{"id":18608,"date":"2023-08-30T12:08:28","date_gmt":"2023-08-30T16:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=18608"},"modified":"2026-02-13T12:44:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:44:24","slug":"macaulay-and-my-75-cent-epiphanies-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/30\/macaulay-and-my-75-cent-epiphanies-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Macaulay and My 75-Cent Epiphanies, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a>

c copyright 2023 James Bovard<\/p><\/div>\n

Macaulay and My 75-Cent Epiphanies, Part 1<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

Fearing that my writing style was becoming anemic, I recently sought a literary booster shot from my bookshelves<\/strong>. Happily, a dozen volumes of Thomas Macaulay awaited me. Macaulay made history mesmerizing, and I have been captivated by his speed, grace, and wit for 40 years.<\/p>\n

Macaulay helped me recognize the paltry prevailing standards for political reasoning.<\/span>
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Nobody would mistake my shelf of Macaulay books for leather-bound collector items. In 1981, I picked up a four-volume set of his essays for 75 cents from a \u201cdiscard\u201d book sale outside McKeldin Library on the University of Maryland campus. Those volumes were too ratty for a cat to drag into a house. Two of the volumes had cracked spines and were held together with masking tape. Having been raised in the mountains of Virginia, I knew exactly how to upgrade them. I replaced the masking tape with duct tape. Having a \u201clibrary discard\u201d set zapped any hesitation to annotate the hell out of the crinkly old pages.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was a pirate edition of Macaulay\u2019s essays. A Philadelphia printer published the collection in 1842, at a time when Macaulay prohibited his essays from being republished in England. After the pirate edition (no royalties were paid to the author) began being imported into London, Macaulay relented and brought out the essays in Britain, providing an immense blessing for readers everywhere. Friedrich Hayek, in a footnote to his The Constitution of Liberty<\/i>, hailed \u201cMacaulay\u2019s success in making the achievement of the constitutional struggles of the past once more a living possession of every educated Englishman\u201d in bygone times.<\/p>\n

Swooning for Macaulay\u2019s masterful prose<\/b><\/h2>\n

Those four volumes complimented a battered 1860 volume of his essays that I snared for 25 pence in 1977 in Cambridge, England, during a summer spent hitchhiking around Europe. That volume included early vociferous pieces that Macaulay himself sought to suppress.<\/p>\n

Macaulay was the Mike Tyson of book reviewers, busting heads left and right.<\/strong> He immortalized one Tory anti-Catholic bigot: \u201cHe foams at the mouth with the love of truth<\/strong>.\u201d He lampooned an overheated paternalist: \u201cHis artillery \u2026 is composed of two sorts of pieces, pieces which will not go off at all, and pieces which go off with a vengeance, and recoil with most crushing effect upon himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

He derided England\u2019s Poet Laureate: \u201cWhat theologians call the spiritual sins are his cardinal virtues \u2014 hatred, pride, and the insatiable thirst for vengeance\u2026. \u2018I do well to be angry,\u2019 seems to be the predominant feeling of his mind.\u201d The first part of that description fits many political zealots nowadays. The second line could serve as a motto for people endlessly agitated by a recent president.<\/p>\n

Macaulay vehemently denounced the oppressive, archaic laws of England that brutalized the downtrodden: \u201cWe see the barbarism of the thirteenth century and the highest civilization of the nineteenth century side by side; and we see that the barbarism belongs to the government, and the civilization to the people.\u201d In his 1839 essay on \u201cChurch and State,\u201d Macaulay declared: \u201cIt is mere foolish cruelty to provide penalties which torment the criminal without preventing the crime.\u201d I recycled that one-sentence refutation of the U.S. drug war in several articles in the 1980s and 1990s. Unfortunately, politicians profit from tormenting drug users regardless of the vast collateral damage of the war on drugs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Macaulay understood economics and pilloried protectionism at every chance.<\/strong> In 1824, he lamented, \u201cFree trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country, unpopular.<\/strong>\u201d He recognized that voluntary exchange is by definition mutually beneficial: \u201cTo trade with civilized men is infinitely more profitable than to govern savages.<\/strong>\u201d He also appreciated how renegades spurred reform: \u201cMany absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler<\/strong>.\u201d It is unclear whether Macaulay knew that clashes between British troops and Bostonians commenced after the seizure of a ship named \u201cLiberty,\u201d which John Hancock, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, used for smuggling.<\/p>\n

One of my biggest surprises in reading Macaulay was learning how pro-government balderdash is perpetually recycled throughout history.<\/strong> In his 1830 essay on Robert Southey\u2019s Colloquies on Society, Macaulay mocked faith in taxation:<\/p>\n

In every season of distress which we can remember, Mr. Southey has been proclaiming that it is not from economy, but from increased taxation, that the country must expect relief; A people, he tells us, may be too rich: a government cannot: for a government can employ its riches in making the people richer\u2026. We are really at a loss to determine whether Mr. Southey\u2019s reason for recommending large taxation is that it will make the people rich, or that it will make them poor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Macaulay followed up by impaling the delusion that government intervention is the magic cornucopia to produce prosperity:<\/p>\n

In a bad age, the fate of the public is to be robbed. In a good age, it is much milder \u2014 merely to have the dearest and the worst of everything. We firmly believe, that five hundred thousand pounds subscribed by individuals for railroads or canals, would produce more advantage to the public, than five millions voted by Parliament for the same purpose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A ten-to-one ratio of benefits from government vs. private spending was par for the boondoggles I investigated in the Reagan era and beyond. I used the \u201cbad age\u201d quote to anchor the conclusion of a 1986 Cato policy analysis on \u201cThe Continuing Failure of Foreign Aid.\u201d Neither my analysis nor endless Inspector General demolitions of failed projects slowed the foreign-aid gravy train.<\/p>\n

Another Macaulay phrase provided a lodestar for my attacks on agricultural subsidies. As I wrote in my 1989 book, The Farm Fiasco<\/i>, \u201cFarm aid is based on the old superstition that \u2018no money can set industry in motion till it has been taken by the tax-gatherer out of one man\u2019s pocket and put into another man\u2019s pocket.\u2019\u201d Any farm handout that made voters or donors grateful was a good investment for congressmen. Because politicians didn\u2019t pay the price of foolish policies, they had no incentive to cease repeating nitwit interventions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the final pages of my 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty<\/i>, I could not resist roping in my favorite essayist: \u201cGovernment should be organized solely with a view to its main end; and no part of its efficiency for that end should be sacrificed in order to promote any other end however excellent.\u201d I set up that quote with my own swing at an epigram: \u201cAmerica needs fewer laws, not more prisons.\u201d Unfortunately, no leash can stop politicians from launching crusades for which government has no competence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Macaulay\u2019s continued relevance<\/b><\/h2>\n

Macaulay\u2019s essays offer antidotes for the new mania for government crackdowns on \u201cmisinformation.\u201d<\/strong> He skewered the notion that governments possessed latent wisdom: \u201cNone of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords \u2026 much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbors.\u201d In an 1830 essay, he explained why nothing good should be expected from officialdom \u201cfixing\u201d public opinion: \u201cGovernment, as government, can bring nothing but the influence of hopes and fears to support its doctrines. It carries on controversy, not with reasons, but with threats and bribes\u2026. Thus, instead of a contest between argument and argument, we have a contest between argument and force.\u201d Unfortunately, today\u2019s zealots are thrilled to use government force to win any argument. In an 1839 essay, Macaulay warned, \u201cThose who preach to rulers the duty of employing power to propagate truth would do well to remember that falsehood, though no match for truth alone, has often been found more than a match for truth and power together.\u201d The vast secrecy regime of the federal government props up far more falsehoods than citizens suspect.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Macaulay helped me recognize the paltry prevailing standards for political reasoning.<\/strong> He gained early fame in part from a series of attacks on Utilitarians, a new political sect that claimed their phrase \u201cgreatest happiness for the greatest number\u201d solved the mysteries of the political universe. Many Utilitarians were poorly read devotees who \u201cdelighted to be rescued from the sense of their own inferiority by some teacher who \u2026 puts five or six phrases into their mouths \u2026 and transforms them into philosophers,\u201d Macaulay wrote. He derided their reliance on deductive, evidence-free argument, which he labeled \u201creasoning utterly unfit for moral and political discussions.\u201d Utilitarians failed to recognize that \u201clogic has its illusions as well as rhetoric, that a fallacy may lurk in a syllogism as well as in a metaphor.\u201d He wrapped up with a taunt that also applies to contemporary political science, castigating \u201cthat slovenliness of thinking which is often concealed beneath a peculiar ostentation of logical neatness.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Macaulay became a Member of Parliament in 1830, he openly denigrated legislative imbecility: \u201cNothing is so ill-made in our island as the laws.\u201d That line should have been carved above the entrance of the U.S. Capito<\/strong>l. He had no patience for pablum about \u201cthe best and the brightest\u201d: \u201cNine-tenths of the calamities which have befallen the human race had any other origin than the union of high intelligence with low desires.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Macaulay vigorously opposed universal suffrage because he believed poor people would use their votes to plunder everyone else. He warned in 1840: \u201cWhile property is insecure, it is not in the power of the finest soil, or of the moral or intellectual constitution of any country, to prevent the country sinking into barbarism. On the other hand, while property is secure, it is not possible to prevent a country from advancing in prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Private property still exists despite universal suffrage, but politicians are continually whittling down citizens\u2019 right to retain their earnings and control their own turf. Politicians are dividing Americans into two classes \u2014 those who work for a living and those who vote for a living<\/strong>. Maybe Macaulay\u2019s warnings helped spur my most widely quoted line: \u201cDemocracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all of my Macaulay volumes were tattered. Shortly after I dropped out of Virginia Tech, I purchased a five-volume set of his History of England<\/i> (another bootleg production by a Philadelphia printer). The $5 price seemed extravagant back when a six-pack of beer was only 99 cents, but wisdom never comes cheap. When I first read those volumes, I was enthralled by the vivid portrayal of the long fight of the English people against oppressive kings. But I reckoned that modern Americans would not need the lessons on torture and habeas corpus.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But 9\/11 proved me wrong.<\/p>\n

The Liberty Fund has kindly posted free copies of Macaulay\u2019s essays in its Online Library of Liberty<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published in the August 2023 edition of<\/em> Future of Freedom<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Macaulay and My 75-Cent Epiphanies, Part 1 by James Bovard Fearing that my writing style was becoming anemic, I recently sought a literary booster shot from my bookshelves. Happily, a dozen volumes of Thomas Macaulay awaited me. Macaulay made history mesmerizing, and I have been captivated by his speed, grace, and wit for 40 years. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2296,52,1205,161,441,3866,2302,3868,3869,494,443,3867,75],"class_list":["post-18608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-classics","tag-democracy","tag-england","tag-hayek","tag-history","tag-legislatures","tag-macaulay","tag-parliament","tag-pirated-edition","tag-protectionism","tag-tariffs","tag-university-of-maryland","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"\nMacaulay and My 75-Cent Epiphanies, Part 1 - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Thomas Macaulay's essays provided a literary booster shot when my own writing style bordered on anemic.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/30\/macaulay-and-my-75-cent-epiphanies-part-1\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Macaulay and My 75-Cent Epiphanies, Part 1 - 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