality that we can pardon the man who loves well though not widely; and
if Macaulay had not a genuine fervour of regard for the little circle of
his intimates, there is no man who deserves such praise.

It is when we turn from Macaulay's personal character to attempt an
estimate of his literary position, that these faults acquire more
importance. His intellectual force was extraordinary within certain
limits; beyond those limits the giant became a child. He assimilated a
certain set of ideas as a lad, and never acquired a new idea in later
life. He accumulated vast stores of knowledge, but they all fitted into
the old framework of theory. Whiggism seemed to him to provide a
satisfactory solution for all political problems when he was sending his
first article to 'Knight's Magazine,' and when he was writing the last
page of his 'History.' 'I entered public life a Whig,' as he said in
1849, 'and a Whig I am determined to remain.' And what is meant by
Whiggism in Macaulay's mouth? It means substantially that creed which
registers the experience of the English upper classes during the four or
five generations previous to Macaulay. It represents, not the reasoning,
but the instinctive convictions generated by the dogged insistence upon
their privileges of a stubborn, high-spirited, and individually
short-sighted race. To deduce it as a symmetrical doctrine from abstract
propositions would be futile. It is only reasonable so far as a creed,
felt out by the collective instinct of a number of more or less stupid
people, becomes impressed with a quasi-rational unity, not from their
respect for logic, but from the uniformity of the mode of development.
Hatred to pure reason is indeed one of its first principles. A doctrine
avowedly founded on logic instead of instinct becomes for that very
reason suspect to it. Common-sense takes the place of philosophy. At
times this mass of sentiment opposes itself under stress of
circumstances to the absolute theories of monarchy, and then calls
itself Whiggism. At other times it offers an equally dogged resistance
to absolute theories of democracy, and then becomes nominally Tory. In
Macaulay's youth the weight of opinion had been slowly swinging round
from the Toryism generated by dread of revolution, to Whiggism generated
by the accumulation of palpable abuses. The growing intelligence and
more rapidly growing power of the middle classes