history were arranged in faultless compartments, and to whom the past presented itself as a series of Ministerial crises, diversified by oratory and political songs.  To Indians the word progress meant the passage of the soul through aeons of reincarnation towards a blissful absorption into the inconceivable void of indistinctive existence, as when at last a jar is broken and the space inside it returns to space.  For Macaulay the word progress called up a bustling picture of mechanical inventions, an increasing output of manufactured goods, a larger demand for improving literature, and a growth of political clubs to promulgate the blessings of Reform.  The Indian supposed success in life to lie in patiently following the labour and the observances of his fathers before him, dwelling in the same simple home, suppressing all earthly desire, and saving a little off the daily rice or the annual barter in the hope that, when the last furrow was driven, or the last brazen pot hammered out, there might still be time for the glory of pilgrimage and the sanctification of a holy river.  To Macaulay, success in life was the going shop, the growing trade, a seat on the Treasury Bench, the applause of listening Senates, and the eligible residence of deserving age.

Thus equipped, he was instructed by the Reform Government which he worshipped, to mark out the lines for Indian education upon a basis of the wisdom common to East and West.  Though others were dubious, he never hesitated.  From childhood he had never ceased to praise the goodness and the grace that made the happy English child.  As far as in him lay, he would extend that gracious advantage to the teeming populations of India.  In spite of accidental differences of colour, due to climatic influences, they too should grow as happy English children, lisping of the poet’s mountain lamb, and hearing how Horatius kept the bridge in the brave days of old.  They should advance to a knowledge of Party history from the Restoration down to the Reform Bill.  The great masters of the progressive pamphlet, such as Milton and Burke, should be placed in their hands.  Those who displayed scientific aptitude should be instructed in the miracle of the steam-engine, and economic minds should early acquaint themselves with the mysteries of commerce, upon which, as upon the Bible, the greatness of their conquerors was founded.  Under such influence, the soul of India would be elevated from superstitious degradation, factories would supersede laborious handicrafts, artists, learning to paint like young Landseer, would perpetuate the appearance of the Viceregal party with their horses and dogs on the Calcutta racecourse, and it might be that in the course of years the estimable Whigs of India would return their own majority to a Front Bench in Government House.

It was an enviable vision—­enviable in its imperturbable self-confidence.  It no more occurred to Macaulay to question the benefaction of English education and the supremacy of England’s commerce and Constitution than it occurred to him to question the contemptible inferiority of the race among whom he was living, and for whom he mainly legislated.  In his essay on Warren Hastings he wrote: