gave it at the same
time a more popular character than before. Macaulay's 'conversion' was
simply a process of swinging with the tide. The Clapham Sect, amongst
whom he had been brought up, was already more than half Whig, in virtue
of its attack upon the sacred institution of slavery by means of popular
agitation. Macaulay--the most brilliant of its young men--naturally cast
in his lot with the brilliant men, a little older than himself, who
fought under the blue and yellow banner of the 'Edinburgh Review.' No
great change of sentiment was necessary, though some of the old Clapham
doctrines died out in his mind as he was swept into the political
current.

Macaulay thus early became a thoroughgoing Whig. Whiggism seemed to him
the _ne plus ultra_ of progress: the pure essence of political wisdom.
He was never fully conscious of the vast revolution in thought which was
going on all around him. He was saturated with the doctrines of 1832. He
stated them with unequalled vigour and clearness. Anybody who disputed
them from either side of the question seemed to him to be little better
than a fool. Southey and Mr. Gladstone talked arrant nonsense when they
disputed the logical or practical value of the doctrines laid down by
Locke. James Mill deserved the most contemptuous language for daring to
push those doctrines beyond the sacred line. When Macaulay attacks an
old non-juror or a modern Tory, we can only wonder how opinions which,
on his showing, are so inconceivably absurd, could ever have been held
by any human being. Men are Whigs or not-Whigs, and the not-Whig is less
a heretic to be anathematised than a blockhead beneath the reach of
argument. All political wisdom centres in Holland House, and the
'Edinburgh Review' is its prophet. There is something in the absolute
confidence of Macaulay's political dogmatism which varies between the
sublime and the ridiculous. We can hardly avoid laughing at this
superlative self-satisfaction, and yet we must admit that it is
indicative of a real political force not to be treated with simple
contempt. Belief is power, even when belief is most unreasonable.

To define a Whig and to define Macaulay is pretty much the same thing.
Let us trace some of the qualities which enabled one man to become so
completely the type of a vast body of his compatriots.

The first and most obvious power in which Macaulay excelled his
neighbours was his portentous memory. He could assimilate printed pa