Macaulay on the Effect of Extreme Political Polarization on a Nation

This is from Macaulay's essay on Hallam's history.

"The effect of violent animosities between parties has always been an indifference to the general welfare and honour of the State. A politician, where factions run high, is interested not for the whole people, but for his own section of it. The rest are, in his view, strangers, enemies, or rather pirates. The strongest aversion which he can feel to any foreign power is the ardour of friendship, when compared with the loathing which he entertains towards those domestic foes with whom he is cooped up in a narrow space, with whom he lives in a constant interchange of petty injuries and insults, and from whom, in the day of their success, he has to expect severities far beyond any that a conqueror from a distant country would inflict. . . . In the Italian states of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, from the same cause, no man was so much a Pisan or a Florentine as a Ghibeline or a Guelf. It may be doubted whether there was a single individual who would have scrupled to raise his party from a state of depression, by opening the gates of his native city to a French or an Arragonese force. The Reformation, dividing almost every European country into two parts, produced similar effects. The Catholic was too strong for the Englishman, the Huguenot for the Frenchman. The Protestant statesmen of Scotland and France called in the aid of Elizabeth; and the Papists of the League brought a Spanish army into the very heart of France. The commotions to which the French Revolution gave rise were followed by the same consequences. The Republicans in every part of Europe were eager to see the armies of the National Convention and the Directory appear among them, and exalted in defeats which distressed and humbled those whom they considered as their worst enemies, their own rulers. The princes and nobles of France, on the other hand, did their utmost to bring foreign invaders to Paris. A very short time has elapsed since the Apostolical party in Spain invoked, too successfully, the support of strangers."

"Man, however, is always the same."

"Man, however, is always the same. And when so marked a difference
appears between two generations, it is certain that the solution
may be found in their respective circumstances. The principal
statesmen of the reign of Charles the Second were trained during
the civil war and the revolutions which followed it. Such a
period is eminently favourable to the growth of quick and active
talents. It forms a class of men, shrewd, vigilant, inventive; of
men whose dexterity triumphs over the most perplexing
combinations of circumstances, whose presaging instinct no sign
of the times can elude. But it is an unpropitious season for the
firm and masculine virtues. The statesman who enters on his
career at such a time, can form no permanent connections, can
make no accurate observations on the higher parts of political
science. Before he can attach himself to a party, it is
scattered. Before he can study the nature of a government, it is
overturned. The oath of abjuration comes close on the oath of
allegiance. The association which was subscribed yesterday
is burned by the hangman to-day. In the midst of the constant
eddy and change, self-preservation becomes the first object of
the adventurer. It is a task too hard for the strongest head to
keep itself from becoming giddy in the eternal whirl. Public
spirit is out of the question. A laxity of principle, without
which no public man can be eminent or even safe, becomes too
common to be scandalous; and the whole nation looks coolly
on instances of apostasy which would startle the foulest turncoat
of more settled times."

from Critical & Historical Essays
by Thomas Babington Macaulay

Chain of Command

This is paragraph from Thomas Macaulay's essay reviewing Hallam's history of England. They are remarks about the situation at the beginning of the complete between Charles I and the Long Parliament that ended in the Civil War. The painting by a William Shakespeare is titled, 'The Wounded Cavalier'.


But the great security, the security without which every other
would have been insufficient, was the power of the sword. This
both parties thoroughly understood. The Parliament insisted on
having the command of the militia and the direction of the Irish
war. "By God, not for an hour!" exclaimed the King. "Keep the
militia," said the Queen, after the defeat of the royal party.
"Keep the militia; that will bring back everything." That, by the
old constitution, no military authority was lodged in the
Parliament, Mr. Hallam has clearly shown. That it is a species of
authority which ought, not to be permanently lodged in large and
divided assemblies, must, we think in fairness be conceded.
Opposition, publicity, long discussion, frequent compromise;
these are the characteristics of the proceedings of such
assemblies. Unity, secrecy, decision, are the qualities which
military arrangements require. There were, therefore, serious
objections to the proposition of the Houses on this subject. But,
on the other hand, to trust such a King, at such a crisis, with
the very weapon which, in hands less dangerous, had destroyed so
many free constitutions, would have been the extreme of rashness.
The jealousy with which the oligarchy of Venice and the States of
Holland regarded their generals and armies induced them
perpetually to interfere in matters of which they were
incompetent to judge. This policy secured them against military
usurpation, but placed them, under great disadvantages in war.
The uncontrolled power which the King of France exercised over
his troops enabled him to conquer his enemies, but enabled him
also to oppress his people. Was there any intermediate course?
None, we confess altogether free from objection. But on the
whole, we conceive that the best measure would have been that
which the Parliament over and over proposed, namely, that for a
limited time the power of the sword should be left to the two
Houses, and that it should revert to the Crown when the
constitution should be firmly established, and when the new
securities of freedom should be so far strengthened by
prescription that it would be difficult to employ even a standing
army for the purpose of subverting them.

Persecution

"To punish a man
because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed,
though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution.
To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some
doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who
hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime is
persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked."
. . . . . . .
"If, indeed, all men reasoned in the same manner on the same data,
and always did what they thought it their duty to do, this mode
of dispensing punishment might be extremely judicious. But as
people who agree about premises often disagree about conclusions,
and as no man in the world acts up to his own standard of right,
there are two enormous gaps in the logic by which alone penalties
for opinions can be defended. . . , Man, in short, is so
inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his
belief to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another."

from Thomas Macaulay's essay on Hallam's Constitutional History of England, 1828
in Macaulay's Critical and Historical Essays