- 著者
-
加藤 孝
- 出版者
- 一般財団法人 日本英文学会
- 雑誌
- 英文学研究 (ISSN:00393649)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.27, no.2, pp.153-178, 1951
In 1841 Macaulay began to write his History of England, the plan of which had long been in his mind. He worked at it with great assiduity and delight, till in 1848 the first two, and in 1855 the next two volumes appeared. The work met instant applause of the reading public. The extraoridinary success of this history is chiefly due to the fact that it well suited the self-complacent mentality of the middle classes. The fundamental idea underlying History of England is this: the unprecedented power and prosperity of the 19th century England (and especially of the middle classes) is the direct outcome of the whig revolution of 1688, which established once for all the supremacy of the Commons over the Crown. Written from this viewpoint, his portaiture of historical figures is not always impartial, as in the case of Strafford. Contrary to his original intention, his history stopped at the death of William III. However, his various essays and speeches connected with English history clearly show that the subsequent development of English politics was viewed by him in the light of the unfolding and realisation of the whig principles. The culmination of this growth was to him the Reform Act of 1832. He was then the champion of the rising middle classes. Since 1832 he resolutely opposed any further suffrage extention as endangering the Constitution and the principle of property. Therein he was at one with conservatives of the time such as Carlyle. According to him the principle of property is the foundation of all civilisations. Hence his repugnance to Jacobinism as is shown in his criticism of the French Revolution, and hence also his opposition to the introduction of universal suffrage, as is shown in his speeches on the occasion of Chartist petitions. Hindered by this one-sided view of history, he completely failed to foresee the later growth of English democracy in the second half of the 19th century. His early surroundings were not necessarily whiggish, but his education at Cambridge and his connection with the Holland House and the Edinburgh Review determined his subsequent political outlook and made of him a great historian of the bourgeois classes.