acting with either against the other; and they had it in spite of the absence of the forms of popular representation. The French people had the forms of representation, but not the effective power. In defiance of both these anomalies, it is perfectly possible that the forms of popular representation, combined with the power, may constitute the rational and practical mode of promoting good government. The rational and practical way of causing an individual to be taken care of, is to allow him to take care of himself. There have been individuals. who have not been allowed to take care of themselves, and have yet been taken good care of. There have been individuals who have been allowed to take care of themselves, and have not been taken good care of after all. Both these are anomalies; but neither of them destroy the general rule. The general rule is that which is alone applicable to the simple case; the cases where it is not applicable, are complicated by the intervention of some fortuitous circumstance. It would be unreasonable to say to nations in general If you want to enjoy good government, make yourselves a balanced monarchy and aristocracy, as there was in Denmark ;'-just as it would be unreasonable to say to men in general If you want to take care of yourselves, get somebody else to take care of you,' because in a single case it answered.

'The Utilitarian doctrine then is, not that despots and aristocracies will always plunder and oppress the people to the last point, but that they will do so if nothing checks them.'

In the first place, it is quite clear that the doctrine thus stated is of no use at all, unless the force of the checks be estimated. The first law of motion is, that a ball once projected will fly on to all eternity with undiminished velocity, unless something checks. The fact is, that a ball stops in a few seconds after proceeding a few yards with very variable motion. Every man would wring his child's neck, and pick his friend's pocket, if nothing checked him. In fact, the principle thus stated, means only that governments will oppress, unless they abstain from oppressing.'-p. 104.

It no more means so, than a ball's moving till something checks, means only that it will move unless it abstains from moving.

'It is evidently on the real distribution of power, and not on names and badges, that the happiness of nations must depend. The representative system, though doubtless a great and precious discovery in politics, is only one of the many modes in which the democratic part of the community can efficiently check the governing few. That certain men have been chosen as deputies of the people, that there is a piece of paper stating such deputies to possess certain powers,-these

circumstances in themselves constitute no security for good government. Such a constitution nominally existed in France; while, in fact, an oligarchy of committees and clubs trampled at once on the electors and the elected. Representation is a very happy contrivance for enabling large bodies of men to exert their power, with less risk of disorder than there would otherwise be. But, assuredly, it does not of itself give power.'-p. 109.

The answer to all this appears to be, that Mr. Mill undoubtedly spoke of representation accompanied by power, and not of representation deprived of it. At the same time it is not true that the connection between representation and power is one of simple accident. There may have been cases where they have been separated; but the general and natural tendency of possessing the representation is to give the power. There may have been men who had a sword and still could not defend themselves. But it does not follow, that to have a sword, is not a considerable step towards defence.

The special pleading of the Reviewers on the subject of 'sensual pleasures,' is only an effort to lead off from the point in question. If by the sensual pleasures' of a king or an aristocracy, they meant to define such pleasures cut off from all wherewith kings and aristocracies necessarily accompany them, they might as well have stated that it costs comparatively little to find a king or an aristocracy in small beer. What they really intended was, to reduce and cut down the estimate of the cost of sensual pleasures, and huddle up the reckoning of the remainder by hastening to descant on the appetite for good opinion. The sensual pleasures of a king differ from those of a cobbler, as much as their liquors. The Reviewers desire to reckon only for the water that is in the king's Tokay; and to represent every thing that makes it a kingly draught, as referable to another account.

Objections will next be noticed from other sources. It has been stated in a quarter entitled to the most friendly attention, that the principle of Mr. Bentham ought to be limited to its operation on governments, and that its application to individual morality is a burthensome addition. To this it may be replied; that in the first place, the application is true, and for the reasons already stated is not without considerable value in itself; and secondly, that the application to the simpler case is the best method of introducing and illustrating its application to the more complex. Men have already made considerable progress in the comprehension and practical use of the principle in the first form; it is therefore politic to enter the wedge by this end, with a view to the introduction of the remainder.

It has been objected from another quarter, that the magnificent law that was declared to be of such positive utility, is reduced to the working of a probable good.' This is a confusion between uncertainty in individual cases, and uncertainty in the aggregate. There may be uncertainty in one individual of twenty-five surviving another of eighty; but there is no uncertainty in the fact that men of twenty-five are on the whole the better lives. To say that the law which tells a man to prefer an annuity on a life of twenty-five to one of eighty, is only the enunciation of a probable good, would present the same mistake as in the objection. If every man of twenty-five had been certain of surviving every man of eighty, and every immoral act had been certain of being punished without the possibility of escape, there could have been no disinclination to note the fact. But as nature has willed otherwise, the next thing to be done is to note the average certainty which she has chosen to decree.

Another objection has consisted in 'begging to be informed what is the rule that is best for the general happiness;' and subjoining, that if it is to be left to the private judgment of individuals to decide upon what is best for the general happiness, the principle is useless, because mankind will never agree upon the mode of carrying it into effect.' This is only quarrelling with a principle that goes a certain length, because it does not go farther. It is perfectly true that there remains the question of what is for the general happiness. But the virtue of the previous proposition consisted in having reduced the question from a state of greater difficulty to a state of less. It is much, easier to judge with some accuracy whether a given practice tends to the promotion of the general happiness, than to deter mine whether it is moral or immoral without the intervention of any such clue. For the palpable fact is, that men have an exceeding aptitude for judging of what is for the general happiness. They are all capable of forming a very tolerable theory-for their neighbours. Men may fight shy of the truth for some particular purpose; but the practical reality is, that on most points their knowledge is nearly as perfect as can be desired. There may be some debateable ground after all; but the extent of that on which there can be no general debate is incomparably greater.

In all that has preceded, reference has been made to habits, and not to insulated acts. The differences between single acts of immorality and their habitual repetition, have been exhausted by writers to whom it is unnecessary to refer.

The final inference impressed by the whole case is, that the friends of the greatest happiness' have only to persevere, to

arrive at the firmest establishment of their principle. They are wrong if they think all that is necessary has been done somewhere to their hands already; the battle is still to finish, though the good position is their own. What is wanted, is the laborious and extensive illustration of the various ways in which national and political invasions of the law of the greatest happiness work to produce their own punishment. The world has been deluged with illustrations of the corresponding truth in personal morality. All dying speeches are portions of it; not a father that places his son as an apprentice, but adds his fragment to the testimony. There wants a collection of dying speeches of nefarious governments. It would not be difficult to make something of this kind out of the history of the Stuarts. France could supply something like it from periods of her history. The kingdoms of the Peninsula may be considered as in that state where the dying speech is in every body's hands before the man is dead. The antiquary might go back to Rome, and the orientalist to Babylon. One of the first consequences of this resolute prosecution of the principle, would be the abandonment of the theological argument against it, as happened in the case of the geologists. Every body knows the kind of persecution a geologist was exposed to a few years ago, if he ventured to make any portion of the world more ancient than ultra theologians thought proper. The geologists persevered; and now all rational theologians are glad to support their own system by such facts as they can collect from the observations of the geologists. In the same manner let the friends of the greatest happiness persevere; and they will soon find theologians anxious only to have the benefit of such support as they may derive from the establishment of a coincidence between their rules. There is no war between Christianity and philosophy. Pure and undefiled Christianity is sound philosophy. If there ever has been war, it has been against the temporal abuses which pretences of religion were brought forward to protect. This was at the bottom of the outcry made against philosophy during the French Revolution. The real struggle was against arbitrary power sheltering itself under the influence of religious estabfishments. Religion was assailed because it was made an engine in the hands of the common enemy; the animosity was against the enemy, not against the abstract instrument that was in his hands. Those times are past. It is all too late now, to get up a religious opposition to the exercise of reason on any subject connected with the welfare of mankind,

WEST INDIES, IN No. XXII.

Ir has been objected to the comparison between the case of the Mosses and that of Esther Hibner, that it would be quite as just and true to say, that because Lord Ferrers, and Fauntleroy, and Hunton were hanged, all the peers of Great Britain are addicted to the crime of murder, and that all the bankers and quakers are, to a man, swindlers and forgers.' For this objection to have any force, Lord Ferrers should have been not hanged, and the peers should have given him a dinner on the expiration of his confinement; the bankers should have done the same to Fauntleroy, and the quakers to Hunton.

It has been stated that the Article is ferocious and treasonable.' The Article was written to try the question. It was written to settle the point, whether the planters are to announce their intention of transferring their allegiance, and the public in England is not to announce its good wishes for the faithful population. Those who live in glass houses, ought not to have begun throwing stones.

It has been said that the object of the Article was to deluge. the colonies with blood.' Men have no right to threaten rebellion with one breath, and to demand a careful attention to their comfort with another. At the same time, it is palpable that the object was not to produce bloodshed, but to produce that acquiescence in the intimations of the British government which is the only means of finally preventing it.

It has been affirmed that to take off the duty in favour of West Indian sugar, would not lower the price of sugar in England. Now it is clear that if the extra duty was taken off, the raisers of East Indian sugar could raise and sell more than they do; and therefore, even though the price of sugar should fall only by the inconsiderable quantity necessary to give East Indian sugar the power of entry into the market, the West Indians must sell less. But if they are to sell less, the competition among themselves will induce those who can best afford it to lower the price. The price of West Indian sugar therefore will meet the other half-way. This might not take place during the first year, or the second; but it is impossible for it to be finally prevented by any alterations in the price at any other place, that may be consequent on the alteration in the demand for West Indian sugar in England.

If the people of England cannot get rid of such an abuse as being taxed to support slavery, what chance have they of getting rid of any other? And if they desire to get rid of any other, what policy so clear as beginning with the abuse whose supporters support all the rest, as knowing that whenever reform begins, their own must go the first.