Macaulay: Defender of Capitalism; B. Bartlett

In 1857 he was raised to the peer age, died in 1859, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Like Lord Acton, Lord Mac aulay is an outstanding represent ative of the Whig tradition and true liberalism in the nineteenth Mr. Bartlett is a graduate student in history at Georgetown University. 272 Macaulay: Defender of Capitalism BRUCE BARTLETT Thomas Babington Macaulay century. In his works he constant ly stressed the history of liberty as fundamental to human prog ress. Consequently, he w1as also a strong supporter of capitalism and laissez-faire, both in his writing and in numerous speeches before Parliament. His most vigorous ef fort was in a review of Robert Southey's Colloquies on Society for the Edinburgh Review in January, 1830. Southey was Poet Laureate of England at the time. In 1829, how ever, he had temporarily aband oned his poetry to. take up social commentary. Ostensibly, his book was only a coIIection of conversa tions between himself and the ghost of Sir Thomas More; but this was only a literary device to aIIow him to present his own 1975 MACAULAY: DEFENDER OF CAPITALISM 273 opInIons about society in general.

Macaulay easily saw through this and took Southey firmly to task for this departure from his poetry: "It would be scarcely possible for a man of Mr. Southey's talents and acquirements to write two volumes so large as those before us, which should be wholly desti tute of information and amuse ment. Yet we do not remember to have read with so little satisfac tion any equal quantity of matter, written by any man of real abili ties. We have, for some time past, observed with great regret the strange infatuation which leads the Poet Laureate to abandon those departments of literature in which he might excel, and to lec ture the public on sciences of which he still has the very alpha bet to learn. He has now, we think, done his worst." From this opening barrage, Ma caulay went on in similar style to review all of Southey's pronounce ments. Today they would be con sidered left-wing, but in his time Southey was considered the voice of ultra-Toryism. His brand of Tory conservatism taught that all in the past was good, and there fore, he was contemptuous of any change. In a time of rapid social change brought on by the Indus trial Revolution, Southey wanted government to control undesirable trends. He was particularly incensed by the growing prosperity of the new capitalist class.

His distaste for the capitalist was a logical consequence of his conservatism. He hated seeing "common" men with wealth which had heretofore been reserved only for the aristocracy. Southey also hated the source of this new wealth, rooted as it was, not in large land holdings, but in fac tories. To Southey, this new manu facturing system was "a system more tyrannical than that of the feudal ages, a system of actual servitude, a system which destroys the bodies and degrades the minds of those who are engaged in it." Worse Off Without Factories Macaulay's reasoning, rooted much more thoroughly in reality, was that without the factory sys-· tern there would be mass starva tion. "When we compare our own condition with that of our ances tors," he said, "we think it clear that the advantages arising from the progress of civilisation have far more than counter-balanced the disadvantages arising from the progress of population. While our numbers have increased ten-fold, our wealth has increased a hun dred-fold." Macaulay went on to remark that it was the very in crease in wealth which had brought on the complaints of industriali zation. Where wealth is great, he 274 THE FREEMAN May said, suffering is more obvious and thus, more loudly bewailed.

With the wealth of ind ustriali zation spreading rapidly to all classes of society, Southey was also concerned that government was not getting its share. Thus his favorite theme is that a people may be too rich, but a government cannot be. "A state," he says, Hcannot have more wealth at its command than may be employed for general good, a liberal expendi ture in national works being one of the surest means of promoting national prosperity; and the bene fit being still more obvious, of an expenditure directed to the pur poses of national improvement. But a people may be too rich." Needless to say, Macaulay has a field day with such absurd logic, in spite of which it has survived to the present day in John Ken neth Galbraith's The Affluent So ciety . "What does he mean by na tional prosperity?" Macaulay asks. "Does he mean the wealth of the state? If so, his reasoning runs thus: The more wealth a state has the better; for the more wealth a state has the more wealth it will have. This is surely something like that fallacy, which is ungal lantly termed a lady's reason. If by national prosperity he means the wealth of the people,· of how gross a contradiction is Mr. South ey guilty. A people, he tells us, may be too rich; a government cannot; for a government can em ploy its riches in making the peo ple richer. The wealth of the peo ple is to be taken from them be cause they have too much, and laid out in works, which will yield them more."

"We are really at a loss," he concludes, "to determine whether Mr. Southey's reason for recom mending large taxation is that it will make the people rich, or that it will make them poor. But we are sure that, if his object is to make them rich, he takes the wrong course." No Faith in Public Works It is clear from this that Mac aulay has no belief in the virtues of public works; particularly when government competes with private business. In this respect, he fol lows closely the reasoning of the classical economists that no one will invest in a free market with out the expectation of profit. When government invests tax money, however, there will be no such ex pectation. Thus, with private in vestment there is a direct corre lation between the motives of the investor and the utility of the work. The government does not invest to fill an .economic· need, but only a political one. To Mac aulay, this results in ostentatious architecture, great roads in small 1975 MACAULAY: DEFENDER OF CAPITALISM 275 towns, and canals built in some re mote province. "The fame of pub lic works," therefore, "is a much less certain test of their utili ty than the amount of toll collected at them."

Government spending could also be certain to attract a multitude of vultures to prey on· the public treasury: "In a corrupt age, there will be direct embezzlement. In the purest age, there will be abund ance of jobbing ... In a bad age, the fate of the public is to be robbed outright. In a good age, it is merely to have the dearest and the worst of everything." The aim should be to confine government building to legitimate government needs. "Buildings for state pur poses the state must erect," Mac aulay said. "And there we think that, in general, the state ought to stop. We firmly believe that five hundred thousand pounds sub scribed by individuals for .rail roads or canals would produce more advantage to the public than five millions voted by Parliament for the same purpose." The King Knows Best Macaulay finally boiled South ey's system down to one funda mental principle: "That no man can do anything so well for him self as his rulers, be they who they may, can do it for him, and that a government approaches nearer and nearer to perfection, in proportion as it interferes more and more with the habits and no tions of individuals." To Macau lay, such a view was incredibly naive and showed no understand ing at all of history, economics, or human nature: "The division of labour would be no blessing, if those by whom a thing is done were to pay no attention to the opiniun of those for whom it is done. The shoemaker, in the Re lapse, tells Lord Foppington that his lordship is mistaken in suppos ing that his shoe pinches. 'It does not pinch; it cannot pinch; I know my business; and I never made a better shoe.' This is the way in which Mr. Southey would have a government treat a people who usurp the privilege of thinking."

The result of letting the gov ernment run everything could only lead to oppression. As Mac aulay saw it: "Government, 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. If it em ploys reason, it does so, not in vir tue of any powers which belong to it as a government. Thus, instead of a contest between argument and argument, we have a contest between argument and force. In stead of a contest in which truth, from the natural constitution of 276 THE FREEMAN May the human mind, has a decided ad-. vantage over falsehood, we have a contest in which truth can be victorious only by accident." The answer was laissez-faire. "It is not by the intermeddling of Mr. Southey's idol, the omniscient and omnipotent State," Macaulay concludes, "hut by the prudence and energy of the people, that England has hitherto been carried forward in civilisation; and it is to the same prudence and the same energy that we now look with com fort and good hope. Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commod ities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by dimin ishing the price of law, and ob serving strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest." ~ The Reversal: Liberty 1\ CLARENCEB. CARSON THERE ARE CERTAIN PHRASES which have a special place in the Ameri can lexicon. Among these the fol lowing rank high: "individual liberty," "the rights of the indi vidual," "the worth of each indi vidual," "the bill of rights," "con stitutional guarantees of --," and "self-government." They have a special place because they bring to mind the ideas and ideals which animated the establishment of American independence, the draw ing of the documents by which we are governed, and have provided guidelines for Americans over the years. When anyone uses these phrases in an approving manner he may be reasonably sure of evoking the desired response.