On the 5th of April, 1830, he addressed the House of Commons on the second reading of Mr. Robert Grant’s bill for the Removal of Jewish Disabilities.  Sir James Mackintosh rose with him, but Macaulay got the advantage of the preference that has always been conceded to one who speaks for the first time after gaining his seat during the continuance of a Parliament;—­a privilege which, by a stretch of generosity, is now extended to new members who have been returned at a general election.  Sir James subsequently took part in the debate; not, as he carefully assured his audience, “to supply any defects in the speech of his honourable friend, for there were none that he could find, but principally to absolve his own conscience.”  Indeed, Macaulay, addressing himself to his task with an absence of pretension such as never fails to conciliate the goodwill of the House towards a maiden speech, put clearly and concisely enough the arguments in favour of the bill;—­arguments which, obvious, and almost common-place, as they appear under his straightforward treatment, had yet to be repeated during a space of six and thirty years before they commended themselves to the judgment of our Upper Chamber.

“The power of which you deprive the Jew consists in maces, and gold chains, and skins of parchment with pieces of wax dangling from their edges.  The power which you leave the Jew is the power of principal over clerk, of master over servant, of landlord over tenant.  As things now stand, a Jew may be the richest man in England.  He may possess the means of raising this party and depressing that; of making East Indian directors; of making members of Parliament.  The influence of a Jew may be of the first consequence in a war which shakes Europe to the centre.  His power may come into play in assisting or thwarting the greatest plans of the greatest princes; and yet, with all this confessed, acknowledged, undenied, you would have him deprived of power!  Does not wealth confer power?  How are we to permit all the consequences of that wealth but one?  I cannot conceive the nature of an argument that is to bear out such a position.  If we were to be called on to revert to the day when the warehouses of Jews were torn down and pillaged, the theory would be comprehensible.  But we have to do with a persecution so delicate that there is no abstract rule for its guidance.  You tell us that the Jews have no legal right to power, and I am bound to admit it; but in the same way, three hundred years ago they had no legal right to be in England, and six hundred years ago they had no legal right to the teeth in their heads.  But, if it is the moral right we are to look at, I hold that on every principle of moral obligation the Jew has a right to political power.”