(Edinburgh Review, June 1829.)
We {52}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
(1) The Westminster Review. No. XXI. Article XVI. Edinburgh
Review. No. XCVII. Article on Mill’s Essays on Government,
&c. {53}
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 {54}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 {55}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 lav 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 {56}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 ease of
ill-behaviour, as effectually as in other countries where more noise is
made upon the subject. Every body 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 ease 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 not 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 {57}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 {58}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? {59}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 drawl 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 conld 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 {60}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, Æacus, 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 {61}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. {62}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 cheek 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 land-owner, 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 nununos contemplai’ in area’ is sufficient to make
a wide interval between the opinions of the plaintiff and defendant in
such eases. 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 {63}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 {64}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
pleasures 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.