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Miscellaneous writings, speeches and poems, of Lord Macaulay
Miscellaneous writings speeches and poems of Lord Macaulay Author:Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 79 A SPEECH DEL1TEBED AT Edinburgh On The 29xH Of May, 1839. The elevation of Mr. Abercromby to the peerage in May, 1839, caused a vacancy in the rep... more »resentation of the city of Edinburgh. A meeting of the electors was called to consider of the manner in which the vacancy should be supplied. At this meeting the following Speech was made. My Lord Provost And Gentlemen, At the request of a very large and respectable portion of your body, I appear before you as a candidate for a high and solemn trust, which, uninvited, I should have thought it presumption to solicit, but which, thus invited, I should think it cowardice to decline. If I had felt myself justified in following my own inclinations, I am not sure that even a summons so honourable as that which I have received would have been sufficient to draw me away from pursuits far better suited to my taste and temper than the turmoil of political warfare. But I feel that my lot is cast in times in which no man is free to judge, merely according to his own taste and temper, whether he will devote himself to active or to contemplative life; in times in which society has a right to demand, from every one of its members, active and strenuous exertions. I have, therefore, obeyed your call; and I now present myself beforeyou for the purpose of offering to you, not, what I am sure you would reject with disdain, flattery, degrading alike to a candidate, and to a constituent body; but such reasonable, candid, and manly explanations as become the month of a free man ambitious of the confidence of a free people. It is hardly necessary for me to say that I stand here unconnected with this great communiiy. It would be mere affectation not to acknowledge that with respect to local questions I have much to learn; but I hope that ...« less