The world, which has forgotten that Newton excelled as an administrator, and Voltaire as a man of business, remembers somewhat faintly that Macaulay was an eminent orator and, for a time at least, a strenuous politician.
The universal voice of his contemporaries, during the first three years of his parliamentary career, testifies to the leading part which he played in the House of Commons, so long as with all his heart he cared, and with all his might he tried, to play it.

Jeffrey, (for it is well to adduce none but first-rate evidence,) says in his account of an evening's discussion on the second reading of the Reform Bill: "Not a very striking debate.

There was but one exception, and it was a brilliant one.

I mean Macaulay, who surpassed his former appearance in closeness, fire, and vigour, and very much improved the effect of it by a more steady and graceful delivery.

It was prodigiously cheered, as it deserved, and I think puts him clearly at the head of the great speakers, if not the debaters, of the House." And again, on the 17th of December: "Macaulay made, I think, the best speech he has yet delivered; the most condensed, at least, and with the greatest weight of matter.
It contained, indeed, the only argument to which any of the speakers who followed him applied themselves." Lord Cockburn, who sat under the gallery for twenty-seven hours during the last three nights of the Bill, pronounced Macaulay's speech to have been "by far the best;" though, like a good Scotchman, he asserts that he heard nothing at Westminster which could compare with Dr.Chalmers in the General Assembly.