Welsh Journals

for 'Poetry is the best garb for panegyric, and princes have it in their power to be good patrons'. 94 Yet although Mrs. Macaulay was anxious to clear herself from the charge of being a 'bloody-minded Republican', she remained impenitent in her political outlook and in the slant which she gave to her History. In the later, no less than in the earlier, volumes there are many references to current political problems. To destroy corruption, Mrs. Macaulay was in favour of abolishing pocket boroughs and increasing the number of county members; and of extending the franchise. She also recommended the Harringtonian device of secret ballot.95 The 'prerogative of making patent Peers', she thought, was 'one of the most noxious parts of the monarchical power in this kingdom'. 'If there have been any individuals in this country who have not bartered their principles and betrayed the public, for the cap and courtesy which titles gain from the vulgar, and for the enjoyment of that enchanting stile of address which my Lord, and your Lordship, gives, I must own to you they have not yet come to my knowledge'. 96 The National Debt, she thought, made 'gentlemen of estates in effect but tenants' of the monied men. It has produced 'a brood of usurers, brokers, and stock-jobbers, who preyed upon the vitals of their country', and is a prime cause of the prevalent system of corruption.97 'A system of corruption began at the very period of the Revolution' of 1688; 'the motive for contention between whig and tory was merely the enjoyment of power and the lucre of office'; so 'the nation reaped no benefit from oppositions conducted on no one principle of public good'.98 'Under the whig banners the churchmen and the dissenters of all denomina- tions united their efforts to hand down the invaluable blessing of being bought and sold to the latest posterity'.99 She praised Walpole's excise (a tax favoured by Harrington), and approved of Chatham in his early days, but even he had 'to sacrifice to the prejudices of the sovereign all those popular principles which had raised him to the highest pitch of public favour and esteem'.100 94 Ibid., IV, 8. Unlike the later view that all poets are natural Jacobins, Mrs. Macaulay thought that 'poets in general are, of all people, the least tenacious of popular privileges, and the most ignorant in matters of policy. The flights of poetic fancy are too wild for the exercise of subjects bound within the limits of rationality, fitness, convenience, and use'. Of whom was she thinking? 95 Ibid., VIII, 330. 94 History of England from the Revolution, p. 288, cf. History, IV, 355. 97 History of England from the Revolution, pp. 82-83. Much of this recalls Swift. Opposition to victorious Whiggery could develop either into Toryism or into radicalism. 98 Observations on a Pamphlet, Entitled, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, PP. 12-15; History of England from the Revolution, p. 182. 99 Ibid., p. 372. 100 Ibid., p. 372; History, VIII. 335.