Thomas Babington Macaulay — a remark

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“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 till he had learned to swim.”

Rejecting the idea that liberty must be earned in advance of its exercise · Essay, Milton, Edinburgh Review, August 1825

About Thomas Babington Macaulay

Thomas Babington Macaulay

25 October 1800–28 December 1859

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born on 25 October 1800 at Rothley Temple in Leicestershire and died on 28 December 1859 at Kensington, London. He was at once a poet, essayist, parliamentarian, colonial administrator, historian, reviewer, and one of the most commanding prose stylists in nineteenth-century English. To…

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