19 JANUARY 1867, Page 2

The Scotsman publishes a letter written on the 25th of

February, 1846, by the late Lord Macaulay to a correspondent in Edinburgh, against the universal suffrage which the Chartists were then de- manding. He denounces it very strongly. "It would," he says, "in no long time reduce us to a depth of misery and degradation of which it is not easy to form an idea ;" would "make Great Britain in three generations as barbarous as Madagascar." That is nonsense, though it be Lord Macaulay's. All he meant to say was, we presume, that universal suffrage was unfavourable to civilization, which is probably, though not certainly, true ; but he has expressed his idea in language which makes it of little more weight than that of Mr. Leicester, who denounced all members of the House of Commons as hunchbacks.