Macaulay did not share Carlyle’s famous condemnation of political economy as the “dismal science.” Nevertheless, he was an historian first and foremost, and his confidence in the new economic science was not unmitigated (and it was indeed increasingly viewed as a science, the predictions of which should be trusted while planning government policy). He noted how the greatest authors to have written about political economy were divided regarding the very first principles of this science, which dealt with questions of the highest moment. Political theorizers and politicians had very different talents, which were rarely united in one person. “To be at once Adam Smith and William Pitt is scarcely possible.” The political scientist could not be expected to handle the tumultuous contingencies of practical politics, while for the active politician it was enough to understand and apply the economic theories of others. Nevertheless, political economy was both a necessary, and an approachable, science. “Take a science which is still young, a science of considerable intricacy, a science, we may add, which the passions and interests of men have rendered more intricate than it is in its own nature, the science of Political Economy.” It was also impossible to ignore in an age where these two spheres – the theoretical and the practical – were increasingly intertwined and mutually enforcing. To be both a Smith and a Pitt (Macaulay probably meant the Younger) was therefore increasingly becoming a necessity for anyone involved in politics. While the term “Industrial Revolution” remains a contested one among scholars, it is clear that the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were an era in which the growing British population and economy did not display a simple view of lineal development, but rather one which was accompanied by social and financial difficulties. Macaulay could thus not but be heavily engrossed, throughout his career as both a scholar and a politician, in political-economic issues. In the late 1820s he studied political economy for a year in London with his cousin George Babington. And despite his criticism of James Mill, he agreed with his view of political economy as a means to advance human welfare. In this, as regarding various other social and jurisprudential issues, Macaulay shared the Benthamites’ views while rejecting their utilitarian method of thought.