Macaulay wittily denounces a tyrannical priest as being an intermediate grub between sycophant and oppressor (1837)

This quotation by the great 19th century English classical liberal Thomas Babbington (Lord Macaulay) is an excellent example of what might be called “the rhetoric of liberty”, that is the clever and witty use of language in order to defend the principles of liberty and to expose and criticise those who exercise oppressive power over others. In this example Macaulay is reviewing a biography of the Francis Bacon, in particular his time as a student at Trinity College, Cambridge. Bacon came to hate his three years there because of the tyrannical behaviour of the master of the college who was trying to ingratiate himself with powerful political and religious figures by clamping down on critical thinking at the college. Macaulay says Bacon came to view the system of education in Britain at that time as “radically vicious” in its contempt for the emerging discipline of modern science of which Bacon was later to become a leading figure. The wit of Macaulay was to describe the college master as being like a grub who was emerging from its chrysalis on its way to becoming a fully formed dragon-fly and to politicise that metaphor so cleverly: “he was now in a chrysalis state, putting off the worm and putting on the dragon-fly, a kind of intermediate grub between sycophant and oppressor.”