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Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4 by Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay
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among my speeches, those which are the least unworthy to be
preserved. Nine of them were corrected by me while they were
still fresh in my memory, and appear almost word for word as they
were spoken. They are the speech of the second of March 1831,
the speech of the twentieth of September 1831, the speech of the
tenth of October 1831, the speech of the sixteenth of December
1831, the speech on the Anatomy Bill, the speech on the India
Bill, the speech on Serjeant Talfourd's Copyright Bill, the
speech on the Sugar Duties, and the speech on the Irish Church.
The substance of the remaining speeches I have given with perfect
ingenuousness. I have not made alterations for the purpose of
saving my own reputation either for consistency or for foresight.
I have not softened down the strong terms in which I formerly
expressed opinions which time and thought may have modified; nor
have I retouched my predictions in order to make them correspond
with subsequent events. Had I represented myself as speaking in
1831, in 1840, or in 1845, as I should speak in 1853, I should
have deprived my book of its chief value. This volume is now at
least a strictly honest record of opinions and reasonings which
were heard with favour by a large part of the Commons of England
at some important conjunctures; and such a record, however low it
may stand in the estimation of the literary critic, cannot but be
of use to the historian.

I do not pretend to give with accuracy the diction of those
speeches which I did not myself correct within a week after they
were delivered. Many expressions, and a few paragraphs, linger
in my memory. But the rest, including much that had been
carefully premeditated, is irrecoverably lost. Nor have I, in
this part of my task, derived much assistance from any report.
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