ABSTRACT
This long essay constitutes the most extensive attack ever made upon Southey’s social and economic ideas. Macaulay later referred in his journal to ‘the nonsense which Southey talked about political economy’ and his arrogance ‘beyond any man in literary history’ (cf. G. O. Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, World’s Classics edition, ii, pp. 380–2).
