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. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed have to wait forever.
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About Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay was a 18th-century British historian and politician. Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, was a British historian, poet and Whig politician who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster General between 1846 and 1848. He is best known for his The History of England, a seminal example of Whig history which expressed Macaulay's belief in the inevitability of sociopolitical progress and has been widely commended for its prose style. Read more on Wikipedia →