No More Learning

They may as well be Utilitarians as jockeys
or dandies. And, though quibbling about self-interest and motives, and
objects of desire, and the greatest happiness of the greatest number,
is but a poor employment for a grown man, it certainly hurts the health
less than hard drinking, and the fortune less than high play; it is not
much more laughable than phrenology, and is immeasurably more humane
than cock-fighting.

*****




WESTMINSTER REVIEWER'S DEFENCE OF MILL. (June 1829. )

"Westminster Review" Number XXI. , Article XVI. "Edinburgh
Review" Number XCVII. , Article on Mill's Essays on
Government, etc.

We have had great reason, we think, to be gratified by the success of
our late attack on the Utilitarians. We could publish a long list of the
cures which it has wrought in cases previously considered as hopeless.
Delicacy forbids us to divulge names; but we cannot refrain from
alluding to two remarkable instances. A respectable lady writes to
inform us that her son, who was plucked at Cambridge last January, has
not been heard to call Sir James Mackintosh a poor ignorant fool
more than twice since the appearance of our article. A distinguished
political writer in the Westminster and Parliamentary Reviews has
borrowed Hume's History, and has actually got as far as the battle of
Agincourt. He assures us that he takes great pleasure in his new study,
and that he is very impatient to learn how Scotland and England became
one kingdom. But the greatest compliment that we have received is that
Mr Bentham himself should have condescended to take the field in defence
of Mr Mill. We have not been in the habit of reviewing reviews: but, as
Mr Bentham is a truly great man, and as his party have thought fit to
announce in puffs and placards that this article is written by him, and
contains not only an answer to our attacks, but a development of the
"greatest happiness principle," with the latest improvements of the
author, we shall for once depart from our general rule. However the
conflict may terminate, we shall at least not have been vanquished by an
ignoble hand.

Of Mr Bentham himself we shall endeavour, even while defending ourselves
against his reproaches, to speak with the respect to which his venerable
age, his genius, and his public services entitle him. If any harsh
expression should escape us, we trust that he will attribute it to
inadvertence, to the momentary warmth of controversy,--to anything, in
short, rather than to a design of affronting him. Though we have
nothing in common with the crew of Hurds and Boswells, who, either from
interested motives, or from the habit of intellectual servility and
dependence, pamper and vitiate his appetite with the noxious sweetness
of their undiscerning praise, we are not perhaps less competent than
they to appreciate his merit, or less sincerely disposed to acknowledge
it. Though we may sometimes think his reasonings on moral and political
questions feeble and sophistical--though we may sometimes smile at his
extraordinary language--we can never be weary of admiring the amplitude
of his comprehension, the keenness of his penetration, the exuberant
fertility with which his mind pours forth arguments and illustrations.
However sharply he may speak of us, we can never cease to revere in him
the father of the philosophy of Jurisprudence. He has a full right to
all the privileges of a great inventor: and, in our court of criticism,
those privileges will never be pleaded in vain. But they are limited
in the same manner in which, fortunately for the ends of justice, the
privileges of the peerage are now limited. The advantage is personal and
incommunicable. A nobleman can now no longer cover with his protection
every lackey who follows his heels, or every bully who draws in his
quarrel: and, highly as we respect the exalted rank which Mr Bentham
holds among the writers of our time, yet when, for the due maintenance
of literary police, we shall think it necessary to confute sophists,
or to bring pretenders to shame, we shall not depart from the ordinary
course of our proceedings because the offenders call themselves
Benthamites.

Whether Mr Mill has much reason to thank Mr Bentham for undertaking his
defence, our readers, when they have finished this article, will perhaps
be inclined to doubt. Great as Mr Bentham's talents are, he has, we
think, shown an undue confidence in them. He should have considered how
dangerous it is for any man, however eloquent and ingenious he may
be, to attack or defend a book without reading it: and we feel quite
convinced that Mr Bentham would never have written the article before
us if he had, before he began, perused our review with attention, and
compared it with Mr Mill's Essay.

He has utterly mistaken our object and meaning. He seems to think that
we have undertaken to set up some theory of government in opposition to
that of Mr Mill. But we distinctly disclaimed any such design. From
the beginning to the end of our article, there is not, as far as
we remember, a single sentence which, when fairly construed, can be
considered as indicating any such design. If such an expression can be
found, it has been dropped by inadvertence. Our object was to prove, not
that monarchy and aristocracy are good, but that Mr Mill had not proved
them to be bad; not that democracy is bad, but that Mr Mill had not
proved it to be good. The points in issue are these: whether the famous
Essay on Government be, as it has been called, a perfect solution of
the great political problem, or a series of sophisms and blunders; and
whether the sect which, while it glories in the precision of its logic,
extols this Essay as a masterpiece of demonstration be a sect deserving
of the respect or of the derision of mankind. These, we say, are the
issues; and on these we with full confidence put ourselves on the
country.

It is not necessary, for the purposes of this investigation, that
we should state what our political creed is, or whether we have any
political creed at all. A man who cannot act the most trivial part in a
farce has a right to hiss Romeo Coates: a man who does not know a vein
from an artery may caution a simple neighbour against the advertisements
of Dr Eady. A complete theory of government would indeed be a noble
present to mankind; but it is a present which we do not hope and do not
pretend that we can offer. If, however, we cannot lay the foundation, it
is something to clear away the rubbish; if we cannot set up truth, it
is something to pull down error. Even if the subjects of which the
Utilitarians treat were subjects of less fearful importance, we should
think it no small service to the cause of good sense and good taste to
point out the contrast between their magnificent pretensions and their
miserable performances. Some of them have, however, thought fit to
display their ingenuity on questions of the most momentous kind, and on
questions concerning which men cannot reason ill with impunity. We think
it, under these circumstances, an absolute duty to expose the fallacy of
their arguments. It is no matter of pride or of pleasure. To read their
works is the most soporific employment that we know; and a man ought no
more to be proud of refuting them than of having two legs. We must now
come to close quarters with Mr Bentham, whom, we need not say, we do not
mean to include in this observation. He charges us with maintaining,--

"First, 'That it is not true that all despots govern ill;'--whereon the
world is in a mistake, and the Whigs have the true light. And for proof,
principally,--that the King of Denmark is not Caligula. To which the
answer is, that the King of Denmark is not a despot. He was put in his
present situation by the people turning the scale in his favour in a
balanced contest between himself and the nobility. And it is quite clear
that the same power would turn the scale the other way the moment a King
of Denmark should take into his head to be Caligula. It is of little
consequence by what congeries of letters the Majesty of Denmark is
typified in the royal press of Copenhagen, while the real fact is
that the sword of the people is suspended over his head, in case of
ill-behaviour, as effectually as in other countries where more noise is
made upon the subject. Everybody believes the sovereign of Denmark to be
a good and virtuous gentleman; but there is no more superhuman merit in
his being so than in the case of a rural squire who does not shoot his
land-steward or quarter his wife with his yeomanry sabre.

"It is true that there are partial exceptions to the rule, that all
men use power as badly as they dare. There may have been such things as
amiable negro-drivers and sentimental masters of press-gangs; and here
and there, among the odd freaks of human nature, there may have been
specimens of men who were 'No tyrants, though bred up to tyranny. ' But
it would be as wise to recommend wolves for nurses at the Foundling on
the credit of Romulus and Remus as to substitute the exception for the
general fact, and advise mankind to take to trusting to arbitrary power
on the credit of these specimens. "

Now, in the first place, we never cited the case of Denmark to prove
that all despots do not govern ill. We cited it to prove that Mr Mill
did not know how to reason. Mr Mill gave it as a reason for deducing the
theory of government from the general laws of human nature that the King
of Denmark was not Caligula. This we said, and we still say, was absurd.

In the second place, it was not we, but Mr Mill, who said that the King
of Denmark was a despot. His words are these:--"The people of Denmark,
tired out with the oppression of an aristocracy, resolved that their
king should be absolute; and under their absolute monarch are as well
governed as any people in Europe. " We leave Mr Bentham to settle with Mr
Mill the distinction between a despot and an absolute king.

In the third place, Mr Bentham says that there was in Denmark a balanced
contest between the king and the nobility. We find some difficulty in
believing that Mr Bentham seriously means to say this, when we consider
that Mr Mill has demonstrated the chance to be as infinity to one
against the existence of such a balanced contest.

Fourthly, Mr Bentham says that in this balanced contest the people
turned the scale in favour of the king against the aristocracy. But Mr
Mill has demonstrated that it cannot possibly be for the interest of
the monarchy and democracy to join against the aristocracy; and that
wherever the three parties exist, the king and the aristocracy will
combine against the people. This, Mr Mill assures us, is as certain as
anything which depends upon human will.

Fifthly, Mr Bentham says that, if the King of Denmark were to oppress
his people, the people and nobles would combine against the king. But Mr
Mill has proved that it can never be for the interest of the aristocracy
to combine with the democracy against the king. It is evidently Mr
Bentham's opinion, that "monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy may
balance each other, and by mutual checks produce good government. " But
this is the very theory which Mr Mill pronounces to be the wildest,
the most visionary, the most chimerical ever broached on the subject of
government.

We have no dispute on these heads with Mr Bentham. On the contrary, we
think his explanation true--or at least, true in part; and we heartily
thank him for lending us his assistance to demolish the essay of his
follower. His wit and his sarcasm are sport to us; but they are death to
his unhappy disciple.

Mr Bentham seems to imagine that we have said something implying an
opinion favourable to despotism. We can scarcely suppose that, as he has
not condescended to read that portion of our work which he undertook to
answer, he can have bestowed much attention on its general character.
Had he done so he would, we think, scarcely have entertained such
a suspicion. Mr Mill asserts, and pretends to prove, that under no
despotic government does any human being, except the tools of the
sovereign, possess more than the necessaries of life, and that the most
intense degree of terror is kept up by constant cruelty. This, we say,
is untrue. It is not merely a rule to which there are exceptions: but it
is not the rule. Despotism is bad; but it is scarcely anywhere so bad
as Mr Mill says that it is everywhere. This we are sure Mr Bentham will
allow. If a man were to say that five hundred thousand people die every
year in London of dram-drinking, he would not assert a proposition more
monstrously false than Mr Mill's. Would it be just to charge us with
defending intoxication because we might say that such a man was grossly
in the wrong?

We say with Mr Bentham that despotism is a bad thing. We say with Mr
Bentham that the exceptions do not destroy the authority of the rule.
But this we say--that a single exception overthrows an argument which
either does not prove the rule at all, or else proves the rule to be
TRUE WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS; and such an argument is Mr Mill's argument
against despotism. In this respect there is a great difference between
rules drawn from experience and rules deduced a priori. We might believe
that there had been a fall of snow last August, and yet not think it
likely that there would be snow next August. A single occurrence opposed
to our general experience would tell for very little in our calculation
of the chances. But, if we could once satisfy ourselves that in ANY
single right-angled triangle the square of the hypothenuse might be
less than the squares of the sides, we must reject the forty-seventh
proposition of Euclid altogether. We willingly adopt Mr Bentham's lively
illustration about the wolf; and we will say in passing that it gives
us real pleasure to see how little old age has diminished the gaiety of
this eminent man. We can assure him that his merriment gives us far more
pleasure on his account than pain on our own. We say with him, Keep the
wolf out of the nursery, in spite of the story of Romulus and Remus.
But, if the shepherd who saw the wolf licking and suckling those famous
twins were, after telling this story to his companions, to assert that
it was an infallible rule that no wolf ever had spared, or ever would
spare, any living thing which might fall in its way--that its nature was
carnivorous--and that it could not possibly disobey its nature, we think
that the hearers might have been excused for staring. It may be strange,
but is not inconsistent, that a wolf which has eaten ninety-nine
children should spare the hundredth. But the fact that a wolf has once
spared a child is sufficient to show that there must be some flaw in the
chain of reasoning purporting to prove that wolves cannot possibly spare
children.

Mr Bentham proceeds to attack another position which he conceives us to
maintain:--

"Secondly, That a government not under the control of the community (for
there is no question upon any other) 'MAY SOON BE SATURATED. ' Tell it
not in Bow Street, whisper it not in Hatton Garden,--that there is
a plan for preventing injustice by 'saturation. ' With what peals of
unearthly merriment would Minos, Aeacus, and Rhadamanthus be aroused
upon their benches, if the 'light wings of saffron and of blue' should
bear this theory into their grim domains! Why do not the owners of
pocket-handkerchiefs try to 'saturate? ' Why does not the cheated
publican beg leave to check the gulosity of his defrauder with a
repetatur haustus, and the pummelled plaintiff neutralise the malice of
his adversary, by requesting to have the rest of the beating in presence
of the court,--if it is not that such conduct would run counter to all
the conclusions of experience, and be the procreation of the mischief it
affected to destroy? Woful is the man whose wealth depends on his having
more than somebody else can be persuaded to take from him; and woful
also is the people that is in such a case! "

Now this is certainly very pleasant writing: but there is no great
difficulty in answering the argument. The real reason which makes it
absurd to think of preventing theft by pensioning off thieves is this,
that there is no limit to the number of thieves. If there were only a
hundred thieves in a place, and we were quite sure that no person not
already addicted to theft would take to it, it might become a question
whether to keep the thieves from dishonesty by raising them above
distress would not be a better course than to employ officers against
them. But the actual cases are not parallel. Every man who chooses
can become a thief; but a man cannot become a king or a member of
the aristocracy whenever he chooses. The number of the depredators is
limited; and therefore the amount of depredation, so far as physical
pleasures are concerned, must be limited also. Now, we made the remark
which Mr Bentham censures with reference to physical pleasures only. The
pleasures of ostentation, of taste, of revenge, and other pleasures of
the same description, have, we distinctly allowed, no limit. Our words
are these:--"a king or an aristocracy may be supplied to satiety with
CORPORAL PLEASURES, at an expense which the rudest and poorest community
would scarcely feel. " Does Mr Bentham deny this? If he does, we
leave him to Mr Mill. "What," says that philosopher, in his Essay on
Education, "what are the ordinary pursuits of wealth and power, which
kindle to such a height the ardour of mankind? Not the mere love of
eating and of drinking, or all the physical objects together which
wealth can purchase or power command. With these every man is in the
long run speedily satisfied. " What the difference is between being
speedily satisfied and being soon saturated, we leave Mr Bentham and Mr
Mill to settle together.

The word "saturation," however, seems to provoke Mr Bentham's mirth. It
certainly did not strike us as very pure English; but, as Mr Mill used
it, we supposed it to be good Benthamese. With the latter language we
are not critically acquainted, though, as it has many roots in common
with our mother tongue, we can contrive, by the help of a converted
Utilitarian, who attends us in the capacity of Moonshee, to make out a
little. But Mr Bentham's authority is of course decisive; and we bow to
it.

Mr Bentham next represents us as maintaining:--

"Thirdly, That 'though there may be some tastes and propensities that
have no point of saturation, there exists a sufficient check in the
desire of the good opinion of others. ' The misfortune of this argument
is, that no man cares for the good opinion of those he has been
accustomed to wrong, If oysters have opinions, it is probable they think
very ill of those who eat them in August; but small is the effect upon
the autumnal glutton that engulfs their gentle substances within his
own. The planter and the slave-driver care just as much about negro
opinion, as the epicure about the sentiments of oysters. M. Ude throwing
live eels into the fire as a kindly method of divesting them of the
unsavoury oil that lodges beneath their skins, is not more convinced of
the immense aggregate of good which arises to the lordlier parts of the
creation, than is the gentle peer who strips his fellow man of country
and of family for a wild-fowl slain. The goodly landowner, who lives by
morsels squeezed indiscriminately from the waxy hands of the cobbler and
the polluted ones of the nightman, is in no small degree the object of
both hatred and contempt; but it is to be feared that he is a long way
from feeling them to be intolerable. The principle of 'At mihi plaudo
ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca,' is sufficient to make
a wide interval between the opinions of the plaintiff and defendant in
such cases. In short, to banish law and leave all plaintiffs to trust
to the desire of reputation on the opposite side, would only be
transporting the theory of the Whigs from the House of Commons to
Westminster Hall. "

Now, in the first place, we never maintained the proposition which Mr
Bentham puts into our mouths. We said, and say, that there is a CERTAIN
check to the rapacity and cruelty of men, in their desire of the good
opinion of others. We never said that it was sufficient. Let Mr Mill
show it to be insufficient. It is enough for us to prove that there is
a set-off against the principle from which Mr Mill deduces the whole
theory of government. The balance may be, and, we believe, will be,
against despotism and the narrower forms of aristocracy. But what is
this to the correctness or incorrectness of Mr Mill's accounts? The
question is not, whether the motives which lead rulers to behave ill
are stronger than those which lead them to behave well;--but, whether
we ought to form a theory of government by looking ONLY at the motives
which lead rulers to behave ill and never noticing those which lead them
to behave well.

Absolute rulers, says Mr Bentham, do not care for the good opinion of
their subjects; for no man cares for the good opinion of those whom he
has been accustomed to wrong. By Mr Bentham's leave, this is a plain
begging of the question. The point at issue is this:--Will kings and
nobles wrong the people? The argument in favour of kings and nobles is
this:--they will not wrong the people, because they care for the good
opinion of the people. But this argument Mr Bentham meets thus:--they
will not care for the good opinion of the people, because they are
accustomed to wrong the people.

Here Mr Mill differs, as usual, from Mr Bentham. "The greatest princes,"
says he, in his Essay on Education, "the most despotical masters of
human destiny, when asked what they aim at by their wars and conquests,
would answer, if sincere, as Frederick of Prussia answered, pour faire
parler de soi;--to occupy a large space in the admiration of mankind. "
Putting Mr Mill's and Mr Bentham's principles together, we might make
out very easily that "the greatest princes, the most despotical masters
of human destiny," would never abuse their power.

A man who has been long accustomed to injure people must also have been
long accustomed to do without their love, and to endure their aversion.
Such a man may not miss the pleasure of popularity; for men seldom miss
a pleasure which they have long denied themselves. An old tyrant does
without popularity just as an old water-drinker does without wine. But,
though it is perfectly true that men who for the good of their health
have long abstained from wine feel the want of it very little, it would
be absurd to infer that men will always abstain from wine when their
health requires that they should do so. And it would be equally absurd
to say, because men who have been accustomed to oppress care little for
popularity, that men will therefore necessarily prefer the pleasure of
oppression to those of popularity.

Then, again, a man may be accustomed to wrong people in one point and
not in another. He may care for their good opinion with regard to one
point and not with regard to another. The Regent Orleans laughed at
charges of impiety, libertinism, extravagance, idleness, disgraceful
promotions. But the slightest allusion to the charge of poisoning threw
him into convulsions. Louis the Fifteenth braved the hatred and contempt
of his subjects during many years of the most odious and imbecile
misgovernment. But, when a report was spread that he used human blood
for his baths, he was almost driven mad by it. Surely Mr Bentham's
position "that no man cares for the good opinion of those whom he has
been accustomed to wrong" would be objectionable, as far too sweeping
and indiscriminate, even if it did not involve, as in the present case
we have shown that it does, a direct begging of the question at issue.

Mr Bentham proceeds:--

"Fourthly, The Edinburgh Reviewers are of opinion, that 'it might, with
no small plausibility, be maintained, that in many countries, there are
two classes which, in some degree, answer to this description;' [viz. ]
'that the poor compose the class which government is established to
restrain; and the people of some property the class to which the powers
of government may without danger be confided. '

"They take great pains, it is true, to say this and not to say it. They
shuffle and creep about, to secure a hole to escape at, if 'what they
do not assert' should be found in any degree inconvenient. A man
might waste his life in trying to find out whether the Misses of the
'Edinburgh' mean to say Yes or No in their political coquetry. But
whichever way the lovely spinsters may decide, it is diametrically
opposed to history and the evidence of facts, that the poor ARE the
class whom there is any difficulty in restraining. It is not the poor
but the rich that have a propensity to take the property of other
people. There is no instance upon earth of the poor having combined to
take away the property of the rich; and all the instances habitually
brought forward in support of it are gross misrepresentations, founded
upon the most necessary acts of self-defence on the part of the most
numerous classes. Such a misrepresentation is the common one of the
Agrarian law; which was nothing but an attempt on the part of the
Roman people to get back some part of what had been taken from them by
undisguised robbery. Such another is the stock example of the French
Revolution, appealed to by the 'Edinburgh Review' in the actual case.
It is utterly untrue that the French Revolution took place because 'the
poor began to compare their cottages and salads with the hotels and
banquets of the rich;' it took place because they were robbed of
their cottages and salads to support the hotels and banquets of their
oppressors. It is utterly untrue that there was either a scramble for
property or a general confiscation; the classes who took part with the
foreign invaders lost their property, as they would have done here, and
ought to do everywhere. All these are the vulgar errors of the man on
the lion's back,--which the lion will set to rights when he can tell his
own story. History is nothing but the relation of the sufferings of the
poor from the rich; except precisely so far as the numerous classes of
the community have contrived to keep the virtual power in their hands,
or, in other words, to establish free governments. If a poor man injures
the rich, the law is instantly at his heels; the injuries of the rich
towards the poor are always inflicted BY the law. And to enable the rich
to do this to any extent that may be practicable or prudent, there is
clearly one postulate required, which is, that the rich shall make the
law. "

This passage is alone sufficient to prove that Mr Bentham has not taken
the trouble to read our article from beginning to end. We are quite sure
that he would not stoop to misrepresent it. And, if he had read it with
any attention, he would have perceived that all this coquetry, this
hesitation, this Yes and No, this saying and not saying, is simply an
exercise of the undeniable right which in controversy belongs to the
defensive side--to the side which proposes to establish nothing. The
affirmative of the issue and the burden of the proof are with Mr Mill,
not with us. We are not bound, perhaps we are not able, to show that the
form of government which he recommends is bad. It is quite enough if we
can show that he does not prove it to be good. In his proof, among many
other flaws, is this--He says, that if men are not inclined to plunder
each other, government is unnecessary, and that, if men are so inclined,
kings and aristocracies will plunder the people. Now, this we say, is a
fallacy. That SOME men will plunder their neighbours if they can, is
a sufficient reason for the existence of governments. But it is not
demonstrated that kings and aristocracies will plunder the people,
unless it be true that ALL men will plunder their neighbours, if they
can. Men are placed in very different situations. Some have all the
bodily pleasures that they desire, and many other pleasures besides,
without plundering anybody. Others can scarcely obtain their daily bread
without plundering. It may be true, but surely it is not self-evident,
that the former class is under as strong temptations to plunder as the
latter. Mr Mill was therefore bound to prove it. That he has not proved
it is one of thirty or forty fatal errors in his argument. It is not
necessary that we should express an opinion or even have an opinion on
the subject. Perhaps we are in a state of perfect scepticism: but what
then? Are we the theorymakers? When we bring before the world a theory
of government, it will be time to call upon us to offer proof at every
step. At present we stand on our undoubted logical right. We concede
nothing; and we deny nothing. We say to the Utilitarian theorists:--When
you prove your doctrine, we will believe it; and, till you prove it, we
will not believe it.

Mr Bentham has quite misunderstood what we said about the French
Revolution.
We never alluded to that event for the purpose of proving
that the poor were inclined to rob the rich. Mr Mill's principles of
human nature furnished us with that part of our argument ready-made.
We alluded to the French Revolution for the purpose of illustrating
the effects which general spoliation produces on society, not for the
purpose of showing that general spoliation will take place under a
democracy. We allowed distinctly that, in the peculiar circumstances of
the French monarchy, the Revolution, though accompanied by a great shock
to the institution of property, was a blessing. Surely Mr Bentham will
not maintain that the injury produced by the deluge of assignats and
by the maximum fell only on the emigrants,--or that there were not many
emigrants who would have stayed and lived peaceably under any government
if their persons and property had been secure.

We never said that the French Revolution took place because the poor
began to compare their cottages and salads with the hotels and banquets
of the rich. We were not speaking about THE CAUSES of the Revolution,
or thinking about them. This we said, and say, that, if a democratic
government had been established in France, the poor, when they began to
compare their cottages and salads with the hotels and banquets of the
rich, would, on the supposition that Mr Mill's principles are sound,
have plundered the rich, and repeated without provocation all the
severities and confiscations which at the time of the Revolution, were
committed with provocation. We say that Mr Mill's favourite form of
government would, if his own views of human nature be just, make those
violent convulsions and transfers of property which now rarely happen,
except, as in the case of the French Revolution, when the people are
maddened by oppression, events of annual or biennial occurrence. We gave
no opinion of our own. We give none now. We say that this proposition
may be proved from Mr Mill's own premises, by steps strictly analogous
to those by which he proves monarchy and aristocracy to be bad forms of
government. To say this, is not to say that the proposition is true.
For we hold both Mr Mill's premises and his deduction to be unsound
throughout.

Mr Bentham challenges us to prove from history that the people will
plunder the rich. What does history say to Mr Mill's doctrine, that
absolute kings will always plunder their subjects so unmercifully as to
leave nothing but a bare subsistence to any except their own creatures?
If experience is to be the test, Mr Mill's theory is unsound. If Mr
Mill's reasoning a priori be sound, the people in a democracy will
plunder the rich. Let us use one weight and one measure. Let us not
throw history aside when we are proving a theory, and take it up again
when we have to refute an objection founded on the principles of that
theory.

We have not done, however, with Mr Bentham's charges against us.

"Among other specimens of their ingenuity, they think they embarrass the
subject by asking why, on the principles in question, women should not
have votes as well as men. AND WHY NOT?

'Gentle shepherd, tell me why? '--

If the mode of election was what it ought to be, there would be no more
difficulty in women voting for a representative in Parliament than for
a director at the India House. The world will find out at some time
that the readiest way to secure justice on some points is to be just on
all:--that the whole is easier to accomplish than the part; and that,
whenever the camel is driven through the eye of the needle, it would be
simple folly and debility that would leave a hoof behind. "

Why, says or sings Mr Bentham, should not women vote? It may seem
uncivil in us to turn a deaf ear to his Arcadian warblings. But we
submit, with great deference, that it is not OUR business to tell him
why. We fully agree with him that the principle of female suffrage is
not so palpably absurd that a chain of reasoning ought to be pronounced
unsound merely because it leads to female suffrage. We say that every
argument which tells in favour of the universal suffrage of the males
tells equally in favour of female suffrage. Mr Mill, however, wishes
to see all men vote, but says that it is unnecessary that women should
vote; and for making this distinction HE gives as a reason an assertion
which, in the first place, is not true, and which, in the next place,
would, if true, overset his whole theory of human nature; namely, that
the interest of the women is identical with that of the men. We side
with Mr Bentham, so far, at least, as this: that, when we join to drive
the camel through the needle, he shall go through hoof and all. We at
present desire to be excused from driving the camel. It is Mr Mill who
leaves the hoof behind. But we should think it uncourteous to reproach
him in the language which Mr Bentham, in the exercise of his paternal
authority over the sect, thinks himself entitled to employ.

"Another of their perverted ingenuities is, that 'they are rather
inclined to think,' that it would, on the whole, be for the interest of
the majority to plunder the rich; and if so, the Utilitarians will say
that the rich OUGHT to be plundered. On which it is sufficient to reply,
that for the majority to plunder the rich would amount to a declaration
that nobody should be rich; which, as all men wish to be rich, would
involve a suicide of hope. And as nobody has shown a fragment of reason
why such a proceeding should be for the general happiness, it does
not follow that the 'Utilitarians' would recommend it. The Edinburgh
Reviewers have a waiting gentlewoman's ideas of 'Utilitarianism. ' It
is unsupported by anything but the pitiable 'We are rather inclined to
think'--and is utterly contradicted by the whole course of history and
human experience besides,--that there is either danger or possibility of
such a consummation as the majority agreeing on the plunder of the rich.
There have been instances in human memory, of their agreeing to plunder
rich oppressors, rich traitors, rich enemies,--but the rich simpliciter
never. It is as true now as in the days of Harrington that 'a people
never will, nor ever can, never did, nor ever shall, take up arms for
levelling. ' All the commotions in the world have been for something
else; and 'levelling' is brought forward as the blind to conceal what
the other was. "

We say, again and again, that we are on the defensive. We do not think
it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison. Let the vendor
prove it to be sanative. We do not pretend to show that universal
suffrage is an evil. Let its advocates show it to be a good. Mr Mill
tells us that, if power be given for short terms to representatives
elected by all the males of mature age, it will then be for the interest
of those representatives to promote the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. To prove this, it is necessary that he should prove
three propositions: first, that the interest of such a representative
body will be identical with the interest of the constituent body;
secondly, that the interest of the constituent body will be identical
with that of the community; thirdly, that the interest of one generation
of a community is identical with that of all succeeding generations. The
two first propositions Mr Mill attempts to prove and fails. The last he
does not even attempt to prove. We therefore refuse our assent to his
conclusions. Is this unreasonable?

We never even dreamed, what Mr Bentham conceives us to have maintained,
that it could be for the greatest happiness of MANKIND to plunder the
rich. But we are "rather inclined to think," though doubtingly and with
a disposition to yield to conviction, that it may be for the pecuniary
interest of the majority of a single generation in a thickly-peopled
country to plunder the rich. Why we are inclined to think so we will
explain, whenever we send a theory of government to an Encyclopaedia.
At present we are bound to say only that we think so, and shall think so
till somebody shows us a reason for thinking otherwise.

Mr Bentham's answer to us is simple assertion. He must not think that
we mean any discourtesy by meeting it with a simple denial. The fact is,
that almost all the governments that have ever existed in the civilised
world have been, in part at least, monarchical and aristocratical. The
first government constituted on principles approaching to those which
the Utilitarians hold was, we think, that of the United States. That the
poor have never combined to plunder the rich in the governments of the
old world, no more proves that they might not combine to plunder the
rich under a system of universal suffrage, than the fact that the
English kings of the House of Brunswick have not been Neros and
Domitians proves that sovereigns may safely be intrusted with absolute
power. Of what the people would do in a state of perfect sovereignty we
can judge only by indications, which, though rarely of much moment in
themselves, and though always suppressed with little difficulty, are yet
of great significance, and resemble those by which our domestic animals
sometimes remind us that they are of kin with the fiercest monsters of
the forest. It would not be wise to reason from the behaviour of a dog
crouching under the lash, which is the case of the Italian people,
or from the behaviour of a dog pampered with the best morsels of a
plentiful kitchen, which is the case of the purpose of America, to the
behaviour of a wolf, which is nothing but a dog run wild, after a week's
fast among the snows of the Pyrenees. No commotion, says Mr Bentham,
was ever really produced by the wish of levelling; the wish has been put
forward as a blind; but something else has been the real object. Grant
all this. But why has levelling been put forward as a blind in times
of commotion to conceal the real objects of the agitators? Is it with
declarations which involve "a suicide of hope" that man attempt to
allure others? Was famine, pestilence, slavery, ever held out to attract
the people? If levelling has been made a pretence for disturbances, the
argument against Mr Bentham's doctrine is as strong as if it had been
the real object of disturbances.

But the great objection which Mr Bentham makes to our review, still
remains to be noticed:--

"The pith of the charge against the author of the Essays is, that he has
written 'an elaborate Treatise on Government,' and 'deduced the whole
science from the assumption of certain propensities of human nature. '
Now, in the name of Sir Richard Birnie and all saints, from what else
SHOULD it be deduced? What did ever anybody imagine to be the end,
object, and design of government AS IT OUGHT TO BE but the same
operation, on an extended scale, which that meritorious chief magistrate
conducts on a limited one at Bow Street; to wit, the preventing one man
from injuring another? Imagine, then, that the Whiggery of Bow Street
were to rise up against the proposition that their science was to be
deduced from 'certain propensities of human nature,' and thereon were to
ratiocinate as follows:--

"'How then are we to arrive at just conclusions on a subject so
important to the happiness of mankind? Surely by that method, which, in
every experimental science to which it has been applied, has signally
increased the power and knowledge of our species,--by that method for
which our new philosophers would substitute quibbles scarcely worthy
of the barbarous respondents and opponents of the middle ages,--by the
method of induction,--by observing the present state of the world,--by
assiduously studying the history of past ages,--by sifting the evidence
of facts,--by carefully combining and contrasting those which
are authentic,--by generalising with judgment and diffidence,--by
perpetually bringing the theory which we have constructed to the test
of new facts,--by correcting, or altogether abandoning it, according
as those new facts prove it to be partially or fundamentally unsound.
Proceeding thus,--patiently, diligently, candidly, we may hope to form
a system as far inferior in pretension to that which we have
been examining, and as far superior to it in real utility, as the
prescriptions of a great physician, varying with every stage of every
malady, and with the constitution of every patient, to the pill of the
advertising quack, which is to cure all human beings, in all climates,
of all diseases. '

"Fancy now,--only fancy,--the delivery of these wise words at Bow
Street; and think how speedily the practical catchpolls would reply,
that all this might be very fine, but, as far as they had studied
history, the naked story was, after all, that numbers of men had a
propensity to thieving, and their business was to catch them; that they,
too, had been sifters of facts; and, to say the truth, their simple
opinion was, that their brethren of the red waistcoat--though they
should be sorry to think ill of any man--had somehow contracted a
leaning to the other side, and were more bent on puzzling the case for
the benefit of the defendants, than on doing the duty of good officers
and true. Such would, beyond all doubt, be the sentence passed on such
trimmers in the microcosm of Bow Street. It might not absolutely follow
that they were in a plot to rob the goldsmiths' shops, or to set fire
to the House of Commons; but it would be quite clear that they had got
A FEELING,--that they were in process of siding with the thieves,--and
that it was not to them that any man must look who was anxious that
pantries should be safe. "

This is all very witty; but it does not touch us. On the present
occasion, we cannot but flatter ourselves that we bear a much greater
resemblance to a practical catchpoll than either Mr Mill or Mr Bentham.
It would, to be sure, be very absurd in a magistrate discussing the
arrangements of a police-office, to spout in the style either of our
article or Mr Bentham's; but, in substance, he would proceed, if he were
a man of sense, exactly as WE recommend. He would, on being appointed
to provide for the security of property in a town, study attentively
the state of the town. He would learn at what places, at what times, and
under what circumstances, theft and outrage were most frequent. Are
the streets, he would ask, most infested with thieves at sunset or at
midnight? Are there any public places of resort which give peculiar
facilities to pickpockets? Are there any districts completely inhabited
by a lawless population? Which are the flash houses, and which the shops
of receivers? Having made himself master of the facts, he would act
accordingly. A strong detachment of officers might be necessary for
Petticoat Lane; another for the pit entrance of Covent Garden Theatre.
Grosvenor Square and Hamilton Place would require little or no
protection. Exactly thus should we reason about government. Lombardy
is oppressed by tyrants; and constitutional checks, such as may produce
security to the people, are required. It is, so to speak, one of the
resorts of thieves; and there is great need of police-officers. Denmark
resembles one of those respectable streets in which it is scarcely
necessary to station a catchpoll, because the inhabitants would at once
join to seize a thief. Yet, even in such a street, we should wish to
see an officer appear now and then, as his occasional superintence would
render the security more complete. And even Denmark, we think, would be
better off under a constitutional form of government.

Mr Mill proceeds like a director of police, who, without asking a
single question about the state of his district, should give his orders
thus:--"My maxim is, that every man will take what he can. Every man in
London would be a thief, but for the thieftakers. This is an undeniable
principle of human nature. Some of my predecessors have wasted
their time in enquiring about particular pawnbrokers, and particular
alehouses. Experience is altogether divided. Of people placed in exactly
the same situation, I see that one steals, and that another would sooner
burn his hand off. THEREFORE I trust to the laws of human nature alone,
and pronounce all men thieves alike. Let everybody, high and low, be
watched. Let Townsend take particular care that the Duke of Wellington
does not steal the silk handkerchief of the lord in waiting at the
levee. A person has lost a watch. Go to Lord Fitzwilliam and search
him for it; he is as great a receiver of stolen goods as Ikey Solomons
himself. Don't tell me about his rank, and character, and fortune. He
is a man; and a man does not change his nature when he is called a lord.
("If Government is founded upon this, as a law of human nature, that
a man, if able, will take from others anything which they have and he
desires, it is sufficiently evident that when a man is called a king, he
does not change his nature, so that, when he has power to take what he
pleases, he will take what he pleases. To suppose that he will not,
is to affirm that government is unnecessary and that human beings
will abstain from injuring one another of their own accord. "--"Mill on
Government". ) Either men will steal or they will not steal. If they will
not, why do I sit here? If they will, his lordship must be a thief. " The
Whiggery of Bow Street would perhaps rise up against this wisdom. Would
Mr Bentham think that the Whiggery of Bow Street was in the wrong?

We blamed Mr Mill for deducing his theory of government from the
principles of human nature. "In the name of Sir Richard Birnie and all
saints," cries Mr Bentham, "from what else should it be deduced? "
In spite of this solemn adjuration, with shall venture to answer Mr
Bentham's question by another. How does he arrive at those principles of
human nature from which he proposes to deduce the science of government?
We think that we may venture to put an answer into his mouth; for in
truth there is but one possible answer. He will say--By experience.
But what is the extent of this experience? Is it an experience which
includes experience of the conduct of men intrusted with the powers
of government; or is it exclusive of that experience? If it includes
experience of the manner in which men act when intrusted with the powers
of government, then those principles of human nature from which the
science of government is to be deduced can only be known after going
through that inductive process by which we propose to arrive at the
science of government. Our knowledge of human nature, instead of being
prior in order to our knowledge of the science of government, will be
posterior to it. And it would be correct to say, that by means of the
science of government, and of other kindred sciences--the science of
education, for example, which falls under exactly the same principle--we
arrive at the science of human nature.

If, on the other hand, we are to deduce the theory of government from
principles of human nature, in arriving at which principles we have not
taken into the account the manner in which men act when invested with
the powers of government, then those principles must be defective.
They have not been formed by a sufficiently copious induction. We are
reasoning, from what a man does in one situation, to what he will do in
another. Sometimes we may be quite justified in reasoning thus. When we
have no means of acquiring information about the particular case before
us, we are compelled to resort to cases which bear some resemblance to
it. But the more satisfactory course is to obtain information about
the particular case; and, whenever this can be obtained, it ought to be
obtained. When first the yellow fever broke out, a physician might
be justified in treating it as he had been accustomed to treat those
complaints which, on the whole, had the most symptoms in common with it.
But what should we think of a physician who should now tell us that
he deduced his treatment of yellow fever from the general theory of
pathology? Surely we should ask him, Whether, in constructing his theory
of pathology, he had or had not taken into the account the facts which
had been ascertained respecting the yellow fever? If he had, then it
would be more correct to say that he had arrived at the principles of
pathology partly by his experience of cases of yellow fever than that
he had deduced his treatment of yellow fever from the principles of
pathology. If he had not, he should not prescribe for us. If we had the
yellow fever, we should prefer a man who had never treated any cases but
cases of yellow fever to a man who had walked the hospitals of London
and Paris for years, but who knew nothing of our particular disease.

Let Lord Bacon speak for us: "Inductionem censemus eam esse demonstrandi
formam, quae sensum tuetur, et naturam premit, et operibus imminet, ac
fere immiscetur. Itaque ordo quoque demonstrandi plane invertitur. Adhuc
enim res ita geri consuevit, ut a sensu et particularibus primo loco
ad maxime generalia advoletur, tanquam ad polos fixos, circa quos
disputationes vertantur; ab illis caetera, per media, deriventur;
via certe compendiaria, sed praecipiti, et ad naturam impervia, ad
disputationes proclivi et accommodata. At, secundum nos, axiomata
continenter et gradatim excitantur, ut non, nisi postremo loco, ad
maxime generalia veniatur. " Can any words more exactly describe the
political reasonings of Mr Mill than those in which Lord Bacon thus
describes the logomachies of the schoolmen? Mr Mill springs at once to a
general principle of the widest extent, and from that general principle
deduces syllogistically every thing which is included in it. We say with
Bacon--"non, nisi postremo loco, ad maxime generalia veniatur. " In the
present inquiry, the science of human nature is the "maxime generale. "
To this the Utilitarian rushes at once, and from this he deduces a
hundred sciences. But the true philosopher, the inductive reasoner,
travels up to it slowly, through those hundred sciences, of which the
science of government is one.

As we have lying before us that incomparable volume, the noblest and
most useful of all the works of the human reason, the Novum Organum,
we will transcribe a few lines, in which the Utilitarian philosophy is
portrayed to the life.

"Syllogismus ad 'Principia' scientiarum non adhibetur, ad media axiomata
frustra adhibetur, cum sit subtilitati naturae longe impar. Assensum
itaque constringit, non res. Syllogismus ex propositionibus constat,
propositiones ex verbis, verba notionum tesserae sunt. Itaque si
notiones ipsae, id quod basis rei est, confusae sint, et tenere a rebus
abstractae, nihil in iis quae superstruuntur est firmitudinis. Itaque
spes est una in Inductione vera. In notionibus nil sani est, nec in
Logicis nec in physicis. Non substantia, non qualitas, agere, pati,
ipsum esse, bonae notiones sunt; multo minus grave, leve, densum, tenue,
humidum, siccum, generatio, corruptio, attrahere, fugare, elementum,
materia, forma, et id genus, sed omnes phantasticae et male terminatae. "

Substitute for the "substantia," the "generatio," the "corruptio,"
the "elementum," the "materia," of the old schoolmen, Mr Mill's pain,
pleasure, interest, power, objects of desire,--and the words of Bacon
will seem to suit the current year as well as the beginning of the
seventeenth century.

We have now gone through the objections that Mr Bentham makes to our
article: and we submit ourselves on all the charges to the judgment of
the public.

The rest of Mr Bentham's article consists of an exposition of the
Utilitarian principle, or, as he decrees that it shall be called, the
"greatest happiness principle. " He seems to think that we have been
assailing it. We never said a syllable against it. We spoke slightingly
of the Utilitarian sect, as we thought of them, and think of them; but
it was not for holding this doctrine that we blamed them. In attacking
them we no more meant to attack the "greatest happiness principle" than
when we say that Mahometanism is a false religion we mean to deny the
unity of God, which is the first article of the Mahometan creed;--no
more than Mr Bentham, when he sneers at the Whigs means to blame them
for denying the divine right of kings. We reasoned throughout our
article on the supposition that the end of government was to produce the
greatest happiness to mankind.

Mr Bentham gives an account of the manner in which he arrived at the
discovery of the "greatest happiness principle. " He then proceeds to
describe the effects which, as he conceives, that discovery is producing
in language so rhetorical and ardent that, if it had been written by any
other person, a genuine Utilitarian would certainly have thrown down the
book in disgust.

"The only rivals of any note to the new principle which were brought
forward, were those known by the names of the 'moral sense,' and the
'original contract. ' The new principle superseded the first of these, by
presenting it with a guide for its decisions; and the other, by making
it unnecessary to resort to a remote and imaginary contract for what was
clearly the business of every man and every hour. Throughout the whole
horizon of morals and of politics, the consequences were glorious and
vast. It might be said without danger of exaggeration, that they who
sat in darkness had seen a great light. The mists in which mankind
had jousted against each other were swept away, as when the sun of
astronomical science arose in the full development of the principle of
gravitation. If the object of legislation was the greatest happiness,
MORALITY was the promotion of the same end by the conduct of the
individual; and by analogy, the happiness of the world was the morality
of nations.

". . . All the sublime obscurities, which had haunted the mind of man from
the first formation of society,--the phantoms whose steps had been on
earth, and their heads among the clouds--marshalled themselves at the
sound of this new principle of connection and of union, and stood a
regulated band, where all was order, symmetry, and force. What men had
struggled for and bled, while they saw it but as through a glass darkly,
was made the object of substantial knowledge and lively apprehension.
The bones of sages and of patriots stirred within their tombs, that what
they dimly saw and followed had become the world's common heritage. And
the great result was wrought by no supernatural means, nor produced
by any unparallelable concatenation of events. It was foretold by no
oracles, and ushered by no portents; but was brought about by the quiet
and reiterated exercise of God's first gift of common sense. "

Mr Bentham's discovery does not, as we think we shall be able to show,
approach in importance to that of gravitation, to which he compares it.
At all events, Mr Bentham seems to us to act much as Sir Isaac Newton
would have done if he had gone about boasting that he was the first
person who taught bricklayers not to jump off scaffolds and break their
legs.

Does Mr Bentham profess to hold out any new motive which may induce men
to promote the happiness of the species to which they belong? Not at
all. He distinctly admits that, if he is asked why government should
attempt to produce the greatest possible happiness, he can give no
answer.

"The real answer," says he, "appeared to be, that men at large OUGHT not
to allow a government to afflict them with more evil or less good
than they can help. What A GOVERNMENT ought to do is a mysterious and
searching question, which those may answer who know what it means; but
what other men ought to do is a question of no mystery at all. The
word OUGHT, if it means anything, must have reference to some kind of
interest or motives; and what interest a government has in doing right,
when it happens to be interested in doing wrong, is a question for
the schoolmen. The fact appears to be, that OUGHT is not predicable of
governments. The question is not why governments are bound not to do
this or that, but why OTHER MEN should let them if they can help it. The
point is not to determine why the lion should not eat sheep, but why men
should not eat their own mutton if they can. "

The principle of Mr Bentham, if we understand it, is this, that mankind
ought to act so as to produce their greatest happiness. The word OUGHT,
he tells us, has no meaning, unless it be used with reference to some
interest. But the interest of a man is synonymous with his greatest
happiness:--and therefore to say that a man ought to do a thing, is
to say that it is for his greatest happiness to do it. And to say that
mankind OUGHT to act so as to produce their greatest happiness, is to
say that the greatest happiness is the greatest happiness--and this is
all!

Does Mr Bentham's principle tend to make any man wish for anything for
which he would not have wished, or do anything which he would not have
done, if the principle had never been heard of?