Here's a fairly well known passage from Macaulay's History of England (1849-61):

The Puritan hated bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Here's the same thought from Hume's History of England (1754-57):

Even bear baiting was esteemed heathenish and unchristian: the sport of it, not the inhumanity, gave offense.

IMHO Macaulay's thought has bite, but the effect is undercut by the even tempo at which he unrolls it. Hume uses abstract nouns ("sport" and "inhumanity") rather than verb phrases ("gave pleasure/pain to . . ."), and his meaning is slightly less clear as a result, but the construction is tighter and snappier, and it concentrates all its sting in the tail of the sentence. Hume's style strikes me as the more like Austen's.

Thoughts?