onal minds,
and it was, moreover, an obvious absurdity to have one system of voting
prevailing in this constituency and a totally different system
prevailing in another. Therefore Lord Grey and Lord John Russell
cannot be censured for their resolve to abolish the fancy franchises
altogether. They were introducing an entirely new constitutional
system, and it was evident that in the new system there must be some
uniform principle as to the franchise. But it is none the less certain
that the men who were disfranchised by an Act professedly brought in to
extend the suffrage must have felt that they had good reason to
complain of its direct effect upon themselves and upon what they
believed to be their rights. Nearly forty years of agitation had yet
to be gone through before the principal deficiencies in the Reform Act
of 1833 were supplied by Liberal and Tory legislation.

Before closing this chapter of history it is fitting to take notice of
the fact that the debates on the Reform Bill gave opportunity for the
public opening of a great career in {184} politics and in
literature--the career of Lord Macaulay. [Sidenote: 1832--Thomas
Babington Macaulay] Thomas Babington Macaulay was a new member of the
House of Commons when the first Reform Bill was introduced by Lord John
Russell. He was the son of Zachary Macaulay, who was famous in his
day, and will always be remembered as the high-minded philanthropist
and the energetic and consistent opponent of slavery and the slave
trade. Macaulay the son had, from his earliest years, given evidence
of precocious and extraordinary intelligence and versatility. When he
entered Parliament he found that his fame had gone before him, but his
friends were not quite certain whether he was to be poet, essayist,
historian, or political orator. As years went on, he proved that he
could write brilliant and captivating poems; that he could turn out
essays which had a greater fascination for the public than many of the
cleverest novels; that he could write history which set critics
disputing, but which everybody had to read; and that he could deliver
political speeches in the House of Commons which, when correctly
reproduced from the newspapers, appeared to belong to the highest class
of Parliamentary eloquence. It may well be questioned whether any man
could possibly attain supreme success in the four fields in which, from
time to time, Macaulay appeared to be successful. At present w