that crime which made the earth shake anu blotted out the sun from heaven? The same reasoning which is now employed to vindicate the disabilities imposed on our Hebrew coun. trymen will equally vindicate the kiss of Judas and the judgment of Pilate. "The Son of man grim and sojourner in the land? Does the expectation of being restored to the country of his fathers make him insensible to the fluctuations of the stock-exchange? Docs he, in arranging his private affairs, ever take into the account the chance of his migrating to Palestine? If not, why are we to suppose that feel-goeth, as it is written of him; but woe to tha ings which never influence his dealings as a merchant, or his dispositions as a testator, will acquire a boundless influence over him as soon as he becomes a magistrate or a legislator? There is another argument which we would not willingly treat with levity, and which yet we scarcely know how to treat seriously. Scripture, it is said, is full of terrible denunciations against the Jews. It is foretold that they are to be wanderers. Is it then right to give them a home? It is foretold that they are to be oppressed. Can we with propriety suffer" to serve their enemies in hunger, and in thirst, them to be rulers? Tc admit them to the rights of citizens is manifestly to insult the Divine oracles. We allow that to falsify a prophecy inspired by Divine Wisdom would be a most atrocious crime. It is, therefore, a happy circumstance for our frail species, that it is a crime which no man can possibly commit. If we admit the Jews to seats in Parliament, we shall, by so doing, prove that the prophecies in question, whatever they may mean, do not mean that the Jews shall be excluded from Parliament. In fact it is already clear that the prophecies do not bear the meaning put upon them by the respectable persons whom we are now answering. In France and in the United States the Jews are already admitted to all the rights of citizens. A prophecy, therefore, which should mean that the Jews would never, during the course of their wanderings, be admitted to all the rights of citizens in the places of their sojourn, would be a false prophecy. This, therefore, is not the meaning of the prophecies of Scripture. man by whom the Son of man is betrayed.* And woe to those who, in any age or in any country, disobey his benevolent commands un der pretence of accomplishing his predictions If this argument justifies the laws now existing against the Jews, it justifies equally all the cruelties which have ever been committee against them, the sweeping edicts of banish ment and confiscation, the dungeon, the rack and the slow fire. How can we excuse our selves for leaving property to people who are and in nakedness, and in want of all things;" for giving protection to the persons of those who are to "fear day and night, and to have none assurance of their life;" for not seizing on the children of a race whose "sons and daughters are to be given unto another people." We have not so learned the doctrines of Him who commanded us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and who, when he was called upon to explain what He meant by a neighbour, selected as an example a heretic and an alien. Last year, we remember, it was represented by a pious writer in the John Bull newspaper, and by some other equally fervid Christians, as a monstrous indecency, that the measure for the relief of the Jews should be brought forward in Passion week. One of these humourists ironically recommended that it should be read a second time on Good Fri day. We should have had no objection; nor do we believe that the day could be commemorated in a more worthy manner. We know of no day fitter for terminating long hostilities and repairing cruel wrongs, than the day on But we protest altogether against the prac-which the religion of mercy was founded. We tice of confounding prophecy with precept, of setting up predictions which are often obscure against a morality which is always clear. If actions are to be considered as just and good merely because they have been predicted, what action was ever more laudable than that crime which our bigots are now, at the end of eighteen centuries, urging us to avenge on the Jews, 43 know of no day fitter for blotting out from the statute book the last traces of intolerance than the day on which the spirit of intolerance produced the foulest of all judicial murders, the day on which the list of the victims of intoler. ance, that noble list wherein Socrates and Morg are enrolled, was glorified by a yet greater and holier name. MILL'S ESSAY ON GOVERNMENT.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW, MARCH, 1829.] Or those philosophers who call themselves | them that the studies which they have neglected Utilitarians, and whom others generally call Benthamites, Mr. Mill is, with the exception of the illustrious founder of the sect, by far the most distinguished. The little work now before us contains a summary of the opinions held by this gentleman and his brethren, on several subjects most important to society. All the seven Essays of which it consists, abound in curious matter. But at present we intend to confine our remarks to the Treatise on Government, which stands first in the volume. On some future occasion we may perhaps attempt to do justice to the rest. are of no value, puts five or six phrases intc their mouths, lends them an odd number of the Westminster Review, and in a month trans. forms them into philosophers. Mingled with these smatterers, whose attainments just suffice to elevate them from the insignificance of dunces to the dignity of bores, and to spread dismay among their pious aunts and grandmothers, there are, we well know, many wellmeaning men, who have really read and thought much; but whose reading and meditation have been almost exclusively confined to one class of subjects; and who, consequently, though they possess much valuable knowledge respecting those subjects, are by no means so well qualified to judge of a great system as if they had taken a more enlarged view of literature and society. Nothing is more amusing or instructive than to observe the manner in which people, who think themselves wiser than all the rest of the world, fall into snares which the simple good sense of their neighbours detects and avoids. It is one of the principal tenets of the Utilitarians, that sentiment and eloquence serve only to impede the pursuit of truth. They therefore affect a quakerly plainness, or rather a cynical negligence and impurity of style. The strongest arguments, when clothed in brilliant language, seem to them so much wordy nonsense. In the meantime they surrender their understandings, with a facility found in no other party, to the meanest and most abject sophisms, provided those sophisms come before them disguised with the externals of demonstration. They do not seem to know that logic has its illusions as well as rhetoric,—that a fallacy may lurk in a syllogism as well as in a metaphor. It must be owned, that, to do justice to any composition of Mr. Mill is not, in the opinion of his admirers, a very easy task. They do not, indeed, place nim in the same rank with Mr. Bentham; but the terms in which they extol the disciple, though feeble when compared with the hyperboles of admiration employed by them in speaking of the master, are as strong as any sober man would allow himself to use concerning Locke or Bacon. The Essay before us is perhaps the most remarkable of the works to which Mr. Mill owes his fame. By the members of his sect, it is considered as perfect and unanswerable. Every part of it is an article of their faith; and the damnatory clauses, in which their creed abounds far beyond any theological symbol with which we are acquainted, are strong and full against all who reject any portion of what is so irrefragably established. No man, they maintain, who has understanding sufficient to carry him through the first proposition of Euclid, can read this master-piece of demonstration, and honestly declare that he remains unconvinced. We have formed a very different opinion of this work. We think that the theory of Mr. Mill rests altogether on false principles, and Mr. Mill is exactly the writer to please people that even on those false principles he does not of this description. His arguments are stated reason logically. Nevertheless, we do not with the utmost affectation of precision: his think it strange that his speculations should divisions are awfully formal; and his style is have filled the Utilitarians with admiration. generally as dry as that of Euclid's Elements. We have been for some time past inclined to Whether this be a merit, we must be permitted suspect that these people, whom some regard to doubt. Thus much is certain, that the ages as the lights of the world, and others as incar- in which the true principles of philosophy nate demons, are in general ordinary men, with were least understood, were those in which the narrow understandings, and little information. ceremonial of logic was most strictly observed, The contempt which they express for elegant and that the time from which we date the rapid literature is evidently the contempt of igno-progress of the experimental sciences was also rance. We apprehend that many of them are persons who, having read little or nothing, are delighted to be rescued from the sense of their own inferiority, by some teacher who assures * Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, the Liberty of the Press, Prisons and Prison Discipline, Colonies, the Law of Nations and Education. By JAMES MILL, Esq., author of the History of British India. Reprinted by permission from the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. (Not for sale.) London. 1828 the time at which a less exact and formal way of writing came into use. The style which the Utilitarians admire, suits only those subjects on which it is possible to reason a priori. It grew up with the verbal sophistry which flourished during the dark ages. With that sophistry it fell before the Baconian philosophy, in the day of the great deliverance of the human mind. The inductive method not cnly endured, but require 1, greater freedom of diction. It was impossible | in a theory because a fact contradicts it, is what to reason from phenomena up to principles, to neither philosopher nor pope ever before remark slight shades of difference in quality, or quired. This, however, is what Mr. Mill de to estimate the comparative effect of two oppo- mands of us. He seems to think that if all site considerations, between which there was despots, without exception, governed ill, it no common measure, by means of the naked would be unnecessary to prove, by a synthetical and meager jargon of the schoolmen. Of those argument, what would then be sufficiently clear schoolmen, Mr. Mill has inherted both the spirit from experience. But as some despots will be and the style. He is an Aristotelian of the so perverse as to govern well, he finds himself fifteenth century, born out of due season. We compelled to prove the impossibility of their have here an elaborate treatise on government, governing well, by that synthetical argument, from which, but for two or three passing allu- which would have been superfluous had not sions, it would not appear that the author was the facts contradicted it. He reasons a priori, aware that any governments actually existed because the phenomena are not what, by rea among men. Certain propensities of human soning a priori, he will prove them to be. In nature are assumed; and from these premises other words, he reasons a priori, because, by so the whole science of polities is synthetically reasoning, he is certain to arrive at a false deduced! We can scarcely persuade ourselves conclusion! that we are not reading a book written before the time of Bacon and Galileo,-a book written in those days in which physicians reasoned from the nature of heat to the treatment of fever, and astronomers proved syllogistically that the planets could have no independent motion, because the heavens were incorruptible, and nature abhorred a vacuum! The reason, too, which Mr. Mill has assigned for taking this course strikes us as most extraordinary. "Experience," says he, "if we look only at the outside of the facts, appears to be divided on this subject. Absolute monarchy, under Neros and Caligulas, under such men as the emperors of Morocco and sultans of Turkey, is the Scourge of human nature. On the other side, 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." This Mr. Mill actually gives as a reason for pursuing the a priori method. But, in our judgment, the very circumstances which he mentions, irresistibly prove that the a priori method is altogether unfit for investigations of this kind, and that the only way to arrive at the truth is by induction. Experience can never be divided, or even appear to be divided, except with reference to some hypothesis. When we say that one fact is inconsistent with another fact, we mean only that it is inconsistent with the theory which we have founded on that other fact. But, if the fact be certain, the unavoidable conclusion is, that our theory is false: and in order to correct it, we must reason back from an enlarged collection of facts to principles. Now, here we have two governments which, by Mr. Mill's own account, come under the same head in his theoretical classification. It is evident, therefore, that, by reasoning on that theoretical classification, we shall be brought to the conclusion that these two forms of government must produce the same effects. But Mr. Mill himself tells us, that they do not produce the same effects. Hence he infers, that the only way to get at truth is to place implicit confidence in that chain of proof a priori, from which it appears that they must produce the same effects! To believe at once in a theory, and in a fact which contradicts it, is an exercise of faith sufficiently hard: But, to believe In the course of the examination to which we propose to subject the speculations of Mr. Mill, we shall have to notice many other curious instances of that turn of mind which the pas sage above quoted indicates. The first chapter of his Essay relates to the ends of government. The conception on this subject, he tells us, which exists in the minds of most men, is vague and undistinguishing. He first assumes, justly enough, that the end of government is "to increase to the utmost the pleasures, and diminish to the utmost the pains, which men derive from each other." He then proceeds to show, with great form, that "the greatest possible happiness of society is attained by insuring to every man the greatest possible quantity of the produce of his labour." To effect this is, in his opinion, the end of government. It is remarkable that Mr. Mill, with all his affected display of precision, has here given a description of the ends of government far less precise than that which is in the mouths of the vulgar. The first man with whom Mr. Mill may travel in a stage-coach will tell him that government exists for the protection of the persons and property of men. But Mr. Mill seems to think that the preservation of property is the first and only object. It is true, doubtless, that many of the injuries which are offered to the persons of men proceed from a desire to possess their property. But the practice of vindictive assassination, as it has existed in some parts of Europe-the practice of fighting wanton and sanguinary duels, like those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which bands of seconds risked their lives as well as the principals ;these practices, and many others which might be named, are evidently injurious to society; and we do not see how a government which tolerated them could be said "to diminish to the utmost the pains which men derive from each other." Therefore, according to Mr. Mill's very correct assumption, such a government would not perfectly accomplish the end of its institution. Yet such a government might, as far as we can perceive, "insure to every man the greatest possible quantity of the produce of his labour." Therefore, such a government might, according to Mr. Mill's subsequent doctrine, prfectly accomplish the end of its institution. The matter is not of much consequence, exc pt as an instance of that slovenliness of thinking which is often concealed beneath a peculiar ostentation of logical neatness. Having determined the ends, Mr. Mill proceeds to consider the means. For the preservation of property, some portion of the community must be intrusted with power. This is government; and the question is, how are those to whom the necessary power is intrusted to be prevented from abusing it? Mr. Mill first passes in review the simple forms of government. He allows that it would be inconvenient, if not physically impossible, that the whole community should meet in a mass; it follows, therefore, that the powers of government cannot be directly exercised by the people. But he sees no objection to pure and direct democracy, except the difficulty which we have mentioned. "The community," says he, "cannot have an interest opposite to its interest. To affirm this would be a contradiction in terms. The community within itself, and with respect to itself, can have no sinister interest. One community may intend the evil of another; never its own. This is an indubitable proposition, and one of great importance." Mr. Mill then proceeds to demonstrate that a purely aristocratical form of government is necessarily bad. "The reason for which government exists is, that one man, if stronger than another, will take from him whatever that other possesses and he desires. But if one man will do this, so will several. And if powers are put into the hands of a comparatively small number, called an aristocracy,-powers which make them stronger than the rest of the community, they will take from the rest of the community as much as they please of the objects of desire. They will thus defeat the very end for which government was instituted. The unfitness, therefore, of an aristocracy to be intrusted with the powers of government, rests on demonstration." tocracy may soon be saturated with the objecti of their desires, and may then protect the com munity in the enjoyment of the rest? Mr. Mill answers in the negative. He proves, with great pomp, that every man desires to have the actions of every other correspondent to his will. Others can be induced to conform to our will only by motives derived from pleasure or from pain. The infliction of pain is of course direct injury; and even if it take the milder course, in order to produce obedience by motives derived from pleasure, the government must confer favours. But, as there is no limit to its desire of obedience, there will be në limit to its disposition to confer favours; and, as it can confer favours only by plundering the people, there will be no limit to its disposi tion to plunder the people. "It is therefore not true, that there is in the mind of a king, or in the minds of an aristocracy, any point of saturation with the objects of desire." Mr. Mill then proceeds to show that, as monarchical and oligarchical governments can influence men by motives drawn from pain as well as by motives drawn from pleasure, they will carry their cruelty, as well as their rapacity, to a frightful extent. As he seems greatly to admire his own reasonings on this subject, we think it but fair to let him speak for himself. "The chain of inference in this case is close and strong to a most unusual degree. A man desires that the actions of other men shall be instantly and accurately correspondent to his will. He desires that the actions of the greatest possible number shall be so. Terror is the grand instrument. Terror can work only through assurance that evil will follow any failure of conformity between the will and the actions willed. Every failure must therefore be punished. As there are no bounds to the mind's desire of its pleasure, there are, of course, no bounds to its desire of perfection in the instruments of that pleasure. There are, therefore, no bounds to its desire of exactness in the conformity between its will and the In exactly the same manner Mr. Mill proves absolute monarchy to be a bad form of govern-actions willed; and, by consequence, to the ment. "If government is founded upon this as a law of human nature, that a man, if able, will take from others any thing 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 got power to enable him to take from every man what he pleases, he will take whatever 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. strength of that terror which is its procuring cause. Even the most minute failure must be visited with the heaviest infliction; and as failure in extreme exactness must frequently happen, the occasions of cruelty must be in cessant. "We have thus arrived at several conclusions of the highest possible importance. We have seen that the principle of human nature upon which the necessity of government is founded, the propensity of one man to possess himself of the objects of desire at the cost of another, leads on, by infallible sequence, where power over a community is attained, and nothing checks, not only to that degree of plun "It is very evident that this reasoning extends to every modification of the smaller number. Whenever the powers of govern-der which leaves the members, (excepting al ment are placed in any hands other than those of the community, whether those of one man, of a few, or of several, those principles of human nature which imply that government is at all necessary, imply that those persons will make use of them to defeat the very end for which government ex sts." ways the recipients and instruments of the plunder,) the bare means of subsistence, but to that degree of cruelty which is necessary to keep in existence the most intense terrors. Now, no man who has the least knowledge of the real state of the world, either in former ages or at the present moment, can possibly But is it not possil e that a king or an aris-be convinced, though he may perhaps be be vildered, by arguments like these. During | execration, are feelings from the influence of the last two centuries, some hundreds of ab- which scarcely any man is perfectly free, and solute princes have reigned in Europe. Is which in many men are powerful and constant it true that their cruelty has kept in exist- motives of action. As we are afraid that, if ence the most intense degree of terror, that we handle this part of the argument after our their rapacity has left no more than the bare own manner, we shall incur the reproach of means of subsistence to any of their subjects, sentimentality, a word which, in the sacred their ministers and soldiers excepted? Is this language of the Benthamites, is synonymous true of all of them? Of one-half of them? with idiocy, we will quote what Mr. Mill himOf one-tenth part of them? Of a single one? self says on the subject, in his Treatise on Is it true, in the full extent, even of Philip the Jurisprudence. Second, of Lewis the Fifteenth, or of the Emperor Paul? But it is scarcely necessary to quote history. No man e: common sense, however ignorant he may be of books, can be imposed on by Mr. Mill's argument; because no man of comm n sense can live among his fellow-creatures for a day without seeing innumerable facts which contradict it. It is our business, however, to point out its fallacy; and, happily, the fallacy is not very recondite. "Pains from the moral source are the pains derived from the unfavourable sentiments of mankind. . . These pains are capable of rising to a height with which hardly any other pains incident to our nature can be compared. There is a certain degree of unfavourableness in the sentiments of his fellowcreatures, under which hardly any man, not below the standard of humanity, can endure to live. "To know how to direct the unfavourable sentiments of mankind, it is necessary to know in as complete, that is, in as comprehensive, a way as possible, what it is which gives them birth. Without entering into the metaphysics of the question, it is a sufficient practical answer, for the present purpose, to say that the unfavourable sentiments of man are excited by every thing which hurts them." We grant that rulers will take as much as "The importance of this powerful agency, they can of the objects of their desires; and for the prevention of injurious acts, is too obthat when the agency of other men is neces-vious to need to be illustrated. If sufficiently sary to that end. they will attempt by all means at command, it would almost supersede the in their power to enforce the prompt obedience use of other means. of such men. But what are the objects of human desire? Physical pleasure, no doubt, in part. But the mere appetites which we have in common with the animals, would be gratified almost as cheaply and easily as those of the animals are gratified, if nothing were given to taste, to ostentation, or to the affections. How small a portion of the income of a gentleman in easy circumstances is laid out merely in giving pleasurable sensations to the body of the possessor? The greater part even of what is spent on his kitchen and his cellar, goes not to titillate his palate, but to keep up his character for hospitality, to save him from the reproach of meanness in house-keeping, and to cement the ties of good neighbourhood. It is clear, that a king or an aristocracy may be supplied to satiety with mere corporeal pleasures, at an expense which the rudest and poorest community would scarcely feel. It is strange that a writer who considers the pain derived from the unfavourable sentiments of others as so acute, that, if sufficiently at command, it would supersede the use of the gallows and the treadmill, should take no notice of this most important restraint, when discussing the question of government. We will attempt to deduce a theory of politics in the mathematical form, in which Mr. Mill delights, from the premises with which he has himself furnished us. PROPOSITION I. THEOREM. No rulers will do any thing which may hurt the people. This is the thesis to be maintained; and the following we humbly offer to Mr. Mill as its syllogistic demonstration. No rulers will do that which produces pain to themselves. But the unfavourable sentiments of the peo ple will give pain to them. Those tastes and propensities which belong to us as reasoning and imaginative beings, are not, indeed, so easily gratified. There is, we admit, no point of saturation with objects of desire which come under this head. And therefore the argument of Mr. Mill will be just, unless there be something in the nature of the objects of desire themselves which is inconsistent with it. Now, of these objects there is none which men in general seem to desire more than the good opinion of others. The hatred and contempt of the public are generally felt to be intolerable. It is probable, that our regard for the sentiments of our fellow-people. creatures springs by association from a sense of their ability to hurt or to serve us. But be this as it may, it is notorious, that when the habit of mind of which we speak has once been formed, men feel extremely solicitous about the opinions of those by whom it is most improbable, nay, absolutely impossible, that they should ever be in the slightest degree injured or benefited. The desire of posthumous fame, and the dread of posthumous reproach and Therefore no rulers will do any thing which may excite the unfavourable sentiments of the But the unfavourable sentiments of the peo ple are excited by every thing which hurts them. Therefore no rulers will do any thing which may hurt the people, which was the thing to be proved. Having thus, as we think, not unsuccessfully imitated Mr. Mill's logic, we do not see why we should not imitate what is at least equally perfect in its kind, his self-complacency, and |