Macaulay tells us that "when the old vessel of a commonwealth is torn to pieces by the shocks it has sustained from contending parties; when the people, disdaining and rejecting all those fond opinions by which they have been enslaved to misery," then they can "go to war with those in power; a war of all against all."

Question

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This quote misattributes the concept of a "war of all against all" to Macaulay. The phrase is actually associated with Thomas Hobbes, who used it to describe the state of nature without a strong central government in his work "Leviathan."

Macaulay Tells Us That "When the Old Vessel of a Commonwealth