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when the people are maddened by oppression, | ous to reproach him in the language which events of annual or biennial occurrence. We Mr. Bentham, in the exercise of his paternal gave no opinion of our own. We give none authority over the sect, thinks himself entitled now. We say that this proposition may be to employ. 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 deductions 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 à pricri 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."

"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 invoive 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 any thing but the pitiabie '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 vender 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?

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 is unnecessary that women should vote; and for making this distinction, he gives as a reason an assertion which, in the first We never even dreamed, what Mr. Bentham place, is not true, and which, in the next place, conceives us to have maintained, that it co would, if true, overset his whole theory of be for the greatest happiness of mankind human nature; namely, that the interest of the plunder the rich. But we are "rather inclined women is identical with that of the men. We to think," though doubtingly, and with a disposide with Mr. Bentham, so far at least as this, sition to yield to conviction, that it may be for that when we join to drive the camel through the pecuniary interest of the majority of a sinthe needle, he shall go through hoof and all. gle generation in a thickly-peopled country to We at present desire to be excused from driv- plunder the rich. Why we are inclined to ing the camel. It is Mr. Mill who leaves the think so we will explain, whenever we send a hoof behind. But we should think it uncourte-theory of government to an encyclopedia. Ar

present we are bound to say only that we 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 civilized 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 plunder the rich under a system of universal suffrage, than the fact, that the English kings of the House of Brunswick have 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 people 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 cf commotion, to conceal the real objects of the agitators? Is it with declarations which involve “a suicide of hope," that men 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 the 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 cerlain propensities of human nature. Now, in the name of Sir Richard Birnie, and all saints, from what else should it be deduced? What lid 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 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 conclu sions on a subject so important to the happy ness 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 observ ing 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 generalizing 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 il! 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 cf 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 superintendence would render the security more complete. And even Denmark, we think, would be better off under a constitutional form of government.

else should it be deducea!" In spite of this solemn adjuration, we 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 ven. ture 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.

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 If, on the other hand, we are to deduce the take what he can. Every man in London theory of government from principles of huwould be a thief, but for the thief-takers. This man nature, in arriving at which principles we is an undeniable principle of human nature. have not taken into the account the manner Some of my predecessors have wasted their in which men act when invested with the time in inquiring about particular pawnbro- powers of government, then those principles kers, and particular alehouses. Experience is must be defective. They have not been formed altogether divided. Of people placed in ex- by a sufficiently copious induction. We are actly the same situation, I see that one steals, reasoning from what a man does in one situaand that another would sooner burn his hand tion, to what he will do in another. Sometimes of. Therefore I trust to the laws of human we may be quite justified in reasoning thus. nature alone, and pronounce all men thieves When we have no means of acquiring inforalike. Let everybody, high and low, be watch-mation about the particular case before us, we ed. 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 Solo-yellow fever broke out, a physician might be mans 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. 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 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

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 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

are compelled to resort to cases which bear some resemblance to it. But the most satisfactory course is to obtain information about the particular case; and whenever this can be ob tained, it ought to be obtained. When first the

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 yel low 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 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

holding this doctrine that we blamed them. Is attacking them we no more meant to attack the "greatest happiness principle," than when we say that Mohammedanism is a false religion, we mean to deny the unity of God, which is the first article of the Mohammedan 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 happi.

Mr. Bentham gives an account of the manner in which he arrived at the discovery of the "greatest happiness principle." He then pro ceeds 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.

censeinus eam esse demonstrandi formam, quæ
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 par-
ticularibus primo loco ad maxime generalia
advoletur, tanquam ad polos fixos, circa quos
disputationes vertantur; ab illis cætera, per
media, deriventur; viâ certe compendiariâ, sed
præcepiti, et ad naturam imperviâ, ad disputa-
tiones proclivi et accommodatâ. At, secundum
nos, axiomata continenter et gradatim excitan-ness to mankind.
tur, 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 de-
scribes 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 incompar-
able 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 naturæ longe impar. Assensum itaque constringit, non res. Syllogismus ex propositionibus constat, propositiones ex verbis, verba notionum tesseræ sunt. Itaque si notiones ipsæ, id quod basis rei est, confusæ sint, et temere a rebus abstractæ, nihil in iis quæ 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, bonæ notiones sunt: multo minus grave, leve, densum, tenue, humidum, siccum, generatio, corruptio, attrahere, fugare, elementum, materia, forma, et id genus, sed omnes phantasticæ et male terminatæ."

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

"The only rivals of any note to the new principles 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 bu 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 brick

layers 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 governments 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 any thing, 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 eat their own mutton if they can.'

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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!

do it. Will the principle run thus-pursue the greatest happiness of mankind, whether it be your own greatest happiness or not? This is absurd and impossible, and Mr. Bentham himself allows it to be so. But if the principle be not stated in one of these two ways, we cannot imagine how it is to be stated at all. Stated in one of these ways, it is an identical proposi tion, true, but utterly barren of consequences. Stated in the other way, it is a contradiction in terms. Mr. Bentham has distinctly declined the absurdity. Are we then to suppose that he adopts the truism?

There are thus, it seems, two great truths which the Utilitarian philosophy is to communicate to mankind-two truths which are to produce a revolution in morals, in laws, in governments, in literature, in the whole system of life. The first of these is speculative; the second is practical. The speculative truth is, that the greatest happiness is the greatest hap piness. The practical rule is very simple, for it imports merely that men should never omit, when they wish for any thing, to wish for it. or when they do any thing, to do it! It is a great comfort for us to think, that we readily assent. ed to the former of these great doctrines as soon as it was stated to us; and that we have long endeavoured, as far as human frailty would permit, to conform to the latter in our practice. We are, however, inclined to suspect, that the calamities of the human race have been owing less to their not knowing that happiness was happiness, than to their not knowing how to obtain it-less to their neglecting to do what they did, than to their not being able to do what they wished, or not wishing to do what they ought.

Thus frivolous, thus useless is this philoso phy,-"controversiarum ferax, operum effœta, ad garriendum prompta, ad generandum in valida." The humble mechanic who discovers some slight improvement in the construction of safety lamps or steam vessels, does more for the happiness of mankind than the "magnificent principle," as Mr. Bentham calls. it, will do in ten thousand years. The mechanic teaches us how we may, in a small degree, be better off than we were. The Utilitarian advises us, with great pomp, to be as well off as

we can.

Does Mr. Bentham's principle tend to make any man wish for any thing for which he would not have wished, or do any thing which he would not have done, if the principle had never been heard of? If not, it is an utterly useless principle. Now, every man pursues his own happiness or interest-call it which you will. If his happiness coincides with the happiness of the species, then, whether he ever heard of the "greatest happiness principle" or The doctrine of a moral sense may be very not, he will, to the best of his knowledge and unphilosophical, but we do not think that it can ability, attempt to produce the greatest happi- be proved to be pernicious. Men did not enter ness of the species. But, if what he thinks tain certain desires and aversions because they his happiness be inconsistent with the greatest believed in a moral sense, but they gave the happiness of mankind, will this new principle name of moral sense to a feeling which they convert him to another frame of mind? Mr. found in their minds, however it came there. Bentham himself allows, as we have seen, that If they had given it no name at all, it would he can give no reason why a man should pro- still have influenced their actions: and it will mote the greatest happiness of others, if their not be very easy to demonstrate that it has ingreatest happiness be inconsistent with what fluenced their actions the more, because they he thinks his own. We should very much like have called it the moral sense. The theory of to know how the Utilitarian principle would the original contract is a fiction, and a very run, when reduced to one plain imperative absurd fiction; but in practice it meant, what proposition. Will it run thus-pursue your the "greatest happiness principle," if ever own happiness? This is superfluous. Every it becomes a watchword of political warfare man pursues it, according to his light, and will mean-that is to say, whatever served the always has pursued it, and always must pursue turn of those who used it. Both the one ex To say that a man has done any thing, is

it.

to say that he thought it for his happiness to

Bacon, Novum Organum.

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