BOB'S BITS

[Stanley]

MACAULEY

From my early youth I have read with delight those histories which exhibit Liberty in its most exalted state, the annals of the Roman and the Greek republics. Studies like these excite that natural love of Freedom which lies latent in the breast of every rational being. Catharine Macauley, in the foreword to the first volume of her History of England (8 vols., 1763-1783).

To write such a history was an audacious undertaking for a young woman in George III’s England. And she kept at it, through a short but happy marriage and a long widowhood. Along the way, Macauley considered who rightly belonged to that class of “every rational being.” As she wrote her history and observed the events of her own times, she concluded that “every rational being” included all adult persons, male or female, rich or poor, aristocratic or of the common herd. So she qualified as a radical democrat--and a well-read one. One of four children of John Sawbridge and Dorothy Wanley, born on April 2, 1731, Catherine Macauley inherited her share of two banking fortunes, which helped, and even more to the point read voraciously through her family library. That became a lifelong habit and was the main source of her self-confidence. When, newly married, she started on her History, she went to the then new British Museum to read the correspondence of King James I and his lover-confidante the Duke of Buckingham. The librarian thought much of it too racy for a young gentlewoman, to which Catherine is said to have replied “Phoo!” She read all the letters, not to gather evidence of their sexual liaisons, but to establish them as co-conspirators against the cause of English liberty. She continued on that course throughout all her History, then continued it with a subsequent volume (written in epistolary form) in which she dismissed the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 as an inglorious compact between a still-too-powerful crown and a grasping, easily manipulated political class. So it’s not easy to see Macauley as a “whig” historian, though many do. The American and then the French Revolution offered better hopes, and she entered upon the pamphlet wars of the time in hopes of real progress in empowering “every rational being” to assume their proper place in government. So it is as well to see Macauley as a political philosopher, certainly not ‘just’ an historian. Her advocacy of the American cause put her at odds with England’s governing consensus. Her early support of the French Revolution brought her into open conflict with the patron saint of conservatism, Edmund Burke. Macauley was not a majoritarian democrat. Better civil education was needed to bring the many-headed up to speed. Nor was she a feminist. But there’s evidence that Catherine Macauley’s radicalism (and her gender) inspired such as Mary Wollstonecroft and Mercy Otis Warren to examine the gender implications of radical egalitarianism. As for Macauley, her contributions to the process ended with her death, at 60, after her celebratory tour of the new republic across the Atlantic. ©