before, if any one had expressed himself as plainly as
Macaulay did on entering Parliament, he would have had a taste of jail,
the hulks, or the pillory. So alert had the Government agents been for
sedition that to stick one's tongue in his cheek at a member of the
Cabinet was considered fully as bad as poaching, both being heinous
offenses before God and man. Persecution was in the air and tyranny
stalked abroad.

But tyranny is self-limiting. If laws are too severe, there will surely
come a time when they will not be observed, and history shows that the men
who have introduced the guillotine ended their careers in its embrace.

A change had come in England. The Tories were being jostled from their
seats, and the Whigs were just coming into power. Liberalism was abroad in
the land, and surely the time had come when a strong man might speak his
mind.

Macaulay was by nature a protester; he was "agin 'em"; and when he chose a
subject for his maiden speech he was not only sincere, but exceeding
politic. He guessed the lay of the land, and knew the direction of the
wind. Heresy was popular.

His address was in favor of an act removing the legal disabilities of
Jews. It was a plea for liberty, and such was the vigor, power and vivid
personality he threw into the address that he astonished the House and
brought in the loungers from the cloakrooms.

It was his only speech during the session. Efforts were made to get him on
his feet again, but he was too wise to lend the battery of his mind to any
commonplace theme. Only a subject such as might stir men's souls could
tempt him.

Wise Thomas Macaulay!

He had made a reputation as a writer by his first article, and after his
maiden speech all London chanted his praises as an orator. He practised
self-restraint and knew better than to dilute his fame by holding argument
with small men on little topics.

His first speech at the next session of Parliament only served to fix his
place as an orator more firmly. The immediate excuse was the "Reform
Bill"; but the subject was liberty, and literature and history were called
upon to furnish fire and supply the fuel for pyrotechnics. After its
delivery the Speaker sent for Macaulay and personally congratulated him on
making the most effective address to which he had listened for twenty-five
years. The House of Commons, ever willing and anxious to appropriate a
genius, being glutted by the dull and commonplace, sought in many ways