ss, the opponents
of progress began to perceive that they had to reckon, not with a small
and disheartened faction, but with a clear majority of the nation led by
the most enlightened, and the most eminent, of its sons. Agitators and
incendiaries retired into the background, as will always be the case
when the country is in earnest; and statesmen who had much to lose, but
were not afraid to risk it, stepped quietly and firmly to the front.
The men, and the sons of the men, who had so long endured exclusion from
office, embittered by unpopularity, at length reaped their reward. Earl
Grey, who forty years before had been hooted through the streets
of North Shields with cries of "No Popery," lived to bear the most
respected name in England; and Brougham, whose opinions differed little
from those for expressing which Dr. Priestley in 1791 had his house
burned about his ears by the Birmingham mob, was now the popular idol
beyond all comparison or competition.

In the face of such unanimity of purpose, guided by so much worth and
talent, the Ministers lost their nerve, and, like all rulers who do not
possess the confidence of the governed, began first to make mistakes,
and then to quarrel among themselves. Throughout the years of Macaulay's
early manhood the ice was breaking fast. He was still quite young when
the concession of Catholic Emancipation gave a moral shock to the Tory
party from which it never recovered until the old order of things had
finally passed away. [Macaulay was fond of repeating an answer made to
him by Lord Clarendon in the year 1829. The young men were talking over
the situation, and Macaulay expressed curiosity as to the terms in which
the Duke of Wellington would recommend the Catholic Relief Bill to the
Peers. "Oh," said the other, "it will be easy enough. He'll say 'My
lords! Attention! Right about face! March!'"] It was his fortune to
enter into other men's labours after the burden and heat of the day had
already been borne, and to be summoned into the field just as the
season was at hand for gathering in a ripe and long-expected harvest of
beneficent legislation.

On the 5th of April, 1830, he addressed the House of Commons on the
second reading of Mr. Robert Grant's bill for the Removal of Jewish
Disabilities. Sir James Mackintosh rose with him, but Macaulay got the
advantage of the preference that has always been conceded to one who
speaks for the first time after gaining his seat during the c