that assertion to contain a most important truth. But
in Macaulay's mind this sound doctrine seems to be confused with the
very questionable doctrine that in political questions there is no
philosophy at all. To appeal to experience may mean either to appeal to
facts so classified and systematically arranged as to illustrate general
truths, or to appeal to a mere mass of observations, without taking the
trouble to elicit their true significance, or even to believe that they
can be resolved into particular cases of a general truth. This is the
difference between an experimental philosophy and a crude empiricism.
Macaulay takes the lower alternative. The vigorous attack upon James
Mill, which he very properly suppressed during his life on account of
its juvenile arrogance, curiously illustrates his mode of thought. No
one can deny, I think, that he makes some very good points against a
very questionable system of political dogmatism. But when we ask what
are Macaulay's own principles, we are left at a stand. He ought, by all
his intellectual sympathies, to be a utilitarian. Yet he treats
utilitarianism with the utmost contempt, though he has no alternative
theory to suggest. He ends his first Essay against Mill by one of his
customary purple patches about Baconian induction. He tells us, in the
second, how to apply it. Bacon proposed to discover the principle of
heat by observing in what qualities all hot bodies agreed, and in what
qualities all cold bodies. Similarly, we are to make a list of all
constitutions which have produced good or bad government, and to
investigate their points of agreement and difference. This sounds
plausible to the uninstructed, but is a mere rhetorical flourish.
Bacon's method is admittedly inadequate for reasons which I leave to men
of science to explain, and Macaulay's method is equally hopeless in
politics. It is hopeless for the simple reason that the complexity of
the phenomena makes it impracticable. We cannot find out what
constitution is best after this fashion, simply because the goodness or
badness of a constitution depends upon a thousand conditions of social,
moral, and intellectual development. When stripped of its pretentious
phraseology, Macaulay's teaching comes simply to this: the only rule in
politics is the rule of thumb. All general principles are wrong or
futile. We have found out in England that our constitution, constructed
in absolute defiance of all _a priori_ reasoning