Let us glance at his other achievements and take some
note of his equipment.
Macaulay was a man of remarkable vitality and energy,
and though he died early, in his sixtieth year, he began his
work early and continued it with unabated vigor to the end.
But his work, voluminous as it is, represents only one side of
his activity. There was the burden, assumed while yet a
young man, of repairing his father's broken fortunes and
providing for the family of younger brothers and sisters.
This burden was assumed cheerfully, but it entailed heavy
responsibilities for one so young. It forced him to seek
salaried positions, such as the post of bankruptcy com
missioner, when lie might have been more congenially em
ployed. Then there were the many years spent in the service
of the government as a Whig member of the House of
Commons and as a cabinet minister during the exciting
period of the Reform 13111 and the Anti-Corn-Law League,
with all that such service involved, study of politics, can
vassing, speech-making in Parliament and out, reading and
making reports, endless committee meetings, endless
sessions. There were the three years spent in India, drafting
a penal code, and there was, first and last, the acquisition of
the knowledge that made possible this varied activity, the
years at the University, the study of law and jurisprudence,
the reading of entire national literatures, the ransadking of
libraries and the reading of hundreds of manuscripts in the
the course of historical research. We may well be astonished
that the man who could do all these things in the course of
an average lifetime could find time to produce so mucl►
literature of his own.
That literature may be divided in to at least five di visions.
First, the essays, which lie produced at intervals all through
life. Second, the speeches which he delivered on the floor of
Parliament between his first election in 1830 and his last in
1852, rank very high. Then the Indian Penal Code, not