“I wish to add a few words touching a question which has lately been much canvassed; I mean the question of pledges.  In this letter, and in every letter which I have written to my friends at Leeds, I have plainly declared my opinions.  But I think it, at this conjuncture, my duty to declare that I will give no pledges.  I will not bind myself to make or to support any particular motion.  I will state as shortly as I can some of the reasons which have induced me to form this determination.  The great beauty of the representative system is, that it unites the advantages of popular control with the advantages arising from a division of labour.  Just as a physician understands medicine better than an ordinary man, just as a shoemaker makes shoes better than an ordinary man, so a person whose life is passed in transacting affairs of State becomes a better statesman than an ordinary man.  In politics, as well as every other department of life, the public ought to have the means of checking those who serve it.  If a man finds that he derives no benefit from the prescription of his physician, he calls in another.  If his shoes do not fit him, he changes his shoemaker.  But when he has called in a physician of whom he hears a good report, and whose general practice he believes to be judicious, it would be absurd in him to tie down that physician to order particular pills and particular draughts.  While he continues to be the customer of a shoemaker, it would be absurd in him to sit by and mete every motion of that shoemaker’s hand.  And in the same manner, it would, I think, be absurd in him to require positive pledges, and to exact daily and hourly obedience, from his representative.  My opinion is, that electors ought at first to choose cautiously; then to confide liberally; and, when the term for which they have selected their member has expired, to review his conduct equitably, and to pronounce on the whole taken together.

“If the people of Leeds think proper to repose in me that confidence which is necessary to the proper discharge of the duties of a representative, I hope that I shall not abuse it.  If it be their pleasure to fetter their members by positive promises, it is in their power to do so.  I can only say that on such terms I cannot conscientiously serve them.

“I hope, and feel assured, that the sincerity with which I make this explicit declaration, will, if it deprive me of the votes of my friends at Leeds, secure to me what I value far more highly, their esteem.

“Believe me ever, my dear Sir,

“Your most faithful Servant,

“T.  B. MACAULAY.”

This frank announcement, taken by many as a slight, and by some as a downright challenge, produced remonstrances which, after the interval of a week, were answered by Macaulay in a second letter; worth reprinting if it were only for the sake of his fine parody upon the popular cry which for two years past had been the watchword of Reformers.