, and none, perhaps,
have ever forgiven. There were many mornings when it was impossible for
him to allow the newspapers to lie about his sister's drawing-room.

The Editor of the Periodical which called itself, and had a right to
call itself, the "Friend of India," undertook to shame his brethren
by publishing a collection of their invectives; but it was very soon
evident that no decent journal could venture to foul its pages by
reprinting the epithets, and the anecdotes, which constituted the daily
greeting of the literary men of Calcutta to their fellow-craftsman of
the Edinburgh Review. But Macaulay's cheery and robust common sense
carried him safe and sound through an ordeal which has broken down
sterner natures than his, and embittered as stainless lives. The
allusions in his correspondence, all the more surely because they are
brief and rare, indicate that the torrent of obloquy to which he was
exposed interfered neither with his temper nor with his happiness; and
how little he allowed it to disturb his judgment or distort his public
spirit is proved by the tone of a State paper, addressed to the Court of
Directors in September 1836, in which he eagerly vindicates the freedom
of the Calcutta Press, at a time when the writers of that Press, on the
days when they were pleased to be decent, could find for him no milder
appellations than those of cheat, swindler, and charlatan.

"I regret that on this, or on any subject, my opinion should differ from
that of the Honourable Court. But I still conscientiously think that we
acted wisely when we passed the law on the subject of the Press; and
I am quite certain that we should act most unwisely if we were now to
repeal that law.

"I must, in the first place, venture to express an opinion that the
importance of that question is greatly over-rated by persons, even the
best informed and the most discerning, who are not actually on the spot.
It is most justly observed by the Honourable Court that many of the
arguments which may be urged in favour of a free Press at home do not
apply to this country. But it is, I conceive, no less true that scarcely
any of those arguments which have been employed in Europe to defend
restrictions on the Press apply to a Press such as that of India.

"In Europe, and especially in England, the Press is an engine of
tremendous power, both for good and for evil. The most enlightened
men, after long experience both of its salutary and of its pern