Thomas Babington (or Babbington) Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, was a nineteenth century British poet, historian and Whig politician. He wrote extensively as an essayist and reviewer, and on British history. His middle name is spelt "Babington" in History of England and "Babbington" in the Lays of Ancient Rome.

Macaulay as a politician
The son of Zachary Macaulay, a British colonial governor and abolitionist, Macaulay was born in Leicestershire and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. Whilst at Cambridge he wrote much poetry and won several prizes. In 1825 he published a prominent essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Review.

In 1830 he became a Member of Parliament for the pocket borough of Calne. After the Great Reform Act was passed, he became MP for Leeds. Macaulay was appointed Secretary to the Board of Control, which required him to visit India. Macaulay was a convinced colonialist and a believer in European, especially British, superiority over all things Oriental.

Serving on the Supreme Council of India between 1834 and 1838 Macaulay was instrumental in creating the foundations of bilingual colonial India, by convincing the council and parliament to close schools and colleges teaching in Sanskrit or Arabic and instead to teach English to "natives" and provide education in English only.

Macaulay's criminal law system was enacted immediately in the aftermath of the 1857 "Sepoy mutiny" (as per the colonisers) or the "first war of Indian independence" (as per Indian nationalists). It was a "successful" experiment - the Indian Penal Code was later reproduced in most other British colonies – and to date many of these laws are still in place. The anti-sodomy provision, Section 377 continuing in places as far apart as Singapore, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

He is credited with the term Macaulay's Children, which is used to refer to people born of Indian ancestry who adopt Western Culture as a lifestyle. The term is usually used in a derogatory fashion, and the connotation is one of disloyalty to one's country and one's heritage. The passage to which the term refers is from his Minute on Indian Education, delivered in 1835. It reads, "It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population."

Later, in 1839, he became Secretary at War. During this time he composed the Lays of Ancient Rome.

During the 1840s he began work on his most famous history, the History of England from the accession of James II, publishing the first two volumes in 1848. The following year he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow and he also received the freedom of the city. The next two volumes appeared in 1855.

He was raised to the Peerage in 1857 as Baron Macaulay, of Rothley in the County of Leicester, but seldom attended the House of Lords.

Macaulay's great-nephew was the historian G. M. Trevelyan.

Quotes

"His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar."

"Thus then stands the case: it is good that authors should be remunerated and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly, yet monopoly is an evil for the sake of the good. We must submit to the evil, but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good."

"If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principle of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of £10,000 then living there would be five men of £50,000, that London would be twice as large and twice as populous, and that nevertheless the rate of mortality would have diminished to one half of what it then was, that the post-office would bring more into the exchequer than the excise and customs had brought in together under Charles II, that stage coaches would run from London to York in 24 hours, that men would be in the habit of sailing without wind, and would be beginning to ride without horses, our ancestors would have given as much credit to the prediction as they gave to Gulliver's Travels."

"The Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty."

"She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts."

"A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favoured and cherished."

"Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle."

"With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher."

"The doctrine which, from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words and stripped of rhetorical disguise, is simply this: I am in the right, and you are in the wrong. When you are the stronger, you ought to tolerate me; for it is your duty to tolerate truth. But when I am the stronger I shall persecute you; for it is my duty to persecute error."

"The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave."

"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."

"Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water until he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever."

"Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or in other words a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read and say and eat and drink and wear."