An Eminent Victorian on Trial (Hatchet Job Against Thomas Babington Macaulay)

Wall Street Journal ^ | December 6, 2009 | Andrew Roberts

[C19fan]

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) was an influential historian, minor Victorian politician and the author of India's legal code. His educational reforms in India are largely the reason why English is the tongue that unites the subcontinent today. His greatest literary legacy was the "History of England From the Accession of James II," which established the Whig or "progressive" view of history. In all, a life of influence in many spheres, and generally for the good.

................................

Yet despite almost superhuman diligence, Mr. Sullivan has a tin ear for Victorian discourse, both public and private, which has led him into making critical errors. Taking off a few days from footnote compilation to curl up with "Our Mutual Friend" or "Little Dorrit" would have saved him from several howlers.

[C19fan]

Sounds like the level of scholarship on par with those who claim Lincoln was gay because he shared a bed with another man when the practice was very common in the 19th century for the simple reason beds were expensive items.

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

It soon becomes clear that Mr. Sullivan has simply imposed 21st-century, post-Freudian interpretations on a normal 19th-century family.

I say, old man, jolly ridiculous, wot?

[Sherman Logan]

As eager to sniff out racism as Al Sharpton, Mr. Sullivan makes the case that Macaulay believed in distinctions of racial superiority—true as far as it goes, but it would be more impressive if Mr. Sullivan could name a Briton, as the empire reached it apogee at mid-century, who did not believe that way.

To hold such a belief required rejecting the scientific consensus of the day, which was unanimous in this belief.

Some few Britons and Americans did reject this consensus, but as far as I know every single one did so based on his belief in the Bible, not for scientific reasons.

I am continually amazed at the ability of those who claim to be moral relativists to nevertheless apply an absolute moral standard not only to today's issues but also those of the distant past.

[AnAmericanMother]

I don't care for Macaulay as a historian because he was a doctrinaire Whig who tended to get his facts wrong. But in all my years of reading British history, I never came across anything that even hinted at the nonsense the author of this biography puts out.

While Macaulay wasn't anti-Semitic, he was definitely anti-Catholic (as were most Englishmen of his day - it was mostly a political thing, not a religious one.) Maybe the author of the book, being at Georgetown, let his dislike for Macaulay's anti-Catholicism overpower his common sense.

Although in that case, as a gung-ho Catholic, he would be in the minority at Georgetown!

[Senator John Blutarski]

..... No turgid polemics here. The reviewer unmasks both book and author with an almost effortless flick of the literary wrist and delivers the death blow with perfect precision.

[AmericanVictory]

"Lars Porsena of Clusium, by the nine gods he swore, that the great house of Tarquin should suffer wrong no more."

Look who he heroized in his verse, Horatious at the Bridge. He was obviouisly an extremist.

[tal hajus]

“By the nine gods he swore it and named a trysting day, and bade his messengers ride out, east and west and north and south to summon his array.”
I had a great deal of the poem memorized but have let it slip over the years.