The pressure of pecuniary trouble was now beginning to make itself felt even by the younger members of the family.  About this time, or perhaps a little earlier, Hannah Macaulay writes thus to one of her cousins:  “You say nothing about coming to us.  You must come in good health and spirits.  Our trials ought not greatly to depress us; for, after all, all we want is money, the easiest want to bear; and, when we have so many mercies—­friends who love us and whom we love; no bereavements; and, above all, (if it be not our own fault,) a hope full of immortality—­let us not be so ungrateful as to repine because we are without what in itself cannot make our happiness.”

Macaulay’s colleagues, who, without knowing his whole story, knew enough to be aware that he could ill afford to give up office, were earnest in their remonstrances; but he answered shortly, and almost roughly:  “I cannot go counter to my father.  He has devoted his whole life to the question, and I cannot grieve him by giving way when he wishes me to stand firm.”  During the crisis of the West India Bill, Zachary Macaulay and his son were in constant correspondence.  There is something touching in the picture which these letters present of the older man, (whose years were coming to a close in poverty which was the consequence of his having always lived too much for others,) discussing quietly and gravely how, and when, the younger was to take a step that in the opinion of them both would be fatal to his career; and this with so little consciousness that there was anything heroic in the course which they were pursuing, that it appears never to have occurred to either of their that any other line of conduct could possibly be adopted.

Having made up his mind as to what he should do, Macaulay set about it with as good a grace as is compatible with the most trying position in which a man, and especially a young man, can find himself.  Carefully avoiding the attitude of one who bargains or threatens, he had given timely notice in the proper quarter of his intentions and his views.  At length the conjuncture arrived when decisive action could no longer be postponed.  On the 24th of July Mr. Thomas Fowell Buxton moved an amendment in Committee, limiting the apprenticeship to the shortest period necessary for establishing the system of free labour.  Macaulay, whose resignation was already in Lord Althorp’s hands, made a speech which produced all the more effect as being inornate, and, at times, almost awkward.  Even if deeper feelings had not restrained the range of his fancy and the flow of his rhetoric, his judgment would have told him that it was not the moment for an oratorical display.  He began by entreating the House to extend to him that indulgence which it had accorded on occasions when he had addressed it “with more confidence and with less harassed feelings.”  He then, at some length, exposed the effects of the Government proposal.  “In free countries the master