Thomas Babington Macaulay

Lore & Background

Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire on 25 October 1800, the son of Zachary Macaulay, a Scottish Highlander, who became a colonial governor and abolitionist, and Selina Mills of Bristol, a former pupil of Hannah More. They named their first child after his uncle Thomas Babington, a Leicestershire landowner and politician, who had married Zachary's sister Jean. The young Macaulay was noted as a child prodigy; as a toddler, gazing out of the window from his cot at the chimneys of a local factory, he is reputed to have asked his father whether the smoke came from the fires of hell. He was educated at a private school in Hertfordshire, and, subsequently, at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won several prizes, including the Chancellor's Gold Medal in June 1821, and where he in 1825 published a prominent essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Review. Macaulay did not study classical literature while at Cambridge, though he subsequently did when he was in India. In his letters he describes his reading of the Aeneid whilst he was in Malvern in 1851, and says he was moved to tears by Virgil's poetry. He taught himself German and was fluent in French. He studied law and in 1826 he was called to the bar, before he took more interest in a political career. Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review in 1827, and in a series of anonymous letters to The Morning Chronicle, censured the analysis of indentured labour by the British Colonial Office expert Colonel Thomas Moody, Kt. Macaulay's evangelical Whig father Zachary Macaulay, who desired a 'free black peasantry' rather than equality for Africans, also censured, in the Anti-Slavery Reporter, Moody's contentions. Macaulay, who did not marry nor have children, was rumoured to have fallen in love with Maria Kinnaird, who was the wealthy ward of Richard 'Conversation' Sharp. Macaulay's strongest emotional relationships were with his youngest sisters: Margaret, who died while he was in India, and Hannah, to whose daughter Margaret, whom he called 'Baba', he was also attached.

Reader's Guide

Macaulay in 1830 accepted the invitation of the Marquess of Lansdowne that he become Member of Parliament for the pocket borough of Calne. Macaulay's maiden speech in Parliament advocated abolition of the civil disabilities of the Jews in the UK. Macaulay's subsequent speeches in favour of parliamentary reform were commended. He became MP for Leeds subsequent to the 1833 enactment of the Reform Act 1832, by which Calne's representation was reduced from two MPs to one, and by which Leeds, which had not been represented before, had two MPs. Macaulay remained grateful to his former patron, Lansdowne, who remained his friend. Macaulay was Secretary to the Board of Control under Lord Grey from 1832 until he in 1833 required, as a consequence of the penury of his father, a more remunerative office, than that of the unremunerated office of an MP, from which he resigned after the passing of the Government of India Act 1833 to accept an appointment as first Law Member of the Governor-General's Council. In 1834 Macaulay went to India, where he served on the Supreme Council between 1834 and 1838. His Minute on Indian Education of February 1835 was primarily responsible for the introduction of Western institutional education to India. Macaulay recommended the introduction of the English language as the official language of secondary education instruction in all schools where there had been none before, and the training of English-speaking Indians as teachers. In his minute, he urged Lord William Bentinck, the then-Governor-General to reform secondary education on utilitarian lines to deliver 'useful learning', a phrase that to him was synonymous with Western culture. There was no tradition of secondary education in vernacular languages; the institutions supported by the East India Company taught either in Sanskrit or Persian. Hence, he argued, 'We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language.' Macaulay argued that Sanskrit and Persian were no more accessible than English to the speakers of the Indian vernacular languages and existing Sanskrit and Persian texts were of little use for 'useful learning'. In one of the less scathing passages of the Minute he wrote: 'I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I

Did You Know?

• He became MP for Calne in 1830 after accepting the invitation of the Marquess of Lansdowne.
• Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education of February 1835 led to the introduction of Western institutional education in India.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859) was a nineteenth century British poet, historian and Whig politician." — Thomas Babington Macaulay "Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war,And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre." — Thomas Babington Macaulay "The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion." — Thomas Babington Macaulay "Soon fades the spell, soon comes the night:Say will it not be then the same,Whether we played the black or white,Whether we lost or won the game?" — Thomas Babington Macaulay