Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes
A [legal] code is almost the only blessing, perhaps it is the only blessing, which absolute governments are better fitted to confer on a nation than popular governments.
1st Baron Macaulay. An autocracy can produce an extensive coherent legal code much easier than a popular government because a few people can make all the decisions and need the final approval of one. The democracy has all the different forces and views of society to contend with and it takes much more to resolve and compromise a final code. The result however is not only fairer generally but is respected more by the people.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1800-1859, British Historian & Secretary of War (Liberal), Member of Parliament, Speech on the Government of India, July 10, 1833
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Three Chicago Aldermen had marched on an art school demanding that a painting they found offensive be removed from public display. The police seized the painting, prompting a lawsuit.
Individual states passed laws that impinged on Indian rights and undid the effect of previous treaties. Some tribes complained to the President. In actuality, there was Federal legislation that preempted the states, but President Jackson, as a matter of policy allowed the state action.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, FRS FRSE PC was a British historian and Whig politician. He wrote extensively as an essayist, on contemporary and historical sociopolitical subjects, and as a reviewer. His The History of England was a seminal and paradigmatic example of Whig historiography, and its literary style has remained an object of praise since its publication, including subsequent to the widespread condemnation of its historical contentions which became popular in the 20th century.
