Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/24

18 that purpose,' wrote Macaulay in a Council Minute — for the days of oral discussion were not yet — 'it ought to be made so. If it is fit to administer justice to the great body of the people, why should we exempt a mere handful of settlers from its jurisdiction? ... If we take pains to show that we distrust our highest courts, how can we expect that the Natives of the country will place confidence in them?' While his measure was before the Council, complaints against it came not from Englishmen nor from English journals in the provinces, but from the English community of Calcutta, to whom the measure would not apply. These grew loud in their clamours and daring in their abuse. A weaker man than Macaulay would have cursed the day when he drafted the Bill which secured the freedom of the Indian Press. But all the wild words hurled at him day after day by most of the Calcutta newspapers, and anon by enraged orators at public meetings, failed for a moment to shake his solid mind from its reasoned allegiance to the cause of free speech.

After the passing of the Act which placed our countrymen in civil suits on a level with Natives before the law, the clamour and scurrility of its opponents, chiefly lawyers with their followers and allies in the Press, waxed even bolder and more insensate than before. To find himself called cheat, liar, swindler, charlatan, in some of the Calcutta journals, became for Macaulay a regular experience. The climate of the City of Palaces in the hot season may go far to account