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DISSERTATIONS
AND
DISCUSSIONS:
iguana, ‘miln'suplgiwl, m ifiismiwlo
BY
JOHN STUART MILL.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III. -

BOSTON:
WILLIAM V SPENCER,
134, WASHINGTON STREET.
186%.
100‘
§‘.‘.-\
BO 8 T O N:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON,
No. 5, Water Street.
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CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
PAGE
VINDICATION OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF FEBRUARY, 1848;
IN REPLY TO LORD BROUGHAM AND OTHERS . . . . . 5
APPENDIX................... 82
ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
DR. WHEWELL ON“? MORAL PHILOSOPHY . . . . . . . . . 132
GROTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION . . . . . .' . . . 238
THE SLAVE POWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
UTILITARIANISM.................300
DISSERTATIONS,
ETC.

fl
VINDICATION OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION .OF
FEBRUARY, 1848; IN REPLY TO LORD BROUGHAM
AND OTHERS.*
THAT the transactions and the men of the late French
Revolution should find small favor in the eyes of the
vulgar and selfish part of the upper and middle classes,
can surprise no one; and that the newspaper press,
which is the echo, or, as far as it is able, the anticipa-
tion, of the opinions and prejudices of those classes,
should endeavor to recommend itself by malicious dis-
paragement of that great event, is but in the natural
order of things. Justice to the men, and a due appre-
ciation of the event, demand that these unmerited
attacks should not remain unprotested against. But it
is difficult to grapple with so slippery an antagonist as
* Letter to the Marquess of Lansdowne, K.G., Lord President of the
Council, on the late Revolution in France. By Lord Brougham, F.R.S.,
Member of the National Institute. London: Ridgway. 1848.
Westminster Review, April, 1849.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848 6
the writer in a newspaper, and impossible to follow the
stream of calumny as it swells by a perpetual succession
of infinitesimal infusions from incessant newspaper arti-
cles. Unless through some similar medium, in which
the day’s falsehood can be immediately met by the day’s
contradiction, such assailants are fought at too great a
disadvantage. It is fortunate, therefore, when some
one, embodying the whole mass of accusation in one
general bill of indictment, puts the case upon the issue
of a single battle instead of a multitude of skirmishes.
It is an immense advantage to the defenders of truth
and justice, when all that falsehood and injustice have
got to say is brought together in a moderate compass,
and in a form convenient for exposure.
Such an advantage Lord Brougham has afforded by
his eutpouring of desultory invective against the Rev-
olution and its authors. Among the multitude of
performances, similar in intention and often superior
in skill, which have issued from the English press since
February, 1848, his pamphlet is the only one which
affects to embrace the whole subject, and the only one
which bears a known name. Should it seem to any
one that more importance is attached to such a per-
formance than properly belongs to a thing so slight
and trivial, let it be considered that the importance of
a numerical amount does not so much depend upon the
unit which heads it, as upon the number of the figures
which follow.
Lord Brougham “thinks it a duty incumbent on him, as
one who has at various times been a leader in political move-
ments, and had some hand in bringing about the greatest
constitutional change that ever was effected without actual
\
i
AND ITS AssAILANTS. 7
violence, to enter calmly but fully upon the consideration of
the most extraordinary Revolution which ever altered the
face of affairs in a civilized country.”
It is very natural and commendable in any one (even
though he may not have had the advantage .which
Lord Brougham so often reminds the reader that he
once enjoyed, of being a fellow-minister with the Mar-
quess of Lansdowne) to endeavor to understand the
remarkable event which is the theme of his vituperation.
Remarkable, it may justly be called; though the com-
monplace hyperbole of " the most extraordinary Revo-
lution which ever altered the face of affairs in a civilized
country” will scarcely pass muster, even as a rhetorical
flourish. In one respect, indeed, the Revolution of
February must be allowed to be extraordinary, if not
unexampled. It stands almost alone among revolu-
tions, in having placed power in the hands of men who
neither expected nor sought it, nor used it for any
personal purpose, —-not even for that of maintaining,
otherwise than by opinion and discussion, the ascen-
dency of their own party ; men whose every act
proclaimed them to be that almost unheard-of phenom—
enon, — unselfish politicians; who did not, like the
common run of those who fancy themselves sincere,
aim at doing a little for their opinions, and much for
themselves, but, with a disinterested zeal, strove to
make their tenure of power produce as much good as
their countrymen were capable of receiving, and more
than their countrymen had yet learnt to desire. It
was not, perhaps, to be expected that men of this stamp
should command much of Lord Brougham’s sympathy.
Lord Brougham has fought, both frequently and effec-
8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
l
tively, on the people‘s side; but few will assert that he
often was much in advance of them, or fought any
up-hill battle in their behalf. Even in the days of his
greatest glory, it was remarked that he seldom joined
any cause until its first difficulties were over, and it had
been brought near to the point of success by laborers
of deeper earnestness, and more willing to content
themselves without indiscriminate applause. If sym-
pathy, therefore, depends on similarity of character, it
was not likely that his lordship should feel any warm
admiration for the members of the Provisional Govern-
ment. But he is probably the only man in Europe, of
his reputation and standing, who would have been
capable of speaking of them in such a strain as the
following : —
“ The instantaneous disappearance of virtues, dominions,
princedoms, powers, --of all the men who by their station, or
their capacity, or their habits of government, or even their
habits of business, had a claim to rule the affairs of their
country, — was succeeded by the sudden lifting-up to supreme
power of men, who, with the single exception of my illustrious
friend M. Arago, were either wholly unknown, before in any
way, even to their very names and existence; or who were
known as authors of no great fame; or who were known as
of so indifferent reputation, that they had better have not
been known at all; and M. Arago, the solitary exception to
this actual or desirable obscurity, himself known in the world
of science alone.”
Remembering that, of the body of men thus spoken
of, M. de Lamartine is one, it is difficult not to be
amazed at so unbounded a reliance on the ignorance of
the public. The literary fame of M. de Lamartine in
AND ITS ASSAILANTS. 9
France and in Europe can afford to be ignored by
Lord Brougham. There was not a single obscure
person among the Provisional Government. The seven
originally named were all distinguished members of the
Chamber of Deputies. Their venerable president, one
of the most honored characters in France, had even
held office, if that be a recommendation: he was a
member of the first cabinet appointed in 1830, and left
the government when Louis Philippe parted company
with popular principles. The “ illustrious friend ”
known only " in the world of science” had been an
active and influential politician for twenty years. Three
others were leading members of the Paris bar. The
four whom, in obedience to the popular voice, these
seven accepted as their colleagues, were the acknowl-
edged leaders of the Republican press; and who, that
had paid the smallest attention to French affairs, was
not familiar with the names and reputation of Marrast
and of Louis Blane?
The first sin of the Revolution, in the eyes of the
pamphleteer, is its singularity. " The like of it never '
was before witnessed among men.” It has " no parallel
in the history of nations.” It is " wholly at variance
with every principle, as well as all experience.” If it
could possibly last, he would " feel bound to make the
addition of a new head or chapter” to "a very elabo-
rate work, the Political Philosophy ” of " our Useful-
Knowledge Society.” If his account of it were true,
one would be unable to understand how the Revolution
could possibly have happened. It was " the sudden
work of a moment, —a change prepared by no pre-
Ceding plan, prompted by no felt inconvenience, an-
10 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
nounced by no complaint ; ” " without ground, without
pretext, without one circumstance to justify or even to
account for it, except familiarity with change,” and
"proneness to violence.” It was the " work of some
half-dozen artisans, met in a printing-office,”—“ a
handful of armed ruffians, headed by a shoemaker and
a sub-editor.” “Tho is meant by the sub-editor, his
lordship best knows: the shoemaker, it must be pre-
sumed, is M. Adolphe Chenu, whose word Lord
Brougham takes for the share he had in the transaction ;
though a bare reading of his deposition is enough to
prove that he was already known to be, what he is nowr
admitted to have been, a police spy. To this “hand-
ful,” be it of " artisans” or " ruffians,” everybody sub-
mitted, though everybody disapproved. Half a dozen
obscure men overthrew a government which nobody
disliked, and established one which nobody desired.
This singular incident, of a government which, so to
speak, falls down of itself, does not suggest to the
writer that there must have been something faulty in its
foundations. It merely proves to him that foundations
are of no use. It reveals the " terrible truth,” that it
is natural to buildings to fall without a cause, and that
henceforth none can be expected to stand. It " for ever
destroys our confidence in any system of political
power which may be reared,” not only in France, but
on the face of the earth. "All sense of security in
any existing government” is gone. “ None can now
be held safe for an hour.”
The explanation of the Revolution is, in short, that
it is entirely inexplicable; and this is intended, not as
a confession of ignorance, but as a sufficient theory.
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. 11
Common sense, however little informed concerning.
the Revolution, has been unable, from the first, to
accept this notion of it. It appears to Lord Brougham
very unaccountable that the English jOurnals did not
at once declare a determined enmity to the Revolution,
but waited a few weeks before assuming their present
attitude of hostility. It was because they did not
believe, as he professes to do, that the best and wisest
of governments had been overthrown by a touch; the
mature opinion of the whole country being in its favor.
That, too, is the reason why even now, while the
grossest misrepresentations of the state of things which
the Revolution has produced are universally propagated
and very generally believed, hardly any one except the
pamphleteer expresses regret for what it swept away.
" The illustrious prince, who, with extraordinary ability
and complete success, had, in times of foreign and
domestic difficulty, steered the vessel of the State in
safety and in peace during a period of seventeen years,” '
and who had invited Lord Brougham to the Tuileries,
and listened with apparent resignation to his “ear-
nest and zealous ” counsels, has now Lord Brougham for
his only, or almost only, regretter and admirer. WVhy
is this? Because everybody, whether acquainted with
the facts or not, is able to see, that a government, which,
after seventeen years of almost absolute power over a
great country, can be overthrown in a day; which,
during that long period, —a period, too, of peace and
prosperity, undisturbed by any public calamity, —has
so entirely failed of creating anywhere a wish for its
preservation, that "a capital of one million souls, and
a nation of five and thirty,” including an army of
12 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
several hundred thousand, look on quietly while " a
shoemaker and a sub-editor,” followed by " an armed
mob of two or three thousand,” turn out the Chambers,
and proclaim a totally different set of institutions, -—
that such a government, unless it was so much in
advance of the public intelligence as to be out of the
reach of appreciation by it, was so greatly in arrear of
it as to deserve to fall.
This government, Lord Brougham confesses, was not
without its foibles. The ministry had committed some
blunders and indiscretions; and the institutions of the
country had a few remaining defects, which the gov-
ernment showed no willingness to remove. There
were too many placemen in parliament, and the elec-
tive franchise was " too limited,” being confined, in
a nation of thirty-four millions, to about a quarter
of a million; distributed, it might have been added,
so unequally, that a majority of the constituencies
did not exceed two or three hundred voters. The
government should have looked to this. They should
have given " votes to all who were liable to serve on
juries ;” and also " enfranchised, without regard to
property, the classes connected with science, letters,
and the arts : ” which is the same thing twice over ; for
the jury-list consisted precisely of the electors and of
those classes. By this they would have added to the
two hundred and fifty thousand electors, and to the
large constituencies almost exclusively, some twenty or
thirty thousand voters more. The other improvements
of which, in Lord Brougham’s judgment, the French
Constitution stood in need, were to make the peerage
hereditary, and allow land to be entailed. It would
AND ITS AsSAILANTS. 13
have been treating his friends very hardly, to be severe
upon them for not effecting these last specimens of
constitutional improvement; since they might, with as
much chance of success, have attempted to alter the
solar system. Hereditary legislation. and entails are
not things which a nation takes back, when once it has
rid itself of them. It certainly was not for this that
the government of Louis Philippe, in the moment of
trial, was found to be deserted by all mankind. Ac-
cordingly, Lord Brougham can find no mode of
accounting for the fact but the selfishness and indif-
ference of the National Guard, who “ think only of
their shops and their brittle wares; and avoid acting,
provided they see no risk of pillage following the
outbrea .”
This specimen of philosophizing is not at all Baco-
nian, and does no credit to the political philosopher of
the Useful-Knowledge Society. The National Guard
acted vigorously enough in 1832, and again in 1834,
when they assisted the troops in putting down much
more formidable insurrections than that of 1848. Their
conduct in June last was not, as the pamphlet repre—
sents, the exception, but the rule. Their horror of
Z’émeute amounted to a passion: it was that, and not
any attachment to the throne of Louis Philippe, which
made them tolerate him for seventeen years. \Vhy
then, in February, did they, for the first and only time,
not only not resist, but openly countenance, the insur-
rection? Because the time had come when disgust
with the government had become a stronger feeling
than even that passionate horror. The ruler Of France
had made the terror of the bourgeois at the idea of a
14 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION or 1848
new revolution his sole instrument of government, ex-
cept personal corruption; and that support now gave
way under him.
The explanation of this result of seventeen years of
power—the reason why a government, which, in the
first years following its establishment, the most deter-
mined and violent attacks had failed to shake, found
itself, in 1848, so feeble, that it fell at the first onset,
and not a hand was raised to stay its fall—will be
found, we believe, principally in two things.
First, it was a government wholly without the spirit
of improvement. Not only did it make an obstinate
resistance to all and every organic reform, even the
most moderate; to all merely legislative or merely ad-
ministrative improvements it was, in practice, equally
inimical: it originated none itself, and successfully re-
sisted all 'which were proposed by others. There are
few instances of a government, in a country calling
itself free, so completely sold to the support of all
abuses: it rested on a coalition of all the sinister in-
terests in France. Among those who influenced the
suffrages of the bodies of two or three hundred elect—
ors who returned the ministerial majority, there were
always some to whose interests improvement, be it
in what it might, would have been adverse. It made
things worse', not better, that the most conspicuous
instruments of the system were men of knowledge and
cultivation, who had gained the greater part of their
reputation as the advocates of improvement. In some
of these men, it might be personal interest; in others,
hatred of democracy: but neither scrupled, for the
sake of keeping their party together, to make them-
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. 15
selves subservient to the purposes of their worst sup-
porters. In order to bind these together in an united
band to oppose democracy, they were allowed to have
their own way in resisting all other change. This was,
of itself, fatal to the durability of a government, in the
present condition of the world. No_g_overnment can
now expect to be permanent, unless it guarantees prog:
Yegs as well as order; nor can it continue really to
*‘SEcure order, unless it promotes progress. It can go
on, as yet, with only a little of the spirit of improve-
ment. While reformers have even a remote hope of
effecting their objects through the existing system, they
are generally willing to bear with it. But when there
is no hope at all; when the institutions themselves seem
to oppose an unyielding barrier to the progress of im-
provement, ——the advancing tide heaps itself up behind
them till it bears them down.
This was one great characteristic of the government
of Louis Philippe. The other, equally discreditable,
was the more fatal to that government, because identi-
fied still more than the first, in public opinion, with
the personal character and agency of the king himself.
It wrought almost exclusively through the meaner and
more selfish impulses of mankind. Its sole instrument
of government consisted in a direct appeal to men’s
immediate personal interests or interested fears. It
never appealed to, or endeavored to put on its side,
any noble, elevated, or generous principle of action.
It repressed and discouraged all such, as being danger—
ous to it. In the same manner in which Napoleon
cultivated the love of military distinction as his one
means of action upon the multitude, so did Louis Phi—




16 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
lippe strive to immerse all France in the culte des in-
téré‘ts matériels, in the worship of the cash-box and
of the ledger. It is not, or it has not hitherto been,
in the character of Frenchmen to be content with being
thus governed. Some idea of grandeur, at least some
feeling of national self-importance, must be associated
with that which they will voluntarily follow and obey.
The one inducement by which Louis Philippe’s govern-
ment recommended itself to the middle classes was, that
revolutions and riots are bad for trade. They are so ;
but that is a very small part of the considerations which
ought to determine our estimation of them. IVhile
classes were thus appealed to through their class-inter-
ests, every individual, who, either from station, reputa-
tion, or talent, appeared worth gaining, was addressed
through whatever personal interest, either of money or
vanity, he was thought most likely to be accessible to.
lVIany were attempted unsuccessfully, many successfully.
Corruption was carried to the utmost pitch that the re-
sources at the disposal of the government admitted of.
Accordingly, the best spirits in France had long felt,
and felt each year more and more, that the government
of Louis Philippe was a demoralizing government;
that, under its baneful influence, all public principle or
public spirit, or regard for political opinions, was giving
way more and more to selfish indifference in the pro-
pertied classes generally, and, in many of the more
conspicuous individuals, to the shameless pursuit of
personal gain.
It is almost superfluous to adduce testimonies to facts
of such universal notoriety; but it is worth while to
refer to two documents, which demonstrate, after all
AND ITS ASSAILANTS. 17
that has been said of the unexpectedness of the events
of February, how clearly it was seen, by competent
judges, that, from the principles on which the govern-
ment had long been carried on, such a termination of
its career was almost certain to happen at some time,
and might happen at any time.
One of these documents is a speech of M.‘ de Tocque-
iville, delivered in the Chamber of Deputies on the
27th of January, 1848,-+ exactly four weeks before the
ReVolution. In this remarkable and almost prophetic
discourse, M. de Tocqueville said, that, in the class
which possessed and exercised political rights, " political
morality is) declining; it is already deeply tainted; it
becomes more deeply so from day to day. More and
more, opinions, sentiments, and ideas of a public char-
acter are supplanted by personal interests, personal
aims, points of view borrowed from private interest and
private life.” He called the members of the hostile
majority themselves to witness, whether, in the five, ten,
or fifteen years last elapsed, the number of those who
voted for them from private motives was not perpetually
_ increasing;’ the number who did so from political opin-
ion, constantly diminishing.
“Let them tell me, if around them, under their eyes, there
is not graduallyestablishing itself in public opinion a singular
species of tolerance for the facts I have been speaking of ;
if, by little and little, there is not forming itself a vulgar and
flow morality, according to which the man who possesses
political rights owes it to himself, owes it to his children, to
his wife, to his relations, to make a personal use of those
rights for their benefit; if this is not gradually raising itself
into a sort of duty of the father Of a family; if this new mo-
VOL. III. 2 '
18 ' THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
rality, unknown in the great times of our history, unknown at
the commencement of our Revolution, is not developing itself
more and more, and making daily progress in the public mind.”
He described the acts by which the government of
Louis Philippe had made itself accessory to this decline
of public spirit. In the first place, by the gigantic
strides which it was making towards despotism, —-
“ The government has repossessed itself, especially in these
last years, of greater powers, a larger measure of influence,
prerogatives more manifold and more considerable, than it
had possessed at any other epoch. It has become infinitely
more powerful than could have been imagined, not only by
those who conferred, but by those who accepted, the reins of
government in 1830.”
The mischfef was aggravated by the indirect and
crafty manner in which it was brought about.
“ It was by reclaiming old powers, which were thought to
have been abolished in 1880; by reviving old rights, which.
were supposed to have been annulled; by bringing again into
activity old laws which were believed to have been abrogated,
and applying new ones in a . different meaning from that in
which they had been enacted. . . . Do you suppose that this
crooked and surreptitious manner of gradually regaining as-
cendency, as it were by surprise, through other means than
those granted by the constitution,— think you that this
strange spectacle of address and savoirfaz're, publicly ex-
hibited for several years on so vast a theatre, to a whole
nation looking on,—that this spectacl“e was of a nature to
improve public morals?”
And supposing, by a great concession, that the men
who wrought this evil were themselves persuaded that
it was good, —-
AND ITs AssAILANTs. 19
“They have not the less effected it by means which mo- 8
rality disavows. They have achieved it by taking men, not
by their honorable side, but by their bad side, -—by their pas-
sions, their weaknesses, their personal interests, often their
vices. . . . And, to accomplish these things, it has been ne-
cessary for them to call to their assistance, to honor with
their favor, to introduce into their daily intercourse, men "
who wished neither for honest ends nor honest means; who
desired but the gross satisfaction of their private interests, by
the aid of the power confided “to them.”
After citing one scandalous instance of a high offiOe
of trust conferred on a person notoriously corrupt,
M. de Tocqueville added, “I do not regard this fact
as a solitary one : I consider it the symptom of a gen-
eral evil, the most salient trait of an entire course of
policy. In the paths which you have chosen for
yourselves, you had need of such men.”
As a consequence of these things, he appealed to the
whole body of his hearers whether it was not true
that— '
“The sentiment, the instinct of instability,-—that sentiment,
the precursor of revolutions, which often presages them, and
sometimes causes them to take place,-—already exists to a
most serious degree in the country. . . . Is there not a breeze
of revolution in the air? This breeze, no one knows Where it
rises, whence it comes, nor (believe me) whom it sweeps away.
. . . It is my deep and deliberate conviction, that public morals
are degenerating, and that the degeneracy of public morals will
lead you in- a short, perhaps a very short time, to hew revo-
lutions.'. . . Have you at this very hour the certainty of a-
to-morrow? Do you know what may happen in France in
a year, in a month, perhaps even in a day? You do not;
but this you know,—that the tempest is in the horizon; that
20 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
it is marching towards you: will you suffer yourselves to be
overtaken by it?
“ Several changes in legislation have been talked of. I am
much inclined to believe that such changes are not only useful,
but necessary. I believe in the utility of electoral reform, in
the urgency of excluding placemen from parliament. But I
am not so senseless as to be unaware, that it is not the laws
in themselves which make the destiny of peoples; no, it is
not the mechanism of the laws which produces the great
events of the world: it is the spirit of the government. Keep
your laws if you will, though I think it a great error; keep
them, —keep even the men, if you like; I for my part will be
no obstacle: but, in Heaven’s name, change the spirit of the
government; for, I say it again, that spirit is hurrying you to
the abyss.”
The other document which shall be cited in proof
that the natural consequences of Louis Philippe’s system'
of government were foreseen by near observers is the
evidence of M. Goudchaux, banker at Paris, and for
' some months Minister of Finance to the Republic; de-
livered before the Commission d’Enquéte on the events
of May and June last. M. Goudchaux, who said in his
place in the Assembly that the Revolution had come too
soon, nevertheless delai'ed in his evidence, that he and
some of his political friends felt so convinced that it was
impending, that, a few days before it broke out, they
held a meeting at his house to arrange a list of names
for a Provisional Government, but disagreed on the
question whether to admit or to exclude from the num-
ber M. Louis Blanc.
The Revolution, therefore, which appears to Lord
Brougham in the singular character of an event without
a cause, was so much the natural result of known causes
AND. ITS AssAILANTs. 21
as to be capable of being foreseen; and when what
had been foreseen by the more discerning actually
came to pass, even the undiscerning recognized in it the
legitimate consequence of a just popular indignation.
' hI. Garnier-Pagés was justified in his apostrophe, in the
National Assembly, on the 24th of last October : —-
“I ask it of everybody, Did not every one, in the first
days, agree that the Revolution which had been accomplished
was moral, still more than political? Did not every one agree
that this great renovation had been preceded by a real and
terrible re-action against corruption, and emanated from all
thatwas honest and honorable in the hearts of the French
_ nation?“le
Contrast these representations of the state of the
national mind preceding the Revolution, by persons
really acquainted with it, with the following specimen
from Lord Brougham’s pamphlet: “ The lesson is taught
by the experience of February, 1848, that to change ”
the form of government of France " requires no long
series of complaints, no suffering from oppression,
whether chronic or acute, ho indignation at abuses, no
combination of parties to effect a change, no prepara-
tion for converting the opposition to a ministry into
a war with a dynasty.” The writer has not the most
ordinary knowledge of the public events of his own
time. The war with the dynasty began as early as
a? “ J e 1e demande 51. tons, Este-ce que tout le monde, dans les premiers
jours, ne convenait pas que la Revolution qui venait de s’accomplir était
politique et morale, morale surtout? Est-cc que tout le monde ne convenait
pas que cette grande renovation avait été précédée par une reaction réelle
et terrible contre la corruption, et faite par tout ce qu’il y avait d’honnéte
dans le coeur de la France?”
\
I
22 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
1831, and was first compelled to mask itself under
opposition to a ministry, when the laws of September
had made it impossible to attack, through the press,
either the king or the monarchy, without the certainty
of being ruined, and reduced to silence. But public
feeling, once sufficiently roused, will force a way
through all obstacles; and, in spite of the gagging
laws, much of the opposition to the government had
latterly become almost avowedly a war against the king.
" There was little personal disrespect shown,” says the
pamphlet, “ towards the illustrious prince.” The main
political feature of the six months preceding February
was the reform banquets ; and the most marked circum-
stance attending these was the repeated premeditated
omission, in most of them, to drink the king’s health.
Lord Brougham reproaches the reformers with 'not
trusting to " repeated discussion and the exertion of
the popular influence ” for effecting a reform of the
Constitution by a vote of parliament. They had little
encouragement to rely on such means. The very cor-
ruption which was ruining the government in the gen-
eral opinion was strengthening it with the narrow and
jobbing class who returned a majority of the Chamber.
A general election had occurred the summer previous;
and the ministerial majority had gained, not lost, in
numbers by it. Lord’Brougham boasts, through many
pages, of the feat performed by Lord Grey’s ministry in
effecting a' great change in the Constitution (the first
such change in history which was so accomplished)
without an insurrection. But was it without the fear
of an insurrection? If there had been no chance of a
rising, would the House of Lords have waived their
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. - 23
opposition, or the Duke of Wellington have thrown
up the game in despair? If, in England, the mere
demonstration of popular force sufficed to effect what
elsewhere required its actual exertion, it was because
the majority of even the unreformed House of Commons
was elected by constituencies sufficiently large for a
really powerful and unanimous popular determination
to reach it, and because the political usages and long-
standing liberties of England allowed of popular meet-
ings and political unions without limit or stint. To
the French reformers these means of peaceful demon-
stration were denied. The nearest approach to them
allowed by French law was the reform dinners; and
these, as soon as they began to produce an effect,
the government forbade; reviving for that purpose a
decree passed in the stormiest period of the first Revo-
lution. It was when this last resource was denied that
popular indignation burst forth, and the monarchy was
destroyed.
There never was a greater blunder than to speak of
the French Republic as an " improvised government,”
--“ struck out at a heat,”—-" the result of a sudden
thought,”—“span-new, untried, and even unthought
of.” The Revolution, indeed, was unpremeditated,
spontaneous: the republican leaders had no more to
do with effecting it than the socialist leaders had with
the insurrection of June last. But the republicans,
immediately after the crisis, became the directors of the
movement, because they alone, of the various'sections
of the French people, had not to improvise a political
creed, but already possessed one. It would require a
degree of ignorance of French political discussion from
24 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
1830 to 1848, which one would not willingly impute
even to the author of the " Letter to the Marquess of
Lansdowne,” not to know, that, during those years, re-
publicanism, instead of being " unthought of,” had both
been thought of and talked of, in every variety of tone,
by friends and enemies, in all corners of France; that
several formidable insurrections had broken out in its
name ; that many well-known chiefs had been, and some
still were, in the prisons of Ham, Doullens, and Mont
St. Michel, for acts done in ,its behalf; and that, except
the remaining adherents of the elder branch, a republic
entered into the calculations of all who speculated
either on the dethronement of Louis Philippe, or on
the 'minority of his successor. If William III. had
been dethroned for following the example of James
11., would the people of this country have put a child
on the throne, or sent for some other Prince of Orange
from beyond sea? Would they not, almost certainly,
have fallen back on the Commonwealth? What the
English of. the seventeenth century would assuredly
have done, the French might do in the nineteenth
without exciting surprise. And it was the more to
be expected that they would do so, since constitutional
royalty is in itself a thing as uncongenial to the char-
acter and habits of the French, or any other people of
the European continent, as it is suited to the tone of
thought and feeling characteristic of England.
From causes which might be traced in the history
and development of English society and government,
the general habit and practice of the English mind is
compromise. N o idea. is carried out to more than a
small portion of its legitimate consequences. Neither
AND ITs AssAILANTs. 25
by the generality of our speculative thinkers, nor in the
practice of the nation, are the principles which are pro-
fessed ever thoroughly acted upon: something always
stops the application half way. This national habit
has consequences of very various character, of which
the following is one. It is natural to minds governed
by habit (which is the character of the English more
than of any other civilized people), that their tastes and
inclinations become accommodated to their habitual
practice; and, as in England no principle is ever fully
carried out, discordance between principles and practice
has come to be regarded, not only as the natural but as
the desirable state. This is not an epigram or a para-
dox, but a sober description of the tone of sentiment
commonly found in Englishmen. They never feel
themselves safe unless they are living under the shadow
of some conventional fiction, -—some agreement to say
one thing, and mean another. N ow, constitutional roy-
alty is precisely an arrangement of this description.
The very essence of it is, that the so-called sovereign
does not govern, ought not to govern, is not intended
to govern, but yet must be held up to the nation, be
addressed by the nation, and even address the nation,
as if he or she did govern. This, which was originally
a compromise between the friends of popular liberty and
those of absolute monarchy, has established itself as a
sincere feeling in the mind of the nation, who would
be offended, and think their liberties endangered, if a
king or a queen meddled any further in the government
than to give a formal sanction to all acts of Parliament,
and to appoint as ministry, or rather as minister, the
person whom the majority in Parliament pointed out ;
26 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
and yet would be unaffectedly shocked, if every consid-
erable act of government did not profess and pretend to
be the act and mandate of the person on the throne.
The English are fond of boasting that they do not re-
gard the theory, but only the practice, of institutions;
but their boast stops short of the truth: they actually
prefer that their theory should be at variance with their
practice. If any one proposed to them to convert their
practice into a theory, he would be scouted. It appears
to them unnatural and unsafe either to do the thing
which they profess, or to profess the thing which they
do. A theory which purports to be the very thing
intended to be acted upon fills them with alarm: it
seems to carry with it a boundless extent of unfore-
seeable consequences. This disagreeable feeling they
are only free from, when the principles laid down are
obviously matters of convention, which, it is agreed on
all parts, are not to be pressed home.
It is otherwise in France; so much so, that few
Frenchmen can understand this singular characteristic
Of the English mind, which, seen imperfectly and by
glimpses, is the origin of those accUsations of profound
hypocrisy, mistakenly brought by many foreigners
against the English nation. Englishmen, on their part,
can in general as little understand the comparative sim-
plicity and directness of Continental notions. The
French impatience of discrepancy between theory and
practice seems to them fancifulness, and want of good
sense. It was a Frenchman, not an Englishman, who
erected the English practice of constitutional monarchy
into a theory; but his maxim, Le Toz' régne, et ne
' gozwerne pas, took no root on the other side of the
AND ITs AssAILANTs. 27
Channel. The French had no relish for a system, the
forms of which were intended to simulate something at
variance with acknowledged fact. Those who were for
a king at all, wanted one who was a substantial power
in the State, and not a cipher: while, if the will of
the nation wasto be the government; if the king was
to do nothing but register the nation’s decrees, —-both .
the reason and the feelings of the French were in favor
of having those decrees pronounced directly by the peo-
ple’s own delegates.
A constitutional monarchy, therefore, was likely in
France, as it is likely in every other country in Conti-
nental Europe, to. be but a brief halt on the road from
a despotism to a republic. But though a republic, for
France, was the'most natural and congenial of all the
forms of free government, it had two great hinderances
to contend with. One was the political indifference of
the majority, — the result of want of education, and
of the absence of habits of discussion and participation
in public business. The other was the dread inspired
by the remembrance of 1793 and 17 94 ; a dread which, '
though much weakened since 1830, did and does in
some - measure subsist, notwithstanding what was so
promptly done by the Provisional Government to dis-
connect the new republic from whatever was sanguinary
in the recollections of the old. These two causes pre-
vented the French nation in general from demanding or
wishing for a republican government; and, as long as
those causes continue, they will render its existence, even
now when it is established, more or less precarious.
The Provisional Government knew this. They had
no illusions. They were not blind to any of their diffi-
28 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
culties. ' The generation of which they were a part has
neither the ardent faith nor the boundless hope which
belonged to the era of its predecessors, and which made
it easy for an entire people to be transformed into heroes.
It has been publicly stated, that of the eleven members
of the Provisional Government, though all or nearly all
were republicans, M. Ledru Rollin alone, before the
24th of February, thought that the time had yet come
for a republic; and even be, it would appear, in reli-
ance less on what the public sentiment already was
than on 'what it might in his opinion be made. It will
be the immortal glory of these men with posterity, that
they did not need the illusions of political inexperience
to make them heroes; that they could act out their
opinions with calm determination, without exaggerating
to their own minds the measure of success, the amount
of valuable result, which probably awaited them. They
might regret that the nation was not better prepared
for the new re’gz'me; but, when the old had perished,
it was 'not for them to decide that the institutions of
their own preference were too good for their coun-
trymen, but to try whether a republican government,
administered by sincere republicans, if it did not find
the French people republicans, could make them so.
With this noble hope, the members of the Provisional ’
Government, if intentions can be ' judged from acts,
accepted the power which was thrust upon them; and
whoever passes judgment on their proceedings accord-
ing to any other idea of the problem which lay before
them is an incapable appreciator of the situation and its
exigency, and grossly unjust to the men. - 7
Never hadany man, or set of men, suddenly-raised to
AND ITs AssAILANTs. 29
power, a more complicated task before them. It was a
more diflEicult achievement in their case to govern at all
than in the case of almost any other government to
govern well. They were nominal dictators, without
either soldiers or police whom they could call to their
assistance; without even any organized body of adhe-
rents. They were absolute rulers, with no means of
enforcing obedience. And they actually did rule Paris,
for two whole months succeeding a revolution, by
means of such obedience only as was given voluntarily.
This is the part of their conduct, which, to a“ certain
extent, has had least injustice done to it, since it has
commonly been admitted to have been a'difficult and
a meritorious achievement. But the unwilling acknowl—
edgment of merit has stopped in generals: there is.
hardly one of the. acts by which this great feat was
accomplished, that has not since been made a subject of
reproach to them; though not until the emergency had
passed away, and conduct of which the whole benefit
had been reaped could now be criticised at leisure.
.Lord Brougham, among others, cannot tolerate the
speeches by which they calmed the popular efferves-
cence, — speeches for which, at the time when they were
made, the speakers were worshipped almost as gods by
the frightened Parisian bourgeoisie. One would have
thought that men whose almost sole engine of govern-~
ment for months, which in times of revolution are ages,
was the effect which they could produce by haranguing
an armed populace; who had daily to persuade that
populace to forego its demands, at the peril of their
lives if it persisted in them ; and who succeeded in that
object, and kept the frame of government in existence
30 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
until things became quiet, and authority resumed its
course, —-might claim some indulgence as to the means
by which this truly wonderful success was attained.
One hardly expected to hear them taunted with fulsome
flattery and mob-sycophancy because they gave fair
words to those whose good-will was all they had to
depend on for preventing confusion. One would have
thought, too, that a people, or a populace if the term
is preferred, who actually were induced, by fair words
alone, to make themselves a voluntary police, and pre-
serve such order in a great capital that the offences
committed were fewer than in ordinary times, deserved
some praise from their temporary rulers, and might
receive it without subjecting these to any imputation of
time-serving. But Lord Brougham cannot admit that
any praise can be due to a people who make barricades,
and turn out a government. One of the most unworthy
points in his pamphlet is the abusive tone and language
into which he breaks out, every time that he has occa-
sion to speak of the working-classes; of those among
them, at least, who meddle in insurrections, or think
they have any thing to do with the government except
to obey it. “ Rabble,” “ dregs of the populace,”
" armed ruffians,” are his expressions for the most intel-
ligent and best-conducted laboring class, take it for all
in all, to be found on the earth’s surface, -—the artisans
of Paris. His determination to refuse them every
particle of honor must be inveterate indeed, since he
will not allow them even courage : he will not so much
as admit that they actually fought ! --the many hun-
dreds of killed and wounded being, it must be supposed,
the product of accident.
AND ITs AssAILANTs. 31
Even fairer opponents than the pamphleteer, while
giving deserved credit to the Provisional Government
for having overcome the tremendous difficulty of gov-
erning and preserving order, have passed a severe judg-
ment upon the measures of legislation and administration
which were adopted by this temporary authority. Some
of their acts are censured as exceeding the legitimate
powers of a Provisional Government, and deciding
questions which ought to have been reserved for the
appointed representatives of the nation. Others are
condemned as ill-judged and pernicious in themselves.
How far these charges are merited, it will be easier
to judge, if we place ourselves in the situation of
these men, and endeavor to realize, in imagination, the
demands which their position made upon them.
What would have been the proper conduct of men,
who, believing a democratic republic to be not only in
itself the sole form of government which secures due
attention to the interests of the great body of the com-
munity, but also calculated to work well in their own
country, -—believing, however, that the majority of
their countrymen were indifferent, and a great portion
averse to it, -— found themselves unexpectedly placed,
by an insurrection of their own supporters, in a posi-
tion in which it seemed in their power to direct, for
some time to come, the current of events? Were they .
to attempt nothing in favor of their own opinions?
Were they to assume no initiative? Were they merely
to keep things quiet, and in statu quo, until the apathetic
majority could come together, and spontaneously deter-
mine whether they would have what these, the leaders,
thought the best institutions, or what they regarded as
32 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
the worst? Were the noblest spirits and most enlight-
ened minds in the country to employ an opportunity,
such as scarcely occurs once in a thousand years, in
simply waiting on the whims and prejudices of the
many? Were they, who, even on the showing of this
pamphlet, formed the only party which had fixed prin-
ciples and a strong public spirit, to leave all to the
decision of those who either had only mean and selfish
objects, or had not yet acquired any opinions? Had
they done so, they would have deserved to be stigma-
tized in history as the veriest cravens who ever marred
by irresolution the opening prospects of a people.
The democratic principles of these men forbade them
to impose despotically, even if they had the power,
their political opinions upon an unwilling majority, and
compelled them to refer all their acts to the ultimate
ratification of a freely and fairly elected representative
assembly. But the sovereignty of the whole people
does not mean the passiveness of individuals, —-the
negation of all impulse, of all guidance, of all initia-
tive, on the part of the better and wiser few. The more
firmly resolved were these men to stand by the govern-
ment of the majority, even if it did not adopt their opin-
ions, the more incumbent was it on them to spare no
pains for bringing over the majority to them. Their great
task was to republicanize the public mind; to strive by
all means, apart from coercion or deception, that the
coming election should produce an assembly of sincere
republicans. And since this could not but, at the best,
be regarded as doubtful, they were bound, as far as
prudence permitted, to adopt provisionally as many
valuable measures as possible, —— such measures as the
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. 8' 33 ‘
future Assembly, though it might have hesitated to
pass, would not perhaps venture to abrogate. These
two things the Provisional Government did in some
measure attempt; and, though the enemies of popular
institutions have clamored against them as if they had
carried both these courses of action to the most abomi-
nable extremities, posterity will have more reason, not
for censure, but for regret, that they did not venture far
enoughin either.
Among their proceedings which aimed at the first
object, that Of republicanizing the nation, those which
have been most commented on were the sending of the
much-talked-Of commissioners to the departments, and
M. Ledru Rollin’s and “M. Carnot’s famous bulletins
and circulars.
The deputation of commissioners into all parts of
France, to explain what had taken place, to represent
the new government, and supersede the authorities ap-
pointed under the previous regime, seems so natural
and indispensable a proceeding, that the storm of dis-
approbation which it encountered is only a proof of the
blind suspicion and distrust with which the provinces
received all they did, and which was one of the greatest
difficulties of their situation. Much scandal was given
by an expression in M. Ledru Rollin’s instructions to
the commissioners, telling them that their powers were
unlimited. I/Vas it not the very necessity of the case,
that the authority of the Provisional Government was
for the time unlimited, that is, unfettered by any con-
stitutional restraints? and could they have gone on
without imparting to their sole representatives in the
provinces, subject to responsibility to themselves, the
vOL. III. 3
* 34 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
fulness of their own power? Not the power assumed,
but the use made of it, is, in a time of revolution, the
criterion of right or wrong. The Provisional Govern-
ment knew that these commissioners, so ridiculously
compared to the terrible proconsuls of the Convention,
were in small danger of being tempted to any over-
exertion of power. They knew that their delegates, like
themselves, depended on voluntary obedience for being
able to exercise any power at all. These formidable
despots, who are painted in as frightful colors as if they
had carried with them a guillotine an ambulance, were
more than once simply taken by the hand, and led out of
the town on their way back to Paris. The selection
of persons for these appointments has also been much
cavilled at. Lord Brougham revives the almost for-
gotten calumny, that "' one of his ” Ledru Rollin’s)
" commissioners had been a felon, condemned to the gal-
leys, and had undergone the punishment.” Any one,
who has taken as much pains to be informed as is im-
plied in merely reading the French newspapers, knows
'that the person alluded to was not a delegate of the
government or of M. Ledru Rollin, but of the clubs.
lVIistakes, no doubt, were made in the rapid selection of
so great a number of persons, in whom zeal for the
principles ‘of the Republic, being the most essential
requisite, excluded many persons in other respects eligi-
ble. But the maligners of the Provisional Government
may be challenged to deny, that the great majority of
the selections did honor both to the choosers and to the
chosen; that a large proportion acquired, in the dis-
tricts to which they were sent, great and well-merited
popularity, and contributed largely to rally those parts
AND ITS AssAILANTs. 35
of France to the cause of the Republic ; that many are
now (or were, up to M. Léon .Faucher’s recent ejection
en masse) prefects, with general approval, of the de-
partments to which they were delegated; and that, where
errors had been committed, they were at once corrected
as soon as brought to light.
As little ground is there for the imbittered denuncia-
tions against the circulars and proclamations. Two
only of these documents gave cause for just criticism,—
the famous sixteenth bulletin, and M. Carnot’s circular.
The former was withdrawn on the very day of its ap-
pearance, and was afterwards declared to have been
published by the mistake of a clerk; the draft never
having been seen or approved by the minister or by his
secretary. M. Carnot, in his celebrated circular, though
he expressed himself unguardedly, could never, by any
candid reader, be supposed to mean any thing but what
he has always declared that he did mean,— to impress on
those to whom the document was addressed, that it was
more important, at that particular juncture, that the
assembly to be selected should consist of sincere repub-
licans, than that it should contain the greatest possible
number of lettered and instructed men; he knowing,
as he had good reason to know, that, in the greater
part of France, most of those who had gained a repu-
tation as men of letters and acquirements under the Old
regime, like most others who had thriven under that
corrupt system, were not to be relied on by the new.
It is false that M. Carnot disparaged knowledge or
panegyrized ignorance. He declared, on the contrary,
that to make laws and a constitution was a task for the
intellectual élite of France. But were nine hundred
36 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
men of talent, nine hundred talkers, needed, or capable
of being made useful, for such a task? WVhile thinking
only Of the exigencies of the moment, M. Carnot gave
expression, perhaps unwittingly, to a great general truth.‘
It is not the business of a numerous representative as-
sembly to make laws. Laws are never well made but
by a few, ——often best by only one. The office of a
representative body is, not to make the laws, but to see
that they are made by the right persons, and to be the
organ of the nation for giving or withholding its ratifi-
cation of them. For these functions, good sense, good
intentions, and attachment to the principles of free -
government, are the most- important requisites. ' Highly
cultivated intellect is not essential, even if we could
expect to, find it, in more than a select few; and as for
that superficial cleverness, —that command of words,
and skilful management of commonplaces, which pass
for talent and instruction on the hustings, at public
meetings, and in society, —-most really cultivated per-
sons, we believe, are agreed in opinion, that, of this, all
legislative assemblies have, and are likely to have, a
much greater abundance than at all conduces to the
ends for which they purport to exist.
When such are the worst things that can be charged
against the Provisional Government, their conduct must
indeed be free from serious reproach. In this par-
ticular matter, —-the management of the elections, —- .
their behavior, in all that is known of it, will bear com-
parison with that of any government in any country.
Probably no government that ever existed, certainly no
French government, practised so entire an abstinence
from illegitimate influence —from any employment what-
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. 37
ever of government influence —to procure elections in
their own favor. It is not intended to claim merit for
them on this account; their principles required it: but
let it be said, that, under great temptations, they were
true to their principles. It is an unfortunate fact, that
in many things besides this, had they been less disinter-
ested, less upright, less determined to rely solely on the
power of honesty, they would probably have effected
more both for themselves and for their cause. It is
because they persisted in their resolve to owe nothing
to any other than fair means that they have been pre-
cipitated from power; and, among many varieties of
calumny, have not escaped even those charges from
which their (whole conduct had b0rne the stamp of the
most evident determination to keep free.
It would be astonishing (if the impudence of party
calumny could astonish any one) to Observe what are
the crimes of which the detractors Of this noble body
of men have accused, and are not ashamed still to
continue accusing them. They are even now spoken
of in newspapers as if their management of the elections
had been something almost unexampled in tyranny and
turpitude ; and all this time neither a bribe nor a threat,
either to an elector or to a body of electors, has been
proved, or it may almost be said alleged, against them.
If the verdict of history was gathered from the asser-
tions of cotemporaries, what contempt would it inspire
for the judgment of posterity on eminent characters,
when we find that these men have been charged individ-
‘ ually with embezzling money from the treasury; that
even M. de Lamartine has thought it necessary to lay
before the public the details of his. private fortune and
38 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
pecuniary transactions, in order to extinguish the slan-
der beyond possibility of revival! Not without cause:
for, though malignity itself is not shameless enough any
longer to repeat the charge against him personally, his
exculpation has not liberated his colleagues; and there
have appeared within these few weeks, in more than
one English newspaper, articles in which the financial
administration of the Provisional Government has been
spoken of as one mass of profligate malversation.
There is nothing which the spirit that pursues these
men would not dare to assert, when it can venture on
this. One member of the Provisional Government has
been made a mark for greater inveteracy of assault than
the rest, -— M. Ledru Rollin. Everybody has heard
scandalous stories concerning him; and, in his case,
some of these were specific, and accompanied with
names and circumstances. If those which did not enter
into particulars had no better foundation than those
which did, M. Ledru Rollin, as to pecuniary integrity,
is the statesman of most unimpeachable character in
Europe; for every accusation of the kind that we are
acquainted with, which had any tangible character, was
investigated by the Commission d’Enquéte, and dis-
proved by the evidence of the7 persOns alleged to have
been connected with it. In England, his assailants,
and those of his colleagues, seized the opportunity of
the appearance of a mass of evidence which they knew
nobody would read, to affirm (it must in charity be
supposed, without having read it themselves) that it
substantiated all the floating rumors of misconduct, and
covered the members of the government with indelible
disgrace. In France, it was felt even by their enemies
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. ~ 39
to have entirely failed of eliciting the disclosures which
had been expected from it. M. Ledru Rollin instantly
rose many degrees inpublic estimation, and has occu-
pied, since those documents appeared, a position of
greater political importance than before.
To speak now of those measures of the Provisional
Government which partook of a legislative character;
for none of which Lord Brougham can find any other
purpose than " to retain the people’s favor.” Assured-
ly, to retain that favor, at such a time, was as virtuous
an object, considering what depended on it, as any of
those which influence the course of legislation in ordi—
nary times. Yet if it is meant to be said, that for the
sake of the people’s favor they performed one act,
issued one single edict, which did not, in and for itself,
commend itself to them as a thing fit to be done, the
assertion is gratuitous, and in Opposition to all that is
known of the case. Many things were done hastily, to
make sure of their being done at all; some were done
which it has since been necessary to undo ; but no one
thing can they be shown to have done, which was not
such as, in their deliberate opinion, ought to have been
done. ,
Lord Brougham regards the immediate abolition of
colonial slavery as a hasty measure, and beyond ‘the
powers of a Provisional Government. Considering
what proved to" be the character of the National Assem-
bly, who can say, if this great act of justice had been
left for it to do, how long a time would have passed
before it would have found the leisure or the will to
perform it? Financial difficulties, which have gathered
so heavily round the infant Republic, would have been
40 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
‘enough of themselves to have caused the postponement
of emancipation, if it was to be preceded, not followed,
by compensation. The government did at once what
required to be so done: they struck off the fetters of
the slave, knowing, and because they knew, that the
act, once done, was irrevocable. By thus acting, they
not only made sure from the first, that, whatever else
might happen, some hundreds of thousands of human
beings should have permanent cause to bless the Revolu-
tion, but averted the chances of civil war and massacre
consequent on the indefinite withholding, in such cir-
cumstances, of so clear a right. The indemnification
of the owners they left to the future Assembly; but
committed the French nation, as far as it was in the
power of a government to commit them, to that act of
justice.
Lord Brougham talks also of “ their incredible decree
making all judges hold office during pleasure, and by
popular election ; ” thus placing “the administration of
justice in the hands of the populace,” After this
positive assertion, some persons may be surprised to
be told that no such decree ever existed. What the
writer was confusedly thinking about must have been
the act which removed about half a dozen judicial
functionaries from office, declaring in the preamble
that the inamovability of judges was inconsistent with
republican principles. They may have: been, and we
think they were, wrong in this : but the opinion is one
held by a large portion of the republican party; and
several of the best writers on judicial establishments,
both in France and in England, have sanctioned it by
their authority.
AND ITs AssAILANTs. 41
A more important subject than this is M. de Lamar-
tine’s circular to the diplomatic agents of the French
Government, otherwise known as his "Manifeste aux
Puissances,” declaratory of the foreign policy of the new
Republic. This has been made by Lord Brougham the
occasion of an attack on M. de Lamartine, which sur—
passes, in its defiance of fact, almost every other speci-
men of misstatement in this most uncandid pamphlet.
The Provisional G0vernment, he alleges, by this
manifesto, —
“Held out the hand of fellowship to the insurgents of all
nations. . . . M. Lamartine does not and he cannot deny,
that he assured the people of all other countries of assistance
from France in case they should fail to work out by force
their own emancipation; in other words, he promised that
France would help all insurgents who might be defeated by
their lawful rulers in their rebellion against established au-
thority. Beyond all question, this is the very worst thing
that France has done; the most sinning against all principle,
the most hurtful to herself and to the World.”
In this style he continues for several pages, with the
volume before him, or (as the context proves) fresh in
his recollection, which, together with M. de Lamartine’s
defence of his administration, contains a reprint of .
every speech and every public document which proceed-
ed from him during his " three months in power.” Not
one of 'these contains any thing resembling what M. de
Lamartine, as the organ of the French Government, is
here charged with having said.
The "Manifeste aux Puissances” is, both in spirit
and in letter, a declaration of the intention of the
French Republic to remain at peace. The only pas-
42 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
sages which admit of any other construction shall be
quoted at length, to leave no excuse for those who may
imagine that what is so positively asserted, and, if false,
may be so easily confuted, must be true.
“ The treaties of 1815 no longer exist as obligatory, in the
opinion of the French Republic; but the territorial bounda-
ries fixed by those treaties are an existing fact, which the
Republic admits as a basis and a startling-point in its relations
with other countries.
“ But while the treaties of 1815 no longer exist except as
a fact, to be modified by common agreement; and while the
Republic openly declares that it has a right and a mission to
arrive regularly and pacifically at such modifications,-—the
good sense, the moderation, the conscience, the prudence, of
the Republic exist, and are for Europe a better and more
honorable guaranty than the letter of those treaties which
she herself has so' often violated or modified.
“Apply yourself, sir, 'to make this emancipation of the
Republic from the treaties of 1815 understood and admitted,
and to point out that this liberation is in no respect irrecon-
cilable with the repose of Europe.
“We avow openly, that if the hour of reconstruction for
certain oppressed nationalities in Europe or elsewhere appeared
to us to have sounded in the decrees of Providence ; if Switzer-
land, our faithful ally since Francis 1., were constrained or.
menaced in the movement which is taking place within her to
lend an additional force to her band of democratic govern-
ments; if the independent States of Italy were invaded; if
the attempt were made to impose limits or obstacles to their
internal transformations, or to contest by force of arms their
right of allying themselves with each other to consolidate a
common country,--- the French Republic would consider itself
at liberty to take arms for the protection of these legitimate
movements of growth and of nationality.”
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. 43 1‘
Does this promise " that France would help all insur-
gents who might be defeated by their lawful rulers ”?
Can the most perverse ingenuity find in the preceding
words One vestige of a suggestion of such an intention?
' M. de Lamartine claimed for his country the right,
according to its own discretion and judgment, to assist
any nation which might be struggling to free itself from
the yoke of foreign conquerors. Assistance against
foreigners, not against native rulers, was the only as-
sistance of which the smallest mention was made; and
the first of the supposed cases, that of an extinguished
nationality, was the only one which had any thing to do
with “insurrection,” even against-foreigners. And in
that there was not only no promise, but an express
reservation to the French Government to judge for
itself whether the " hour of reconstruction ” had arrived
or not.
But it is not necessary to rely solely on the words of
the manifesto. M. de Lamartine had the advantage,
in this case, of being his own commentator. The
manifesto Nas issued on the 4th of March. On the
19th of that month, M. de Lamartine received a depu-
tation of Poles, and a deputation of Irish on the 3d
of the month following. Both these deputations asked
for the succor which it is pretended that he had prom-
ised to all who might be defeated in a " rebellion ”
against " their lawful rulers.” To both, all succor was
refused. It is an abuse of the privilege of short memo-
ry to have already forgotten declarations which made
A no little sensation when delivered, and had no slight
influence on the subsequent course of events in Europe.
To the Poles he said, —-
I
44 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
“The Republic is not at war, either open or disguised, with
any existing governments, so long as those governments do
not declare themselves at war with France. The Republic
will neither commit, nor voluntarily sufl’er -to be committed,
any act of aggression and violence against the Germanic
nations. . . . The Provisional Government will not allow its ‘
policy to be altered by a foreign nation, however greatly we
sympathize with it. We love Poland, Italy, all oppressed
peoples; but, above all, we love France, and we are responsi-
ble for its destinies, and perhaps for those of Europe at the
present moment. This responsibility we will resign to no
one but to the nation itself. The Republic must not, and will
not, act in contradiction to its professions: the credit of its
word is at stake, and shall never be forfeited. What have we
said in our ‘ Manifeste aux Puissances’? We said, thinking
particularly of you, Whenever it shall appear to us that
the time fixed byProvidence for the resurrection of a nation-
ality unjustly blotted out from the map has arrived, we shall
fly to its assistance; but we have, with good right, reserved
to France what belongs to her alone,—-the appreciation of
the hour, the moment, the justice, the cause, and the means
by which it would be fitting for us to intervene. ‘ The means
which up to this time we have chosen and refived on are
pacific.”
To the Irish, after expressing a warm sympathy with
Ireland as identified with ‘° liberty courageously defend-
ed against privilege,” that is, with the conquests of
peaceful agitation, he said, -— '
“Any other encouragements it would be improper for us
to give, or for you to receive.’ I have already said it d propos
of Switzerland, of Germany, of Belgium, and Italy. I repeat '
it in the case of every nation which has disputes to adjust,
either within itself or with its government. Those whose
AND ITs AssAILANTs. 45
A
own blood is not concerned in the affairs of a people are not
free to intervene in its affairs. We are of no party, in Ire-
land or elsewhere, except the party of justice, of liberty, and
of the people’s welfare.
“ We are at peace, and we desire to remain in friendly and
equal relations, not with this or the other portion of Great
Britain, but with Great Britain itself. We think this peace
useful and honorable, not only for Great Britain and the
French Republic, but for the human race. We will do no
act, speak no word, utter no insinuation, contradictory to the
principles of the reciprocal inviolability of nations, which we
have proclaimed, and of which the Continent is already relap-
ing the fruits. The monarchy had its treaties and its diplo-
matists: our diplomatists are peoples, and their sympathies
are our treaties. We must be senseless to exchange this
diplomacy, in open daylight, for underhand and separate alli-
ances with parties, even the most legitimate, in the countries
which surround us. We have no title to judge them, nor to
prefer one of them to another. Declaring ourselves friends
of one would be proclaiming ourselves enemies of another.
We do not desire to be enemies of any of your countrymen:
we desire, on the contrary, to dissipate, by the loyalty of our
republican word, the'prepossessions and prejudices which may
exist between our neighbors and ourselves.”
Many will recollect (for much notice was taken of
it at the time) the passage which followed these last
words; declaring that he never would imitate the con-
duct of Pitt, when, even during an acknowledged war,
he abetted Frenchmen in carrying on in La Vendée an
armed contest against their own countrymen.
This contrast between what hI. de Lamartine really
said on the subject of affording aid to foreign insur-
rection, and what it suits the author of the pamphlet
46 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
to make him say, speaks for itself without further
comment. i
What was really new and peculiar in M. de Lamar-
tine’s manifesto, consisted, as has been seen by the
extracts, in two things. He repudiated the treaties of
1815; and he asserted a right, though without admit—
‘tiDg an obligation, to afford military aid to nations
attempting to free themselves from a foreign yoke.
To discuss these fundamental points of M. de
Lamartine’s declaration in the manner which they de-
serve would require much more space than can be
afforded to it. The topics are among the most delicate
in political ethics: they are concerned With that nice
question, the line which separates the highest right
from the commencement of wrong; where one person
regards as heroic virtue what another looks upon as
breach of faith, and criminal aggression. T 0 one like
Lord Brougham, who is ostentatiously and to his in-
most core a man of the last century, M. de Lamar-
tine’s principles must naturally appear extremely
scandalous.
M. de Lamartine repudiated certain treaties. He ‘
declared them no longer binding on France. Treaties
are national engagements; and engagements, when in
themselves allowable, and made by persons who have
a right to make them, should be kept: who ever
denied it? But another thing must be admitted also,
and always has been admitted by the morality and
common sense of mankind. This is, that engagements
extorted by a certain kind and measure of external
force are not binding. This doctrine is peculiarly
applicable to national engagements imposed by foreign
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. 47
\
armies. If a nation has, under compulsion, surren-
dered its independence to a conqueror, or even sub-
mitted to sacrifices of territory or dignity greater than
according to general opinion could reasonably be im-
posed, the moral sentiment of mankind has never held
engagements of this sort to preclude the nation from
re-asserting its independence, or from again resorting
to arms, in order that what had been lost by force
might be recovered by force. On what other principle
were Prussia and Austria justified in breaking their
treaties with Napoleon after his disasters in Russia?
This was the situation of France with respect to the
treaties of 1815. They were imposed by conquest,
and were agreed to and signed by an intrusive govern-
ment, while the territory of the nation was occupied by
foreign armies. The nation did not consent to them
for an equivalent advantage, but submitted to them
because it was prostrate at the feet of the invaders, and
had no power to refuse any thing which they might
think fit to demand. Such treaties are never under-
stood to bind nations any longer than they find it their
interest to acquiesce in them. M. de Lamartine had
no need to rest on the fact that these same treaties have
been repeatedly remodelled, and in some cases actually
violated, by others of the contracting powers ; as in the
whole treatment of Poland, and remarkably in the very
recent instance of Cracow. Nor is it even necessary
to consider what the conditions of the treaties were,
and to what extent they were dishonorable or injurious
to France. Into this question M. de Lamartine did
not profess to enter. He simply claimed the right of
deciding it, as inherent in and never foregone by
48 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
France. He denied any moral obligation to keep the
treaties; but he disavowed any intention of breaking
them. He accepted their territorial and other arrange-
ments as existing facts, to be modified only by mutual
consent, or by any of those contingencies which in
themselves he deemed legitimate causes of war. If it
was possible to have assumed any attitude towards
those treaties more just and legitimate, more moderate
and dignified, more wisely uniting the re-assertion of
the nation’s own proper freedom of action with the
regard due to the just rights and security of its neigh-
bors, the world will be obliged to any one who will
point it out.
But the doctrine, that one government may make
war upon another to assist an oppressed nationality in
delivering itself from the yoke I ——this offends Lord
Brougham more than every thing else. Such a breach
of received principles, such defiance of the law of
nations, he finds no words too strong to designate.
He can hardly think of any thing bad enough to com—
pare it with. And it would be vain to deny, that in
this he is backed by a large body of English opinion.
Men who profess to be liberal are shocked at the idea
that the King of Sardinia should assist the Milanese
in effecting their emancipation. That they should
assert their own liberty, might be endured; but that
any one should help them to do it, is insupportable.
It is classed with any unprovoked invasion of a foreign
country; the Piedmontese, it would seem, not being
fellow-countrymen of the people of Venice and Milan,
while the Croats and the Bohemians are.
May we venture, once for all, to deny the whole
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. 49
basis of this edifying moral argumentation? To assist
a people struggling for liberty is contrary to the law
of nations: Puffendorf perhaps does not approve of it;
Burlamaqui says nothing about it; it is not a casus
belli set down in Vattel. So be it. But what is the
law of nations? Something which, to call a law at all,
is a misapplication of terms. The law of nations is
simply the custom of nations. It is a set Of interna-
tional usages, which have grown up like other usages,
partly from a sense of justice, partly from common
interest or convenience, partly from mere opinion and
prejudice. N ow, are international usages the only kind
of customs, which, in an- age of progress, are to be
subject to no improvement? Are they alone to con-
tinue fixed, While all around them is changeable?
The circumstances of Europe have so altered during
the last century, that the constitutions, the laws, the
arrangements of property, the distinctions of ranks,
the modes of education, the opinions, the manners, -—
every thing which affects the European nations sepa-
rately and within themselves, -— has changed so much,
and is likely to change so much more, that, in no great
lapse of time, they will be scarcely recognizable ; and is
it in their collective concerns, their modes of dealing
with one another, that their circumstances, their exi-
gencies, their duties and interests, are absolutely un-
changed? What is called the law of nations is as
open to alteration, as properly and even necessarily
subject to it when circumstances change or opinions
alter, as any other thing of human institution.
And, mark, in the case of a real law, of any thing
properly called a law, it is possible to maintain (how-
VOL. 111. 4
50 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
ever erroneous may be the opinion) that there is never
any necessity for disobeying it; that it should be con-
formed to while it exists, the alternative being open of
endeavoring to get it altered. But in regard to that
falsely called law, the law of nations, there is no such
alternative; there is no ordinance or statute to repeal :
there is only a custom; and the sole way of altering that
is to act in opposition to it. A legislature can repeal
laws; but there is no Congress of nations to set aside
international customs, and no common force by which
to make the decisions of such a Congress binding. The
improvement of international morality can only take
place by a series of violations of existing rules; by a
course of conduct grounded on new principles, and
tending to erect these into customs. in their turn.
Accordingly, new principles and practices are, and
have been, continually introduced into the conduct of
nations towards one another. To omit other instances,
one entirely new principle was for the first time estab-
lished in Europe, amidst general approbation, within
the last thirty years. It is, that whenever two coun-
tries, or two parts of the same country, are engaged in
war, and the war either continues long undecided, or
threatens to be decided in a way involving consequences
repugnant to humanity or to the general interest, other
countries have a right to step in, to settle among them-
selves what they consider reasonable terms of accommo-
dation; and, if these are not accepted, to interfere” by
force, and compel the recusant party to submit to the
mandate. This new doctrine has been acted on by a
combination of the great powers of Europe in three
celebrated instances, -— the interference between Greece
AND ITs ASSAILANTs. 51
and Turkey at Navarino, between Holland and Belgium
at Antwerp, and between Turkey and Egypt at St.
Jean d’Acre. It is too late in the day, after these prece-
dents, to tell us that nations may not forcibly interfere
with one another for the sole purpose of, stopping mis-
chief and benefiting humanity.
Can any exigency of this sort be stronger—is any
motive to such interference of a more binding char-
acter— than that of preventing the liberty of a nation,
which cares suflficiently for liberty to have risen in arms
for its assertion, from being crushed and trampled out
by tyrannical oppressors, and these not even of its own
name and blood, but foreign conquerors? The cus-
toms, or falsely called laws of nations, laid down in the
books, were made for an age like that of Louis XIV.,
to prevent powerful and ambitious despots from swal-
lowing up the smaller States. For this purpose they
were well adapted. But the great interests of civilized
nations in the present age are not those of territorial
attack and defence, but of liberty, just government,
and sympathy of opinion. For this state of things,
what is called the law of nations was not made ; and in
no state of things at all analogous to this has that
so-called law ever been, in the smallest degree, attended
to. There was once in Europe a time, when, as much
as at present, the most important interests of nations,
both in their domestic and in their foreign concerns,
were interests of Opinion: it wits the era of the Refor-
mation. Did any one then pay the least regard to
the pretended principle of non-interference? \Vas not
sympathy of religion held to be a perfectly sufficient
warrant for assisting anybody? Did not Protestants
52 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
aid Protestants wherever they were in danger from their
own governments? Did not Catholics support all other
Catholics in suppressing heresy? What religious sym-
pathies were then, political ones are now: and every
liberal government or people has a right to assist strug-
gling liberalism, by mediation, by money, or by arms,
wherever it can prudently do so ; as every despotic
government, when its aid is needed or asked for, never
scruples to aid despotic governments.
A few observations may be permitted on the extreme
contempt with which Lord Brougham denounces What
he calls --
“That new-fangled principle, that new speculation in the
rights of independent States, the security of neighboring gov-
ernments, and indeed the happiness of all nations, which is
termed Nationality, adopted as a kind of rule for the distri-
bution of dominion. It seems,” he says, “to be the notion
preached by the Paris school of the law of nations and their
foreign disciples, that one State has a right to attack another,
provided, upon statistically or ethnologically examining the
classes and races of its subjects, these are found to vary.
These sages of the international law do not, like their pre-
decessor Robespierre (of whom they compose panegyrics),
hold exactly that France may legally assail any sovereign
who refuses to abdicate, and bestow upon his people the bless-
ings of republican anarchy; but they hold, that, if any sov-
ereign has two dominions inhabited by different races, France
has a right to assist either in casting off his authority. She.
may intimate to him that he can only continue to rule over
the people who are his countrymen; or, if he was born in
neither territory, that he must be put to his election, and
choose which he will give up, but cannot be suffered to keep
both.”
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. 53
It is far from our intention to defend or apologize for
the feelings which make men reckless of, or at least
indifferent to, the rights and interests of any portion
of the human species save that which is called by the
same name, and speaks the same language, as them-
selves. These feelings are characteristic of barbarians :
in proportion as a nation is nearer to barbarism, it has
them in a greater degree; and no one has seen with
deeper regret, not to say disgust, than ourselves, the
evidence which recent events have afforded, that in the
backward parts of Europe, and even (where better things
might have been expected) in Germany, the sentiment
of nationality so far outweighs the love of liberty, that
the people are willing to abet their rulers in crushing
the liberty and independence of any people not of their
own race and language. But grievous as are these
things, yet, so long as they exist, the question of nation-
ality is practically of the very first importance. When
portions of mankind, living under the same govern-
ment, cherish these barbarous feelings; when they
feel toward each other as enemies or as strangers, and
indifferent to each other, —-they are scarcely capable of
merging into one and the same free people. They have
not the fellow-feeling which would enable them to unite
in maintaining their liberties, or in forming a paramount
public opinion. The separation of feeling which mere
difference of language creates is already a serious hin-
‘derance to the establishment of a common freedom.
IVhen to this are added national or provincial antipa-
thies, the obstacle becomes almost insuperable. The
government, being the only real link of union, is able,
by playing off one race and people against another, to
54 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
suppress the liberties of all. How can a free constitution
establish itself in the Austrian Empire, when Bohemians
are ready to join in putting down the liberties of Vien-
nese, when Croats and Servians are eager to crush
Hungarians, and all unite in retaining Italy in slavery
to their common despot? Nationality is desirable as a
means to the attainment of liberty; and this is reason
enough for sympathizing in the attempts of Italians
to reconstitute an Italy, and in those of the people of
Posen to become a Poland. So long, indeed, as a peo-
ple are incapable of self-government, it is often better
for them to be under the despotism of foreigners than
of natives, when those foreigners are more advanced in
civilization and cultivation than themselves; but when
their hour of freedom, to use M. de Lamartine’s meta-
phor, has struck, without their having become merged
and blended in the nationality of their conquerors, the
reconquest of their own is often an indispensable con-
dition, either to obtaining free institutions, or to the
possibility, were they even Obtained, of working them
in the spirit of freedom.
There remains another measure of the Provisional
Government, which opens a still wider field of difficult
and important discussion than the preceding, — the
recognition of the droit au travail; of an obligation
on society to find work and wages for all persons will-
ing and able to work, who cannot procure employment
for themselves.
This conduct of the Provisional Government will be
judged differently, according to the opinions of the per-
son judging, on one of the most controverted questions
of the time. To one class of thinkers, the acknowledg-
1
AND ITs AssAILANTs. 55
ment of the droit au travail may very naturally appear
a portentous blunder ; but it is curious to see who those
are that most loudly profess this opinion. It is singular
that this act of the Provisional Government should find
its bitterest critics in the journalists who dilate on the
excellence of the Poor Law of Elizabeth; and that the
same thing should be so bad in France, which is per-
fectly right, in the opinion of the same persons, for
England and Ireland: for the droit au travail is the
Poor Law of Elizabeth, and nothing more. Aid guar-
anteed to those who cannot work, employment to those
who can,—-this is the Act of Elizabeth, and this the
promise which it is so inexcusable in the Provisional
Government to have made to France.
The Provisional Government not only Offered no
more than the promise made by the Act of Elizabeth,
but offered it in a manner, and on conditions, far less
objectionable. On the English parochial system, the
law gives to every pauper a right to demand work, or
support without work, for himself individually. The
French Government contemplated no such right. It
contemplated action on the general labor market, not
alms to the individual. Its scheme was, that, when
there was notoriously a deficiency of employment, the
State should disburse sufficient funds to create the
amount of productive employment which was wanting.
But it gave no pledge that the State should find work
for A or B. It reserved in its own hands the choice Of
its work-people. It relieved no individual from the
responsibility Of finding an employer, and proving “his
willingness to exert himself. What it undertook was,
that there should always be employment to be found.
56 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
It is needless to enlarge on the incomparably less injuri-
ous influence of this intervention of the government in
favor of the laborers collectively, than of the interven-
tion of the parish to find employment individually for
every able-bodied man who has not honesty or activity
to seek and find it for himself.
The droit au travail, as intended by the Provisional
Government, is not amenable to the commoner objec-
tions against a Poor Law. It is amenable to the most
fundamental of the objections, -— that which is grounded
on the principle of population. Except on that ground,
no one is entitled to find fault with it. From the point
of view of every one who disregards the principle of
population, the droit au travail is the most manifest
of moral truths, the most imperative of political obliga-
tions.
It appeared to the Provisional Government, as it
must appear to every unselfish and open-minded person,
that the earth belongs, first of all, to the inhabitants of
it; that every person alive ought to have a subsistence,
before any one has more; that whosoever works at any
useful thing ought to be properly fed and clothed before
any one able to work is allowed to receive the bread of
idleness. These are moral axioms. But it is impos-
sible to steer by the light of any single principle, with-
out taking into account other principles by which it is
hemmed in. The Provisional Government did not con-
sider, -—what hardly any of their critics have considered,
-—that, although every one of the living brotherhood
of humankind has a moral claim to a place at the table
provided by the collective exertions of the race, no one
Of them has a right to invite additional strangers thither
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. 57
'9
without the consent of the rest. If they do, what is
consumed by these strangers should be subtracted from
their own share.~ There is enough and to spare for all
who are born; but there is not and Cannot be enough
for all who might be born : and, if every person born is
to have an indefeasible claim to a subsistence from the
common fund, there will presently be no more than a
bare subsistence for anybody; and, a little later, there
will not be even that. The droit au travail, therefore,
carried out according to the meaning of the promise,
would be a fatal gift even to those for whose especial
benefit it is intended, unless some new restraint were
placed upon the capacity of increase, equivalent to that
which would be taken away.
The Provisional Government, then, were in the right ;
but those are also in the right who condemn this act of
the Provisional Government. Both have truth on their
side. A time willcome when these two portions of
truth will meet together in harmony. The practical
result of the whole truth might possibly be, that all
persons living should guarantee to each other, through
their organ the State, the ability to earn by labor an
adequate subsistence, but that they should' abdicate the
right of propagating the species at their own discretion,
and Without limit; that all classes alike, and not the
poor alone, should consent to exercise that power in
such measure only, and under such regulations, as society
might prescribe with a view to the common good. But, '
before this solution of the problem can cease to be?
visionary, an almost complete renovation must take
place in some of the most rooted opinions and feelings
of the present race of mankind. The majority, both of
58 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
the upholders of old things and of the apostles of new,
seem at present to agree in the opinion, that one of the
most important and responsible of moral acts, that of
giving existence to human beings, is a thing respecting
which there scarcely exists any moral obligation, and
in which no person’s discretion ought on any pretence
to be interfered with, — a superstition which will one
day be regarded with as much contempt as any of the
idiotic notions and practices of savages.
The declaration of the droit cm travail was followed
by the creation of ateliers nationaum; which, indeed,
was its necessary consequence; since, in the great fall—
ing-off of employment through the industrial stagnation
consequent on the Revolution, it would neither have
been honorable nor safe to make no commencement of
fulfilling the promise given, and circumstances did not
allow of improvising any better mode of temporary
employment for the destitute. Some such measure
would have been necessary after any revolution. In
1830, large sums were expended in setting the unem-
ployed to work. It was the misfortune, not the fault,
of the Provisional Government, that the numbers re-
quiring employment were so much greater than at any
former period, and that the other circumstances of the
case were such as to render the creation of these ateliers
eventually the greatest calamity of the time; since it
soon became impossible to provide funds for continuing
them, while the first attempt to dissolve them was likely
to produce, and did in fact produce, the outbreak in
June.
It was not the fall of the monarchy, or the foundation
of the republic, that caused the complete temporary
AND rrs ASSAILANTS. 59
paralysis of industry and commerce : it was the appear-
ance on the stage of the unexpected and indefinitely
dreaded phenomenon of Socialism; and it was owing
to the diffusion of Socialism among a portion of the
laboring classes, that the first step towards the abolition
of the ateliers nationcmoa became the signal for a de-
termined attempt, by a large section of the workmen of
Paris, to follow up the Republican Revolution by a
Socialist one.
Let us here stop to consider what this new phenome-
non termed Socialism is, in itself, and. in its conse-
quences.
Socialism is the modern form of the protest, which
has been raised more or less, in all ages of any mental
activity, against the unjust distribution of social advan-
tages.
No rational person will maintain it to be abstractedly
just, that a small minority of mankind should be born
to the enjoyment of all the external advantages which
life can give, without earning them by any merit' or
acquiring them by any exertion of their own, while the
immense majority are condemned from their birth to a
life of never-ending, never-intermitting toil, requited by
a bare, and in general a precarious, subsistence. It is
impossible to contend that this is in itself just. It is
possible to contend that it is expedient: since, unless
persons were allowed not only to retain for themselves,
but to transmit to their posterity, the accumulated fruits
of their exertions and of their favorable chances, they
would not, it may be said, produce; or, if they did,
they would not preserve and accumulate their produc-
tions. It may also be said, that to deny to people the
60 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
control of what they have thus produced and accumu-
lated, and compel them to share it with those, who,
either through their fault or their misfortune, have
produced and accumulated nothing, would be a still
greater injustice than that of which the levellers com-
plain; and that the path of least injustice is to rec-
ognize individual property and individual rights of
inheritance.
This is, in few words, the case which the existing
order of society can make out against levellers. The
levellers of the present day, with few exceptions, ac-
knowledge the force of these arguments; and are by
this distinguished from all former opponents of the law-
of property, and constituted, not levellers in the original
sense of the word, but what they term themselves, —-
Socialists.
We grant (they say) that it would be unjust to take
from individual capitalists the fruits of their labor and
of their frugality. Neither do we propose to do so.
But capital is useless without labor; and, if capital
belongs to the capitalists, labor belongs, by at least as
sacred a right, to the laborers. We, the laborers, are
at liberty to refuse to work, except on such terms as we
please. Now, by a system of co-operation among our-
selves, we can do without capitalists. We could also,
if we had fair play from laws and institutions, carry on
productive operations with so much advantage, to our
joint benefit, as to make it the interest of capitalists to
leave their capital in our hands ; because we could offer
them a sufficient interest for its use ; and because, once
able to work for themselves, no laborers of any worth
or efficiency would labor for a master; and capitalists
AND ITS ASSAILANTS. 61
would have no means of deriving an income from their
capitals, except by intrusting them to the associated
work-people.
The system of co-operative production, thus estab-
lished, would cut up by the root the present partial
distribution of social advantages, and would enable the
produce of industry to be shared on whatever principle,
whether of equality or inequality (for, on this point,
different schools of Socialists have different opinions),
might appear to the various communities to be just and
expedient. Such a plan would, in the opinion of
Socialists, be so vast an improvement on the present
order of society, that the government, which exists for
the good of society, and especially for that of the suffer-
ing majority, ought to favor its introduction by every
expedient in its power; ought, in particular, to raise
funds by taxation, and contribute them in aid of the
formation of industrial communities on the co-operative
principle : which funds it is not doubted that the success
of the scheme would enable, in a few years, to be paid
back with interest.
This is Socialism; and it is not obvious what there
is in this system of thought to justify the frantic terror
with which every thing bearing that ominous name is
usually received on both sides of the British Channel.
It really seems a perfectly just demand, in the present
' circumstances of France, that the government should
aid with its funds, to a reasonable extent, in bringing
into operation industrial communities on the Socialist
principle. It ought to do so, even if it could be cer-
tain beforehand that the attempt would fail ; because the
operatives themselves cannot possibly be persuaded of
62 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
this, except by trial ; because they will not be persuaded
of it until every thing possible has been done to make
the trial successful; and because a national experiment
of the kind, by the high moral qualities that would be
elicited in the endeavor to make it succeed, and by the
instruction that would radiate from its failure, would be
an equivalent for the expenditure of many millions on
any of the things which are commonly called “ popular
education . ”
At all events, this view of the subject was the only
one which could be practically taken by the Provisional
Government. They had been made a government
chiefly by the working-classes of Paris. A majority of
the active members of those classes, including most of
their leaders, were deeply imbued with Socialist prin-
ciples and feelings: to them a republican revolution,
which neither did nor attempted any thing for Socialism,
would have been a disappointment and a deception,
which they would have resented with arms in their
hands. The ~Provisional Government, therefore, did
what any government, situated as they were, must have
done : they associated with themselves, in the supreme
authority, two‘of the Socialist chiefs,—M. Louis Blanc
and M. Albert. And, things not being ripe for the
adoption of practical measures of a Socialist character,
they did the only thing which could be done: they
opened an arena for the public discussion of the prob- '
lem ; and invited all competent persons, under the aus-
pices of the government, to contribute their ideas and
suggestions towards its solution.
This was the origin of the conferences at the Luxem-
bourg; which, both in themselves, and in respect of
AND ITS ASSAILANTS. 63
the connection of the Provisional Government with
them, have been the subject of such boundless misrepre-
sentation. The prominent feature of those conferences
consisted of the Socialist speeches of M. Louis Blane;
of whom Lord Brougham asserts, that he has fled to
England " to avoid being judged by enlightened free-
men for endeavoring to make his Republic more bloody
than it has been since 17 94.” The accusation is as
devoid of truth as his charge against the Montagne
party in the Assembly, Of " panting for the guillotine
as an instrument of government.” M. Louis Blane is
not even accused, officially, of being concerned in the
insurrection of June, —-the prosecution against him
having reference solely to the affair of May, in which,
though the National Assembly was turbulently invaded,
" blood,” at all events, was neither shed nor thought
'of ; and, even as to this, his defence before the Commis-
sion d’Enquete appears conclusive. But with regard
to his speeches at the Luxembourg, so far as these have
been published (and it has never been pretended that
any thing has been kept back which would make a
contrary impression), nothing could be less inflamma-
tory and provocative than his tone, nor more sober and
reasonable than every suggestion which he propounded
for immediate adoption. In fact, he proposed nothing
more than that degree of aid by government to the
experimental establishment of the co-operative system
of industry, which, even if the failure were total, would
be a cheap price for setting the question at rest. Far
from stirring up the people to a Socialist insurrection,
every thing proves him to have felt, that, of all things
that could happen, an insurrection like that of June
64 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION or 184.8
Would be the most ruinous to the immediate prospects
of his cause. '
It- was frdm no inherent tendency in the principles
or teaching of the Socialist chiefs that this insurrection
broke out. It arose from the suddenness and unex-
pectedness of the Revolution of February, which,
being effected mainly by Socialists, brought Socialist
Opinions into a position of apparent power, before the
minds of the community generally were prepared for
the situation, or had begun seriously to consider this
great problem. Hence hopes were excited of an im-
mediate practical realization, when nothing was yet
ripe, — when discussion and explanation had nearly all
their work to do; and, as soon as the first inevitable
retrograde steps were taken, the frustration of prema-
ture hopes provoked a fatal collision.
If the Revolution of February should yet disappoint
the glorious expectations which it raised, this collision
will be the cause. It has divided the sincere Repub-
licans, already a small minority, into two parties, at
enmity with one another. It has alienated from the
only Republican party which has any elements of sta-
bility the greater part of the effective strength of the
democracy; and it has filled the bourgeoisie with such
insane terror at the bare thought of great social
changes, that the most beneficent projects share the
discredit of the most perilous, and they are ready to
throw themselves into the arms of any government
which will free them from the fear of a second Socialist
\/ insurrection. These things are lamentable; but the
fatality of circumstances, more than the misconduct of
individuals, is responsible for them.
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. 65
If we are now asked whether we agree’in the antici-
pations of the Socialists; whether we believe that their
co-operative associations, at all events in the present
state of education, would maintain their ground against
individual competition, and secure an adequate amount
of the fruits of industry, combined with a just repar-
tition of them, —our answer must be, that we do not.
It is highly probable, that, among a great number of
such experiments, some would succeed, while under the
influence of the zeal and enthusiasm of: the first
founders. And, in the face of the evidence which ex-
perience affords that mankind may be made capable of
almost any thing by a persevering application of the
power of education in one direction, it would be too
much to affirm that a time can never come when the,
scheme of Owen and of Louis Blane —- of a world
governed by public spirit, without needing the vulgar
incentives of individual interest— will possess a fea-
sibility which cannot be accorded to it now.
But, in proportion to our distrust of the means
which Socialists propose for correcting the unjust in-
equalities in the lot of mankind, do we deem it incum-
bent On philosophers and politicians to use their utmost
endeavors for bringing about the same end by an
adaptation of the existing machinery of society. We
hold with Bentham, that equality, though not the sole
end, is one of the ends, of good social arrangements; .
and that a system of institutions which dOes not ,make
the scale turn in favor of equality, whenever this can
be done without impairing the security of the property
which is the product and reward of personal exertion,
is essentially a bad government, — a government for the
VOL. III. 5
66 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
few, to the injury of the many. And the admiration
and sympathy which we feel for the glorious band who
composed the Provisional Government, and for the
party which supported “them, is grounded, above all, on
the fact that they stand openly identified with this prin—'
ciple, and have in all ways proved their sincere devo-
tion to it. As an exemplification, we extract a few
paragraphs from M. de Lamartine’s " History of the
Girondists,” written before the February Revolution
was thought of ; paragraphs worthy of the noble con-
duct which has immortalized their illustrious writer,
and to be taken as the creed of an earnest and rational
Social Reformer on the questions connected with prop-
erty and the distribution of wealth : —
“ An equal repartition of instruction, of faculties, and of
the things given by nature, is evidently the legitimate ten-
dency of the human mind. Founders of revealed religion,
poets and sages, have eternally revolved this idea in their
souls, and have held it up in their Paradise, in their dreams,
or in their laws, as the ultimate prospect of humanity. It is,
then, an instinct of justice in the human mind. . . . What-
ever tends to constitute inequalities of instruction, of rank,
of condition, of fortune, among mankind, is impious: what-
ever tends gradually to level these inequalities, which are
often injustices, and to share more equitably the common
heritage among mankind, is religious. All policy may be
judged by this test, as a tree by its fruits. The ideal is but
truth at a distance.
J “ But the sublimer an ideal, the more difficult it is to
realize in institutions on the earth. The difficulty up to this
time has been, to reconcile with equality of goods the in-
equalities of Virtues, of faculties, and of exertions, which
distinguish mankind from one another. Between the active
AND ITs AssAILANTs. 67
and the inert, equality of goods is an injustice; for the one
produces, and the other merely consumes. In order that this
community of goods 'may be just, we must suppose in an
mankind the same conscience, the same application to labor,
the same virtue. This supposition is chimerical. What
social order can rest solidly upon such a falsehood? Of two
things, one: society, everywhere present and everywhere
infallible, must be able to compel every individual to the
same labor and the same virtue; but, then, what becomes of
liberty? Society, on this footing, would be universal slavery.
Or else society must distribute daily with its own hands, to
each accOrding to his works, a share exactly proportioned to
the labor and the services of each in the general association.
But, in that case, who is to be the judge?
“Imperfect human wisdom has found it easier, wiser, and
more just, to say to every one, ‘Be thy own judge; take to
thyself thy own recompense by thy riches or thy indigence.’
Society has established property, has proclaimed the freedom
of labor, and has legalized competition.
“ But property, when established, does not feed those who
possess nothing. But freedom of labor does not give the
same means of labor to him who has only his hands, and to
him who possesses millions of acres of the earth’s surface.
But competition is the code of egoism; a war to the death
between those who work, and those who give work; those
who sell, and those who buy; those who revel in abundance,
and those who starve. Injustice on all hands! Incorrigible
inequalities of nature and of law! The wisdom of the legis-
lator seems to lie in palliating them one by one, generation by
generation, law by law. 'He who seeks to correct every thing
by one stroke shatters every thing. Possibility is the neces-
sary condition of poor human wisdom. ‘Without pretending
to resolve complicated iniquities by a single solution, -— to
correct without intermission, to be always ameliorating, is
the justice of imperfect beings like us. . . . Time seems to be
68 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
one of the elements even of truth itself: to demand the ulti-
mate truth from one moment of time, is to demand from the
nature of things more than it can give. Impatience creates
illusions and ruins instead of truths. Delusions are truths
gathered before their time. The Christian and philosophic
community of the good things of the earth is the ultimate
social truth: "the delusions are the violences and the systems '
by which hitherto men have vainly imagined that they could
establish this truth, and organize it into institutions.”
Although net necessary for the main purpose of the
present article, --the .vindication of the Revolution of
February, and of its leading characters, against sys-
tematic misjudgment and misrepresentation, —- it is not
irrelevant to Offer a few pages of comment on the ad-
vice tendered to France, in Lord Brougham’s pamphlet,
respecting the formation of a Constitution.
This advice is prefaced by a very plain intimation
that it is useless, —grounded on the commonplace of
essayists and reviewers, that a Constitution cannot be
made.' " Laws are made: codes and constitutions
grow. Those that grow have roots: they bear, they
ripen, they endure. Those that are fashioned are like
painted sticks planted in the ground, as I have seen
trees of liberty : they strike no root, bear no fruit, and
swiftly decay.”
We have never been able tO_ see in this trite dictum
any thing more than a truism exaggerated into a para-
dox. Stripped of its metaphorical language, it amounts
to this, -—that political institutions cannot work well,
or subsist durably, unless they have existed as customs
before they were enacted as laws. No one can be
insensible to the advantage in point of security for
AND ITs AssAILANTs. 69
stability, possessed by laws which merely annex posi-
tive sanctions to usages which the people had already “
adopted before the legislature recognized them; such
as our mercantile law, grounded on the customs of mer-
chants, to which the courts of justice gradually gave
legal validity. But this, so far as it is true at all, is as
true of any other laws as of political institutions, and
as true of a single law as of a code. Why, then, confine
it to codes and constitutions? Of codes and constitu-
tions, no more than of single laws, is this pre-existence
as custom, however advantageous to stability, a neces-
sary condition of it. What is necessary is, that they
should not violently shock the pre-existing habits aRtF
sgritijnems of the people; and that they should n-dt
demand and r 7.117663% )0 ar mind,
and a degree of interestin, and attachment to, lire
institutions themselves. which the character of the peo-
le and t '~ ' " ' n render unlikel Rib—R
really found in them. These two are the rocks on
Which those usually split, who, by means of a temporary
ascendency, establish institutions alien from, or too much
in advance of, the condition of the public mind. The
founders of the English Commonwealth failed for the
first reason. Their republicanism offended the taste for
kingship and Old institutions: their religious freedom
and equality shocked the attachment to Prelacy or Pres-
byterianism, which then were pervading principles in
the majority of the nation. Charlemagne’s attempt to
construct a centralized monarchy amidst the distraction
and anarchy of the eighth century failed for the other
of the two reasons specified. Its success would have
required, both in the governors and the governed, a


70 THE FRENOH REVOLUTION OF 1848
more cultivated intelligence, a greater comprehension
" of large views and extended interests, than existed or
was attainable in that age, save by eminently excep-
tional individuals like Charlemagne himself. If the
establishment of republicanism in France should turn
out to be premature, it will be for the latter reason.
Although no popular sentiment is shocked by it, the
event may prove that there is no sufficient attachment
to it, or desire to promote its success, but a readiness
to sacrifice it to any trivial convenience, personal en-
gouement, or dream of increased security.
Lord Brougham cannot enter on the subject of the
French Constitution, without rebuking the Assembly
for the indifference they have shown to this their ap-
pointed work.
“ They seem only able to consider, with any interest, per-
sonal questions or party questions ; or (if they deviate .into
more general views) social questions, as the language of the
day terms them. Such are the only discussions in which the
National Assembly appears to have taken a deep interest.
With the work of framing a Constitution, they have, as yet,
troubled themselves but little; although their sittings have
lasted well-nigh six months, at the cost to the people of a
pound a day to each of the nine hundred members.”
These sentences were, of course, written before the
public discussions on the Constitution had commenced;
but that does not excuse omission to take notice of the
fact, that the work of framing the Constitution was
going on uninterruptedly, and with still greater activity,
in the five months which preceded, than in the two
which were occupied by, those public discussions. One
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. 71
of the earliest acts of the Assembly was the nomination
of a committee of thirty of its ablest members to frame
the draft of a Constitution. The draft, when framed,
was the subject of minute examination and discussion,
with closed doors, -—but of which reports reached the
newspapers, —in every one of the fifteen bureauao of
the Assembly; after which the bureaiwc elected another
committee, to be associated with the first committee in
revising the original scheme, and framing a second
draft, with the lights derived from the discussion: so
that, when the day arrived for taking this second draft
publicly into consideration, the work of framing the
Constitution was, in reality, finished. It had received
the benefit of the best light, of the best wisdom, of the
Assembly : it was well known how the votes of the As-
sembly would go, on all disputable points of considera-
ble moment; and little remained for the public discus-
sion to do, except to send forth the arguments of the
majority, and the objections and protests of the minori-
ty, to their constituents and to the world. Is not this
the way in which a Constitution should be made? Are
not all Constitutions, and all laws of any value, the
work Of a few select minds in the first instance, then
discussed and canvassed with a greater number, and
finally ratified by the many?
The Constitution thus made, and now solemnly pro-
claimed and adopted, is such as the ideas and the degree
of instruction of the age and nation permitted it to be.
Of all charges, that to which it is the least Obnoxious
is the trivial one of introducing new " theoretical ” prin-
ciples. There is in it a remarkable absence of what, in
Lord Brougham’s eyes, is so great a fault in a political
72 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1818
Constitution, -- original ideas. There is not a principle
or a provision in it that is not familiar to the public
mind. It is, in fact, a digest of the elementary doctrines
of representative democracy. To those who disapprove
Of democracy, it is, of course, unacceptable; but, that
being granted as the indispensable datum from which the
framers of the Constitution were not at liberty to depart,
any fault which can be found with their work, on the
ground of a deficiency of checks to the preponderance
of popular will, must be set down to the account, not of
new theories, but of the want of them. The presence
of such checks, not their absence, would have been the
novelty in Constitution-making. That would really
have been the introduction of a principle new in demo-
cratic Constitutions, and for which no foundation was
laid in the national mind.
Lord Brougham has condescended to bestow upon
these unapt scholars his view of some of the essential
requisites of a popular Constitution. First among these
is the ancient device, or rather accident, of two Legis-
lative Chambers. How unsuited this contrivance would
be to the state of the French mind, may be known from
the fact, that, although supported by some of the most
individually influential of French orators and politicians,
it has been rejected by a larger majority than any of
the other conservative amendments that have been
proposed; and has numbered among its opponents the
greater part of that large party, in the Assembly, which
calls itself Moderate, and is called by others Anti-re-
publican.
The arguments for a second Chamber, when looked
at from one point of View, are of great force; being
, AND ITs AsSAILANTs. 7 3
no other than the irresistible arguments for the neces-
sity or expediency of a principle of antagonism in
society, —of a counterpoise somewhere to the prepon-
derant power in the State. It seems hardly possible
that there should be permanently good government or
enlightened progress without such a counterpoise. It
may, however, be maintained, with considerable appear-
ance of reason, that the antagonism may be more
beneficially placed in society itself than in the legisla-
tive organ which gives effect to the will of society ; that
it should have its place in the powers which form pub-
lic opinion, rather than in that whose proper function
is to execute it; that, for example, in a democratic
State, the desired counterbalance to the impulses, and
will of the comparatively uninstructed many lies in a
strong and independent organization of the class whose
special business is the cultivation of knowledge; and
will better embody itself in Universities than in Sen-
ates, or Houses of Lords. .
A second Chamber, howsoever composed, is a serious
hinderance to improvement. Suppose it constituted in
the manner, of all others, least calculated to render it
an obstructive body; suppose that an Assembly of
(say) six hundred persons is elected by universal suf-
frage, and, when elected, divides itself, as under the
French Directorial Constitution, into two bodies, -— say,
of three hundred each. N ow, whereas, if the whole
body sat as one Chamber, the opposition of three hun-
dred persons, or one-half of the representativesv'of the
people, would be required to throw out an improve-
ment, -— on the system of separate deliberation, a
hundred and fifty, or one-fourth only, would suffice.
7 4 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
Without doubt, the division into two sections, which
would be a hinderance to useful changes, would be a
hinderance also to hurtful ones; and the arrangement,
therefore, must be regarded as beneficial by those who
think that a democratic Assembly is more likely to
make hurtful than useful changes. But this opinion
both historical and daily experience contradicts. There
cannot be a case more in point than this very instance
of France. The National Assembly was chosen in the
crisis of a revolution by a sufi‘rage including all the
laboring men of the community; the doctrines of a
subversive character which were afloat were peculiarly
favorable to the apparent interests of laboring men:
yet the Assembly elected was essentially a conservative
body ; and it is the general opinion, that the legislature
now about to be elected will be still more so. The
great majority of mankind are, as a general rule, tena-
cious of things existing: habit and custom predominate
with them, in almost all cases, over remote prospects
of advantage ; and, however popular may be the Consti-
tution, in the ordinary course of its working, the diffi-
culty is, not to prevent considerable changes, but to .
accomplish them even when most essentially needful.
Any systematic provision in the Constitution to render
changes diflicult is therefore worse than superfluous : it
is injurious.
It is true, that, in the times which accompany or
immediately follow a revolution, this tendency of the
human'mind may be temporarily and partially reversed :
partially, we say; for a people are as tenacious of Old cus- _
toms and ways of thinking in the crisis of a revolution
as at any other time, on all points except those on which-
AND ITs ASSAILANTS. 75
they have become strongly excited by a perception of
evils or grievances, -—those, in fact, on which the revo-
lution itself turns. On such points, indeed, there may
easily arise, at those periods, an ardor of ill-considered
change; and it is at such times, if ever, that the check
' afforded by a? second or conservative Chamber might be
beneficial. But these are the times when the resistanCe '
of such a body is practically null. The very arguments
used by the supporters of the institution to make it
endurable assume that it cannot prolong its resistance
in excited times. A second Chamber, which, during a
revolution, should resolutely oppose itself to the branch
of the legislature more directly representing the excited
state of popular feeling, would be infallibly swept away.
It is the destiny of a second Chamber to become inOpe-
rative in the only cases in which its effective operation
might have a chance of producing, less harm than good.
If these observations are correct (and we give them
only for what they are worth), there is no reason to
regret the decision by which the Constituent Assembly
of the French Republic has rejected the principle of a
double legislature. The same considerations 'serve to
justify their adoption Of what is termed >universal, suf-
frage. Lord Brougham himself admits that the opera.-
rion of universal suffrage has hitherto proved very
different from what its enemies had anticipated. If a
suffrage extending to every adult male of the commu-
nity produces, and is likely to produce, a legislature
more justly chargeable with too conservative than with
too innovative a spirit, what would it have been, if, by a
_ tax-paying or other property qualification, the democ-'
racy of Paris, Lyons, and other large towns, had been
76 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
{a
excluded from its share of influence? Lord Brougham
repeats, along with other trite and gone-by Observations
on the social. condition of France, that very common-
place one, that Paris is France. It is true, that from
the political passiveness of the majority of the French
people, and the habit of looking to the government as -
the sole arbiter of all political interests, the provinces
of France usually submit: readily to any existing gov-
ernment; but it is not now true, whatever it may have
been formerly, that the provinces , follow blindly the
opinion of Paris : they might more truly be said to be
unreasonably jealous of Parisian influences. Paris,
. with a few of the larger towns, is almost the sole
element of progress which exists, politically speaking,
in France: instead of having too much power, it has
far less than in prOportion to its immense superiority in
political education and intelligence. Its power is never
-preponderant but when its insurrectionary element is
brought into play; and this received a blow in June
last, which has laid it prostrate for some time at
least.
The remainder of Lord Brougham’s advice to the
French people on constitutional subjects is, that they
should have an efficient executive, with poWer promptly
to suppress any attempt at disturbance, —— a point in
which, in the present temper of the French, they are
not likely to be found deficient; and, lastly, that the
legislature should be nothing but a legislature, and
should not, by itself attempting to administer, usurp
the functions of .the executive. On this last topic,
Lord Brougham’s observations, as far as they go, are
just, and to the point.
AND ITS AssAILANTs. 77
“The legislative body,” he observes, “should be strictly
confined to its proper functions,-—of making the laws, and
superintending the administration both of the executive and
of all other departments, but excluded from all share in any of
those branches. The office of discussing legislative measures,
or of controlling the conduct of public functionaries, may well
be intrusted to a senate, however constituted; as the impo-
sition of public burthens upon the community may not only
with equal safety be placed in its hands, but ought almost
exclusively to rest there. A representative body, necessarily
numerous, because elected by a great people, can well and
safely debate such matters: it is peculiarly fitted for their dis-
cussion. Such a body is wholly unfit to handle matters merely
of an administrative kind, or of a judicial. Its numbers at
once pronounce this disqualification: its responsibility to con-
stituents confirms the sentence: its want of individual respon-
sibility precludes all appeal and all doubt. How can an
Assembly of six or seven hundred persons conduct foreign
negotiations, decide questions of peace and war, or dispose of
the national force, whether with a View to internal police or
foreign operations, offensive or defensive? How can such a
body be intrusted with the appointment to places, civil or
military, when each man will be quick to help his fellow-
member’s job, and none ever feel afraid of constituents who
can know little, and care less, about such nominations? Above
every thing, the judicial office must never be exercised by an
Assembly like this; and, of all appointments from which it
should be shut out, those connected with judicial powers fall
most certainly under the rule of exclusion.”
The principle here contended for is of so much
importance, that it deserves to be carried farther than
is done in this passage, or by any existing school of
politicians. In general, if a public function is to be
discharged with honesty and skill, some one person, or
7 8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
a very small number, should, if possible, be specifically
intrusted with it. A few persons, and, still more, one
person, will feel a moral responsibility, an amenability
to the bar of public opinion, which, even when they
cannot be made more directly responsible, will be a far
stronger security for fidelity and attention to their trust
than can be provided in the case of a numerous body.
We dissent altogether‘ from the common opinion of
democratic republicans, which tends to multiply the
conferring of offices by popular election. The sover-
eign Assembly, which is the organ of the people for
superintending and controlling the government, must
of necessity be so elected. But, with this exception, it
appears to us certain (what even Bentham, though in
his earlier speculations he maintained a different opin-
ion, ultimately acknowledged), that judges, administra-
tors, functionaries Of all sorts, will be selected with a
much more careful eye to their qualifications, if some
conspicuous public ofiicer, a president or a minister,
has the choice of them imposed on him as part of his
peculiar business, and feels his official character and
the tenure of his own power to depend, not on what the
people may now think of the choice made, but on what
they will think of it after trial. It seems equally
certain that the president, or prime minister, will be
better selected by the people’s representatives than by
the people themselves directly. The example of the
a United States is a strong argument for this opinion.
If the president were elected by Congress, he would
generally be the leader; and acknowledged ablest man,
of his party: elected by the people, he “is now always
either an unknown mediocrity, or a man whose reputa-
AND ITs AssAILANTs. 79
tion has been acquired in some other field than that of
politics. Nor is this likely to alter ; for every politician
who has attained eminence has made a multitude of at
least political enemies, which renders him a less avail-
able candidate for his party to put forward than some—
body of the same professed principles who is compara-
tively obscure. It is to be feared that the appointment
of a president by the direct suffrages of the community
will prove to be the most serious mistake which the
framers of the French Constitution have made. They
have introduced by it into the still more fermentable
elements of French society— what even in America is
felt to be so great an evil—the turmoil of a perpetual
canvass, and the baneful habit of making the decision
of all great public questions depend less upon their
merits than upon their probable influence on the next
presidential election. And, in addition to this, it will
probably be found, if their present institutions last, that
they have subjected themselves to a series of much
worse selections, and will have their Republic presided
over by a less able and less creditable succession of
men, than if the chief magistrate had been chosen by the
legislature.
It is but just to acknowledge, that this very ques-
tionable provision was introduced in Obedience to the
important principle of preventing the legislature from
encroaching on the province of the executive. The
object was to make the president independent Of the
legislature. It was feared, that, if he were appointed
and could be turned out by them, he would be their
mere clerk, —would exercise no judgment and assume
no responsibility of his own, but simply register the
80 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1848
decrees of a body unfit to conduct the business of
government in detail. There was, however, a means
of avoiding this, which would have been perfectly ef-
fectual. They might have given to the chief of the
executive the power of dissolving the legislature, and
appealing afresh to the people. With this safeguard,
they might have left to the Assembly the uncontrolled
choice of the head of the executive, and the power, by a
vote of dismissal, of reducing him to the alternative of
either retiring, or dissolving the Chamber. The check
which, under this arrangement, the legislature and the
executive would exercise reciprocally over one another,
and the reluctance which each would feel to proceed to
an extremity which might end in their own downfall
instead of their rival’s, would in ordinary cases be suffi-
cient to restrain each within the constitutional limits of
its own authority. Instead of this, it is to be feared,
that, by placing face to face an Assembly and a first
magistrate, — each emanating directly from popular
suffrage, and each elected for a term fixed, only capa-
ble of being abridged by death or resignation, —the
Assembly have organized a perpetual hostility between
the two powers, replete with dangers to the stability of
the Constitution ; for if the president and the National
Assembly should hereafter quarrel, there may for three
whole years be no means by which either can relieve
itself from the hostility of the other, except a coup
d’e’tctt.
In addition to these considerations, an executive
chosen by a select body, and armed with the power of
dissolving the legislature, would probably be a more
effectual check thanany second Chamber upon the con-
AND ITS ASSAILANTS. 81
duct of an Assembly engaged in a course of hasty or
unjust legislation. An eminent politician, the leader
of a great party, and surrounded by the élite of that
party as his ministers and advisers, would have more at
stake in the good conduct of public affairs, would be
more practised and skilful in judging of exigencies,
would apply himself to his task with a much deeper
sense of permanent responsibility“, and, as a consequence
of all this, would be likely to carry with him a greater
weight of opinion, than an Assembly of two or three
hundred persons, whether composed of English lords,
or of the elective representatives of French or American
democracy.
To correct misstatements is so much more tedious a
process than to commit them, that space fails us for
pointing out, or even alluding to, a tenth part of those
which compose the main bulk of Lord Brougham’s
pamphlet. But we have exhibited a sample ; and what
we have exhibited is a fair specimen of what remains
behind. Let us hope that something has been done
towards the more important purpose of vindicating the
Revolution, and the Provisional Government, from as
unjust aspersions as ever clouded the reputation of great
actions and eminent characters.
VOL. III. 6
82
APPENDIX.
THE following are the passages, translations of Which
are given in the text :-— l
From the Speech of M de Tocqueville.
" Pour parler d’abord de ce que j’ai appelé la classe
qui gouverne (remarquez que je prends ces mots dans
leur acception la plus générale: je ne parle pas seule-
ment de la classe moyenne, mais de tous les citoyens,
dans quelque position qu’ils soient, qui possèdent et ex—
ercent des droits politiques) ; je dis donc que ce qui existe
dans la classe qui gouverne m’inquiète et m’efi’raye. Ce
que j’y vois, messieurs, je puis l’exprimer par un mot:
les mœurs publiques s’y altèrent, elles y sont déjà, pro-
fondément altérées; elles s’y altèrent de plus en plus
tous les jours; de plus en plus aux opinions, aux sen-
timents, aux idées communes, succèdent des intérêts
particuliers, des visées particulières, des points de vue
empruntés à. la vie et à l’intérêt privés.
“ Mon intention n’est point de forcer la chambre à
s’appesantir, plus qu’il n’est nécessaire, sur ces tristes
détails; je me bornerai à m’adresser à, mes adversaires
eux-mêmes, à mes collègues de la majorité ministé-
rielle. Je les prie de faire pour leur propre usage
une sorte de revue statistique des collèges électoraux
qui les ont envoyés dans cette chambre; qu’ils com-
posent une première catégorie de ceux qui ne votent
APPENDIX. 83
pour eux que par suite, non pas d’opinions politiques,
mais de sentiments d’amitié particulière, ou de bon
voisinage. Dans une seconde catégorie, qu’ils mettent
ceux qui votent pour eux, non pas dans un point de vue
d’intérêt public ou d’intérêt général, mais dans un point
de vue d’intérêt purement local. A cette seconde
catégorie, qu’ils en ajoutent enfin une troisième, com-
posée de ceux qui votent pour eux pour des motifs d’in-
térêt purement individuels, et je leur demande si ce qui
reste est très nombreux; je leuré demande si ceux
qui votent par un sentiment public désintéressé, par
suite d’opinions, de passions publiques, si ceux la for-
ment la majorité des électeurs qui leur ont conféré le
mandat de député ; je m’assure qu’ils decouvriront aisé-
ment le contraire. Je me permettai encore de leur de-
mander si, à leur connaissance, depuis cinq ans, dix ans,
quinze ans, le nombre de ceux qui votent pour eux par
suite d’intérêts personnels et particuliers ne croît pas
sans cesse; si le nombre de ceux qui votent pour eux
par opinion politique ne décroît pas sans cesse? Qu’ils
me disent enfin si autour d’eux, sous leurs yeux, il ne
s’établit pas peu a peu, dans l’opinion publique, une
sorte de tolérance singulière pour les faits dont je parle,
si peu à peu il ne se fait pas une sorte de morale vul-
gaire et basse, suivant laquelle l’homme qui possède des
droits politiques se doit a lui-même, doit a ses enfans,
à sa femme, a ses parents, de faire un usage personnel
de ces droits dans leur intérêt; si cela ne s’élève pas
graduellement jusqu’à. devenir une espèce de devoir de
père de famille? Si cette morale nouvelle, inconnue dans
les grands temps de notre histoire, inconnue au com-
mencement de notre Révolution, ne se développe pas de
84 APPENDIX.
plus en plus, et n’envahit pas chaque jour les esprits.
Je le leur demande?
" J e crois, messieurs, qu’on peut, sans blesser per—
sonne, dire que le gouvernement a ressaisi, dans ces
dernières années surtout, des droits plus grands, une
influence plus grande, des prérogatives plus considéra-
bles, plus multiples, que celles qu’il avait pos’sédées a
aucune autre époque. Il est devenu infiniment plus
grand que n’auraient jamais pu se l’imaginer, non seule-
ment ceux qui l’ont donné, mais même ceux qui l’ont
reçu en 1830. . . . C’est en ressaisissant de vieux pou-
voirs qu’on croyait avoir abolis en juillet, en faisant re-
vivre d’anciens droits qui semblaient annulés, en remettant
en vigeur d’anciennes lois qu’on jugeait abrogées, en
appliquant les lois nouvelles dans un autre sens que celui
dans lequel elles avaient été faites, c’est par tous ces
moyens détournés, par cette savante et patiente indus-
trie, que le gouvernement a enfin repris plus d’action,
plus d’activité et d’influence, qu’il n’en avait peut-être
jamais eu en France en aucun temps. . . . Et pensez-
vous, messieurs, que cette manière que j’ai appelée tout
à, l’heure détournée et subreptice, de regagner peu à.
peu la puissance, de la prendre en quelque sorte par
surprise, en se servant d’autres moyens que ceux que la
constitution lui avait donnés; croyez-vous que ce spec-
tacle étrange de l’adresse et du savoir-faire donné pub-
liquement pendant plusieurs années, sur un si vaste
théâtre, à toute une nation qui le regarde, croyez-vous
que tel spectacle ait été de nature à améliorer les
mœurs publiques? . . . Ils croient que la révolution
qui s’est opérée depuis quinze ans dans les droits du
pouvoir était nécessaire, soit ; et ils ne l’ont pas fait par
APPENDIX. 85
un intérêt particulier: je le veux croire; mais il n’est
pas moins vrai qu’ils l’ont opérée par des moyens que la
moralité publique désavoue; il n’est pas moins vrai
qu’ils l’ont opérée en prenant les hommes, non par leur
côté honnête, mais par leur mauvais côté —— par leurs
passions, par leur faiblesse, par leur intérêt, souvent
par leurs vices. C’est ainsi que tout en voulant peut-
être un but honnête, ils ont fait des choses qui ne
l’étaient pas. Et pour faire ces choses il leur a fallu
appeler à leur aide, honorer de leur faveur, introduire
dans leur compagnie journalière, des hommes qui ne
voulaient ni d’un but honnête, ni de moyens honnêtes,
qui ne voulaient que la satisfaction grossière de leurs
intérêts privés, à l’aide de la puissance qu’on leur
confiait. . y. . Je ne regarde pas ce fait comme un fait
isolé; je le considère comme le symptôme d’un mal
général, le trait le plus saillant de toute une politique :
en marchant dans les voies que vous aviez choisies,
vous aviez besoin de tels hommes. . . .
" Pour la première fois depuis quinze ans, j’éprouve
une certaine crainte pour l’avenir; et ce qui me prouve
que j’ai raison, c’est que cette impression ne m’est pas
particulière: je crois que je puis en appeler à tous ceux
qui m’écoutent, et que tous me répondront que dans les
pays qu’ils représentent, une impression analogue sub-
siste; qu’un certain malaise, une certaine crainte a
envahi les esprits; que, pour la première fois peut-être
depuis seize ans, le sentiment, l’instinct de l’instabilité,
ce sentiment précurseur des révolutions, qui souvent les
annonce, qui quelquefois les fait naître, que ce senti-
ment existe à un dégré très grave dans le pays. . . .
Est-ce que vous ne ressentez-pas, par une sorte d’intui-
86 APPENDIX.
tion instinctive qui ne peut pas s’analyser, mais qui est
certaine, que le sol tremble de nouveau en Europe?
Est-ce que vous ne sentez-pas—que dirai-je? un vent
de révolutions qui est dans l’air? Ce vent, on ne sait
où il naît, d’où il vient, ni, croyez-le bien, qu’il en—
lève. . . .
" Ma conviction profonde et arrêtée, c’est que les
mœurs publiques se dégradent, c’est que la dégradation
des mœurs publiques vous amènera, dans un temps
court, prochain peut-être, à, des révolutions nouvelles.
. . . Est-ce que vous avez à l’heure où nous sommes, la
certitude d’un lendemain? Est-ce que vous savez ce
qui peut arriver en France d’ici à un an, à, un mois, à
un jour peut-être? Vous l’ignorez; mais ce que vous
savez, c’est que la tempête est à l’horizon, c’est qu’elle
marche sur vous; vous laisserez-vous prévenir par
elle? ' “
“- Messieurs, je vous supplie de ne pas le faire; je ne
vous le demande pas, je vous en supplie : je ne mettrais
volontiers à genoux devant vous, tant je crois le danger
réel et sérieux, tant je pense que le signaler n’est pas Q
recourir à. une vaine for-me de rhetorique. Oui, le
danger est grand! conjurez le quand il en est temps
encore: corrigez le mal par des moyens efficaces, non
en l’attaquant dans ses symptômes, mais en lui-même.
" On a parlé de changements dans la législation. e
suis très porté à croire que ces changements sont non
seulement utiles, mais nécessaires: ainsi je crois à
l’utilité de la réforme électorale, à l’urgence de la ré-
forme parlementaire; mais je ne suis pas assez insensé,
messieurs, pour ne pas savoir que ce ne sont pas les lois
elles-mêmes qui font la destinée des peuples ;:non, ce
I
APPENDIX. 87
n’est pas. le mécanisme des lois qui produit les grands
événements de ce monde: ce qui fait les événements,
messieurs, c’est l’esprit même du gouvernement. Gar-
dez les lois si vous voulez; quoique je pense que vous
ayez grand tort de le faire, gardez-les; gardez-même
les hommes, si cela vous “fait plaisir, je n’y fais, pour
mon compte, aucun obstacle; mais, pour Dieu, changez
l’esprit du gouvernement, car, je vous le répète, cet
esprit-là. vous conduit à. l’abîme.”
From the Mamfesto qf M. de Lamartine.
“ Les traités de 1815 n’existent plus en droit aux.
yeux de la République Française ; toutefois, les circon-
scriptions territoriales de ces traités sont un fait, qu’elle
admet comme base et comme point de départ dans ses
rapports avec les. autres nations.
" Mais, si les traités de 1815 n’existent plus que
comme fait à. modifier d’un accord commun, et si la
République déclare hautement qu’elle a pour droit et
pour mission d’arriver régulièrement et pacifiquement à.
ces modifications, le bon sens, la modération, la con-
science, la prudence de la République existent, et sont
pour l’Europe une meilleure et plus honorable garantie
que les lettres de ces traités, si souvent violés ou modi-
fiés par elle. '
"Attachez-vous, monsieur, à faire comprendre et
admettre de bonne foi cette émancipation de la Répub-
lique des traités de 1815, et à. montrer que cette frane.
chise n’a rien d’inconciliable avec le repos de l’Europe. _-
" Ainsi, nous le disons hautement, si l’heure de la
réconstruction de quelques nationalités opprimées en
Europe ou ailleurs, nous paraissent avoir sonné dans les
88 APPENDIX.
décrets de la Providence ; si la Suisse, notre fidèle alliée
depuis François I“, était contrainte ou menacée dans le
mouvement de croissance qu’elle opère chez elle pour
prêter une force de plus au faisceau des gouvernements
démocratiques; si les. états indépendants de l’Italie
étaient envahis; si l’on imposait des limites ou des
obstacles à leur transformations intérieures; si on leur
contestait'a main armée le droit de s’allier entre eux
pour consolider une patrie Italienne, la République
Française se croirait en droit d’armer elle-même pour
protéger ces mouvements légitimes de croissance et de
la nationalité des peuples.”
From the Answer qf ill. de Lamartine to the Polish Rqf'ugees. .
" La République n’est en guerre ouverte ni sourde
avec aucune des nations, avec aucun des gouvernements
existants, tant que ces nations et ces gouvernements ne
se déclarent pas eux—mêmes en guerre avec elle. Elle
ne fera donc, elle ne permettra volontairement aucun
acte d’agression et de violence contre les nations Ger-
maniques. . . . Le Gouvernement Provisoire ne se
laissera pas changer sa politique dans la main par une
nation étrangère, quelque sympathique qu’elle soit à, nos
cœurs. ' Nous aimons la Pologne, nous aimons l’Italie,
nous aimons tous les peuples opprimés; rmais nous
aimons avant tout la France, et nous avons la responsa-
bilité de ses destinées, et peut-être de celles de l’Europe,
en ce moment. Cette responsabilité nous ne la remet-
trons à personne qu’à, la nation elle-même. . . . La
République ne doit pas et ne veut pas avoir des actes
en contradiction avec ses paroles; le respect de sa
parole. est à ce prix ; elle ne la décréditera jamais en y
APPENDIX. ' 89
manquant. Qu’a-t—elle dit dans son manifeste aux
puissances? Elle a dit, en pensant à. vous: Le jour
où il nous paraîtrait que l’heure providentielle aurait
sonné pour la resurrection d’une nationalité injuste-
ment eff'acée de la carte, nous volerions a son secours.
Mais nous nous sommes justement réservé ce qui ap-
partient a la France seule, l’appréciation de l’heure, du
moment, de la justice, de la cause, et des moyens par
lesquels il nous conviendrait d’intervenir. Eh bien, ces
moyens, jusqu’ici nous les avons choisis et résolus
pacifiques.”
From the Answer of M de Lama'rtz'ne to the Irish Deputation.
“ Quant à, d’autres encouragements, il ne serait pas
convenable à nous (le vous les donner, à, vous de les
recevoir. Je l’ai déjà dit a propos de la Suisse,- à.
proposde l’Allemagne, à propos de la Belgique et de
l’Italie. Je le répète à propos de toute nation qui a
des débats intérieurs à vider avec elle-même ou avec
son gouvernement. Quand on n’a pas son sang dans
les affaires d’un peuple, il n’est pas permis d’y avoir son
intervention ni sa main. Nous ne sommes d’aucun
parti en Irlande ou ailleurs, que du parti de la justice,
de la liberté, et du bonheur des peuples. Aucun autre
‘ rôle ne nous serait acceptable, en temps de paix, dans
les intérêts et dans les passions des nations étrangères.
La France veut se réserver libre pour tous ses droits.
“ Nous sommes en paix, et nous désirons rester en
bons rapports d’égalité, non avec telle ou telle partie de
la Grande Bretagne, mais avec la Grande Bretagne
tout entière. Nous croyons cette paix utile et honora-
ble, non seulement pour la Grande Bretagne et la
90 APPENDIX.
République Française, mais pour le genre humain.
Nous ne ferons aucun acte, nous ne dirons aucune
parole, nous n’adresserons aucune insinuation en contra-
diction avec les principes d’inviolabilité réciproque des
peuples, que nous avons proclamés, et dont le Conti-
nent recueille déjà les fruits. La monarchie déchue
avait des traités et des diplomates; nous avons des
peuples pour diplomates, et des sympathies pour trai-
tés. Nous serions insensés de changer une telle diplo-
matie au grand jour contre des alliances sourdes et
partielles avec les partis même les plus légitimes dans
les pays qui nous environnent. Nous n’avons qualité
ni pour les juger, ni pour les préférer les uns aux
autres. En nous déclarant amis de ceux-ci, nous nous
déclarerions ennemis de ceux-là. Nous ne voulons être
ennemis d’aucuns de vos compatriotes; nous voulons
faire tOmber, au contraire, par la loyauté de la parole
républicaine, les préventions et les préjugés qui existe—
raient entre nos voisins et nous.”
From the “ History of the Gimndz'sts.”
" Le partage égal des lumières, des facultés, et des
dons de la nature est évidemment la tendance légitime
du cœur humain. Les révélateurs, les poètes, et les
sages ont roulé éternellement cette pensée dans leur
âme, et l’ont perpétuellement montrée dans leur ciel,
dans leurs rêves, ou dans leurs lois, comme la perspec-
tive de l’humanité. C’est donc un instinct de la justice
dans l’homme. . . . Tout ce qui tend à. constituer des
inégalités de lumières, de rang, de conditions, de for-
tune, parmi les hommes, est impie. Tout ce qui tend
à. niveler graduellement ces inégalités, qui sont souvent
APPENDIX. 91
des injustices, et à répartir le plus équitablement l’heri-
tage commun entre tous les hommes, est divin. Toute
politique peut-être jugée à, ce signe, comme tout arbre
est jugé à. ses fruits: l’idéal n’est que la vérité a dis-
tance.
“ Mais plus un idéal est sublime, plus il est difficile
à réaliser en institutions sur la terre. La difficulté
jusqu’ici a été de concilier avec l’égalité des biens les
inégalités de vertus, de facultés, et de travail, qui dif-
férencient les hommes entre eux. Entre l’homme actif
et l’homme inerte, l’égalité des biens devient une injus-
tice; car l’un crée, et l’autre dépense. Pour que cette
communauté des biens soit juste, il faut supposer à
tous les hommes la même conscience, la même applica-
tion au travail, la même vertu. Cette supposition est
une chimère. Or quel ordre social pourrait reposer
solidement sur un tel mensonge? De deux choses
l’une. Ou bien il faudrait que la société, partout
présente et partout infaillible, pût contraindre chaque
individu au même travail et à. la même vertu; mais
alors que devient la liberté? La société n’est plus
qu’un universel esclavage. Ou bien il faudrait que la
société distribuât de ses propres mains, tous les jours,
à chacun selon ses œuvres, la part exactement propor-
tionnée à l’œuvre et au service de chacun dans l’associa-
tion générale; mais alors quel sera le juge?
“ La sagesse humaine imparfaite a trouvé plus facile,
plus sage, et plus juste de dire à l’homme: ’ Sois toi-
même ton propre juge, retribue-toi toi-même par la
richesse ou par la misère.’ La société a institué la pro-
priété, proclamé la liberté du travail, et légalisé la
concurrence.
92 APPENDIX.
e‘Mais la propriété instituée ne nourrit pas celui qui
ne possède rien. Mais la liberté du travail ne donne
pas les mêmes éléments de travail à celui qui n’a que
ses bras, et à. celui qui possède des milliers d’arpents
sur la surface du sol. Mais la concurrence n’est que le
code de l’égoïsme, et la guerre à mort entre celui qui
travaille et celui qui fait travailler, entre celui qui achète
et celui qui vend, entre celui qui nage dans le superflu
et celui qui a faim. Iniquité de toutes parts! Incor—
rigibles inégalités de la nature et de la loi! La sagesse
du législateur parait être de les pallier une à, une, siècle
par siècle, loi par loi. ‘ Celui qui veut tout corriger
d’un coup, brise tout. Le possible est la condition de
la misérable sagesse humaine. Sans prétendre résoudre
par une seule solution des iniquités complexes, corriger
sans cesse, améliorer toujours, c’est la justice d’êtres
imparfaits comme nous. . . . Le temps paraît être un
élément de la verité elle-même; demander la vérité
définitive à un seul jour, c’est demander à la nature des
choses plus qu’elle ne peut donner. L’impatience crée
des illusions et des ruines au lieu de vérités. Les dé-
ceptions sont des vérités cueillies avant le temps. La
vérité est évidemment la communauté chrétienne et
philosophique des biens de la terre. Les déceptions, ce
sont les violences et les systèmes par lesquels on a cru
vainement pouvoir établir cette vérité et l’organiser
jusqu’ici.”——LAMARTINE: Æstoz’re des Girondins,
livre 39, ad finem. =
Q
93
ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.*

ALL the more recent of these papers were joint productions
of myself and of one whose loss, even in a merely intellectual
point of view, can never be repaired or alleviated. But the
following Essay is hers in a peculiar sense; my share in it
being little more than that of an editor and amanuensis. Its
authorship having been known at the time, and publicly at—
tributed to her, it is proper to state, that she never regarded
it as a complete discussion of the subject which it treats of;
and, highly as I estimate it, I would rather it remained unac-
knowledged, than that it should be read with the idea that
even the faintest image can be found in it of a mind and heart,
which, in their union of the rarest and what are deemed the
most conflicting excellences, were unparalleled in any human
being that I have known or read of. While she was the
' light, life, and grace of every society in which she took part,
the foundation of her character was a deep seriousness, result-
ing from the combination of the strongest and most sensitive
feelings with the highest principles. All that excites admi-
ration, when found separately in others, seemed brought
together in her: a conscience at once healthy and tender; a
generosity bounded only by a sense of justice, which often
forgot its own claims, but never those of others; a heart so
large and loving, that whoever was capable of making the
smallest return of sympathy always received tenfold; and, in
the intellectual department, a vigor and truth of imagination,
a delicacy of perception, an accuracy and nicety of observa-
tion, only equalled by her profundity of speculative thought,
* Westminster Review, July, 1851.
94 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
and by a practical judgment and discernment next to infalli-
ble. So elevated was the general level of her faculties, that
the highest poetry, philosophy, oratory, or art, seemed trivial
by the side of her, and equal only to expressing some small
part of her mind. And there is no one of those modes of
manifestation in which she could not easily have taken the
highest rank, had not her inclination led her for the most
part to content herself with being the inspirer, prompter, and
unavowed coadjutor of others.
The present paper was written to promote a cause which
she had deeply at heart; and, though appealing only to the
severest reason, was meant for the general reader. The ques-
tion, in her opinion, was in a stage in which no treatment but
the most calmly argumentative could be useful; while many
of the strongest arguments were necessarily omitted, as being
unsuited for popular effect. Had she lived to write out all
her thoughts on this great question, she would have produced
something as far transcending in profundity the present Essay,
as, had she not placed a rigid restraint on her feelings, she
would have excelled it in fervid eloquence. Yet nothing
which even she could have written on any single subject
would have given an adequate idea of the depth and compass
of her mind. As, during life, she continually detected, before
any one else had seemed to perceive them, those changes of
times and circumstances which ten or twelve years later
became subjects of general remark; so I venture to prophesy,
that, if mankind continue to improve, their spiritual history
for ages to come will be the progressive working-out of her
thoughts, and realization of her conceptions.
MOST of our readers will probably learn from these
pages, for the first time, that there has arisen in the
United States, and in the most civilized and enlightened
portion of them, an organized agitation on a new ques-
ENFRANGHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 95
tion, —new, not to thinkers nor to any one by whom
the principles of free and popular government are felt
as well as acknowledged, but new, and even unheard
of, as a subject for public meetings and practical politi-
cal action. This question is the enfranchisement of ,
women ; their admission, in law and in fact, to equality
in all rights, political, civil, and social, with the male
citizens of the community.
It will add to the surprise with which many will
receive this intelligence, that the agitation which has
commenced is not a pleading by male writers and
orators for women; those who are professedly to be
benefited remaining either indifferent or ostensibly hos-
tile. It is a political movement, practical in its objects,
carried on in a form which denotes an intentiOn to per-
severe. And it is a movement not merely for women,
but by them. Its first public manifestation appears to
have been a Convention of Women, held in the State of
Ohio, in the spring of 1850. Of this meeting we have
seen no report. On the 23d and 24th of October last,
a succession of public meetings was held at Worces-
ter, in Massachusetts, under the name of a "Women’s-
Rights Convention,” of which the president was a
woman, and nearly all the chief speakers women; nu-
merously re-enforced, however, by men, among whom
were some of the most distinguished leaders in the kin-
dred cause of negro emancipation. A general and four
special committees were nominated, for the purpose of
carrying on the undertaking until the next annual
meeting.
According to the report in the " N ew-York Tribune,”
above a thousand persons were present throughout;
96 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
and, " if a larger place could have been had, many
thousands more would have attended.” The place was
described as " crowded from the beginning with attentive
and interested listeners.” In regard to the quality of
the speaking, the proceedings bear an advantageous
comparison with those of any, popular movement with
which we are acquainted, either in this country or in
America. Very rarely, in the oratory of public meet-
ings, is the part of verbiage and declamation so small,
that of calm good sense "and reason so considerable.
The result of the Convention was in every respect
encouraging to those by whom it was summoned; and
it is probably destined to inaugurate one of the most
important of the movements towards political and social
reform which'are the best characteristic of the present
age.
That the promoters of this new agitation take their
stand on principles, and do not fear to declare these in
their widest extent, without time-serving or compromise,
will be seen from the resolutions adopted by the Con-
vention, part7 of which we transcribe: -—
“ Resolved, That every human being of full age, and resi-
dent for a proper length of time on the soil of the nation, who
is required to obey the law, is entitled to a voice in its enact-
ment; that every such person, whose property or labor is
taxed for the support of the government, is entitled to a direct
share in such government: therefore ——
“ Resolved, That women are entitled to the right of suf-
frage, and to be considered eligible to office; . . . and that
every party which claims to represent the humanity, the civi-
lization, and the progress of the age, is bound to inscribe on
its banners, ‘ Equality before the Law, without Distinction of
Sex or Color.’ -
ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
“Resolved, That civil and political rights acknowledge no
sex; “and therefore the word ‘ male’ should be struck from
I every State Constitution.
“ Resolved, That since the prospect of honorable and use-
ful employment in after-life is the best stimulus to the use of
educational advantages, and since the best education is that
we give ourselves in the struggles, employments, and disci-
pline of life; therefore it is impossible that women should
make full use of the instruction already accorded to them, or
that their career 'should do justice to their faculties, until the
avenues to the various civil and professional employments are
thrown open to them.
“Resolved, That every effort to educate women, without
according to them their rights, and arousing. their conscience
by the weight of their responsibilities, is futile, and a waste
of labor.
“Resolved, That the laws of property, as affecting married
persons, demand a thorough revisal, so that all rights be equal
between them; that the wife have, during life, an equal con-
trol over the property gained by their mutual toil and sacri-
fices, and be heir to her husband precisely to that extent that
he is heir to her, and entitled at her death to dispose by will
of the same share of the joint property as he is.”
The following is a brief summary of the principal
demands :—
“ 1. Education in primary and high schools, universities,
medical, legal, and theological institutions.
“ 2. Partnership in the labors and gains, risks and remu-
nerations, of productive industry.
“3. A co-equal share in the formation and administration
of laws, -— municipal, state, and national, -- through legislative
assemblies, courts, and executive oflices.”
It would be difficult to put so much true, just, and
reasonable meaning into a' style so little calculated
VOL. 111. 7 ~
98 ENFRANGHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
to recommend it as that of some of the resolutions.
But, whatever objection may be made to some of the
expressions, none, in our opinion, can be made to
the demands themselves. As a question of justice, the
case seems to us too clear for dispute. As one of
expediency, the more thoroughly it is examined, the
stronger it will appear.
That women have as good a claim as men have, in
point of personal right, to the suffrage, or to a place
in the jury-box, it would be difficult for any one to
deny. It cannot certainly be denied by the United
States of America, as a people or as a community.
Their democratic institutions rest avowedly on the
inherent right of every one to a voice in the govern-
ment. Their Declaration of Independence, framed by
the men who are still their great constitutional authori-
ties,——that document which has been from the first,
and is now, the acknowledged basis of their polity, ——
commences with this express statement : —
“ We hold these truths to be self-evident,—-that all men
are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed.”
We do not imagine that any American democrat will
evade the force of these expressions by the dishonest
or ignorant subterfuge, that " men,” in this memorable
document, does not stand for human beings, but for
one sex only; that " life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness,” are " inalienable rights ” of only one moiety ,
ENFRANGHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 99
of the human species ; and that “ the governed,” whose
consent is affirmed to be the only source of just power,
are meant for that half of mankind only, who, in rela-
tion to the other, have hitherto assumed the character
of governors. The contradiction between principle
and practice cannot be explained away. A like dere-
liction of the fundamental maxims of their political
creed has been committed by the Americans in the fla-
grant instance of the negroes : of this they are learning
to recognize the turpitude. After a struggle, which, by
many of its incidents, deserves the name of heroic, the
abolitionists are now so strong in numbers and in influ—
ence, that they hold the balance of parties in the United
States. It was fitting that the men whose names will
remain associated with the extirpation, from the demo-
cratic soil of America, of the aristocracy of color,
should be among the originators, for America and for
the rest of the world, of the first collective protest
against the aristocracy of sex ; a distinction as acciden-
tal as that of color, and fully as irrelevant to all ques-
tions of government.
Not only to the democracy of America, the claim of
women to civil and political equality makes an irresisti-
ble appeal, but also to those Radicals and Chartists in
the British islands, and democrats on the Continent,
who claim what is called universal suffrage as an inher-
ent right, unjustly and oppressively withheld from
them. For with what truth or rationality could the
suffrage be termed universal, while half the human
species remain excluded from it? To declare that a.
voice in the government is the right of all, and demand
it only for a part, —the part, namely, to which the
100 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
claimant himself belongs, --is to renounce even the ap-
pearance of principle. The Chartist who denies the
suffrage to women is a Chartist only because he is not
a lord: he is one of those levellers who would level
only down to themselves.
Even those who do not look upon a voice in the
government as a matter of personal right, nor profess
principles which require that it should be extended to
all, have usually traditional maxims of political justice
with which it is impossible to reconcile the exclusion of
all women from the common rights of citizenship. It
is an axiom of English freedom, that taxation and
representation should be co-extensive. Even under the
laws which give the wife’s property to the husband,
there are many unmarried women who pay taxes. It
is one of the fundamental doctrines of the British
Constitution, that all persons should be tried by their
peers; yet women, whenever tried, are tried by male
judges and a male jury. To foreigners, the law accords
the privilege of claiming that half the jury should be
composed of themselves: not so to women. Apart
from maxims of detail, which represent local and na-
tional rather than universal ideas, it is an acknowl—
edged dictate of justice to make no degrading distinc-
tions without necessity. In all things, the presumption
ought to be on the side of equality. A reason must
be given why any thing should be permitted to one
person, and interdicted to another. But when that
which is interdicted includes nearly every thing which
those to whom it is permitted most prize, and to be
deprived of which they feel to be most insulting ; when
not only political liberty, but personal freedom of action,
ENFRANOHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 101
is the prerogative of a caste ; when, even in the exercise
of industry, almost all employments which task the
higher faculties in an important field, which lead to
distinction, riches, or even pecuniary independence, are
fenced round as the exclusive domain of the predomi-
nant section, scarcely any doors being left open to the
dependent class, except such as all who can enter else-
where disdainfully pass by,—the miserable expediencies
which are advanced as excuses for so grossly partial a
dispensation would not be sufficient, even if they were
real, to render it other than a flagrant injustice: while,
far from being expedient, we are firmly convinced that
the division of mankind into two castes, one born to
rule over the other, is in this case, as in all cases, an
unqualified mischief; a source of perversion and demor-
alization, both to the favored class and to those at
whose expense they are favored ; producing none of the
good which it is the custom to ascribe to it, and forming
a bar, almost insuperable while it lasts, to any really
vital improvement, either in the character or in the
social condition of the human race. ‘
These propositions it is now our purpose to main-
tain. But, before entering on them, we would endeav-
or to dispel the preliminary objections, which, in the
minds. of persons to Whom the subject is new, are apt
to prevent a real and conscientious examination _ of it.
The chief of these obstacles is that most formidable
one, custom. Women never have had equal rights with
men. The claim in their behalf, of the common rights
of mankind, is looked upon as barred by universal
practice. This strongest of prejudices, the prejudice
against what is new and unknown, has indeed, in an age
102 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
of changes like the present, lost much of its force : if it
had not, there would be little hope of prevailing against
it. Over three-fourths of the habitable world, even at
this day, the answer, “ It has always been so,” closes all
discussion. But it is the boast of modern Europeans,
and of their American kindred, that they know and do
many things which their forefathers neither knew nor
did ; and it is perhaps the most unquestionable point
of superiority in the present above former ages, that
habit is not now the tyrant it formerly was over opin-
ions and modes Of action, and that the worship of
custom is a declining idolatry. An uncustomary
thought, on a subject which touches the greater inter-
ests of life, still startlcs when first presented; but, if it
can be kept before the mind until the impression of
strangeness wears off, it obtains a hearing, and as ra-
tional a consideration as the intellect of the hearer is
accustomed to bestow on any other subject.
In the present case, the prejudice Of custom is doubt-
less on the unjust side. Great thinkers indeed, at
different times, from Plato to Condorcet, besides some
of the most eminent names of the present age, have
made emphatic protests in favor of the equality of
women. And there have ' been voluntary societies,
religious or secular, of which the Society of Friends is
the most known, by whom that principle was recog-
nized. But there has been no political community or
nation in which, by law and usage, women have not
been in a state of political and civil inferiority. In the
ancient world, the same fact was alleged, with equal
truth, in behalf of slavery. It might have been
alleged in favor of the mitigated form of slavery, serf-
ENFRANCHISEMENT OF ‘WOMEN.
p
dom, all through the middle ages. It was urged
against freedom of industry, freedom of conscience,
freedom Of the press: none of these liberties were
thought compatible with a well-ordered state, until
they had proved their possibility by actually existing
as facts. That an institution or a practice is customary,
is no presumption of its goodness, when any other suffi-
cient cause can be assigned for its existence. There is
no difficulty in understanding why the subjection of
women has been a custom. No other explanation is
needed than physical force.
That those who were physically weaker should have
been made legally inferior, is quite conformable to the
mode in which the world has been governed. Until
very lately, the rule of physical strength was the general
law of human affairs. Throughout history, the nations,
races, classes, which found themselves the strongest,
either in muscles, in riches, or in military discipline,
have conquered and held in subjection the rest. If,
even in the most improved nations, the law of the sword
is at last discountenanced as unworthy, it is only since
the calumniated eighteenth century. Wars of conquest
have only ceased since democratic revolutions began.
The world is very young, and has but just begun to
cast off injustice. It is only now getting rid of negro
slavery. It is only now getting rid of monarchical
despotism. It is only now getting rid of hereditary
feudal nobility. It is only now getting rid of disabili-
ties on the ground of religion. It is only beginning to
treat any men as citizens, except the rich, and a favored
portion of the middle class. Can we wonder that it
has not yet done as much for women? As society was
104 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
constituted until the last few generations, inequality
was its very basis ; association grounded on equal rights
scarcely existed; to be equals was to be enemies ; two
persons could hardly co-operate in any thing, or meet
in any amicable relation, without the law’s appointing
that one of them should be the superior of the other.
Mankind have outgrown this state; and all things now
tend to substitute, as the general principle of human
relations, a just equality, instead of the dominion of the
strongest. But of all relations, that between men and
women, being the nearest and most intimate, and con-
nected with the greatest number of strong emotions,
was sure to be the last to throw off the old rule, and
receive the new; for in proportion to the strength of a
feeling is the tenacity with which it clings to the forms
and circumstances with which it has even accidentally
become associated.
When a prejudice which has any hold on the feelings
finds itself reduced to the unpleasant necessity of assign-
ing reasons, it thinks it has done enough when it has
re—asserted the very point in dispute in phrases which
appeal to the pre-existing feeling. Thus many persons
think they have sufficiently justified the restrictions on
women’s field of action, when they have said that the
pursuits from which women are excluded are unferni-
nine; and that the proper sphere of women is not
politics or publicity, but private and domestic life.
We deny the right of any portion of the species to
decide for another portion, or any individual for another
individual, what is and what is not their " proper sphere.”
The proper sphere for all human beings is the largest
and highest which they are able to attain to. What
ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 105
this is, cannot be ascertained without complete liberty
of choice. The speakers at the Convention in Amer-
ica have therefore done wisely and right in refusing to
entertain the question of the peculiar aptitudes either
of women or of men, or the limits within which this or
that occupation may be supposed to be more adapted to
the one or to the other. They justly maintain, that these
questions can only be satisfactorily answered by perfect
freedom. Let every occupation be open to all, without
favor or discouragement to any, and employments will
fall into the hands Of those men or women who are
found by experience to be most capable of worthily
exercising them. There need be no fear that women
will take out of the hands of men any occupation which
men perform better than they. Each individual will
prove his or her capacities in the only way in which
capacities can be proved,—by trial ; and the world will
have the benefit of the best faculties of all its inhab-
itants. But to interfere beforehand by an arbitrary
limit, and declare that whatever be the genius, talent,
energy, or force of mind, of an individual of a certain
sex or class, those faculties shall not be exerted, or
shall be exerted only in some few of the many modes
in which others are permitted to use theirs, is not only
an injustice to the individual, and a detriment to society,
which loses what it can ill spare, but is also the most
effectual mode of providing, that, in the sex or class so
fettered, the qualities which are not permitted to be
exercised shall not exist.
We shall follow the very proper example of the Con-
vention, in not entering into the question of the alleged
differences in physical or mental qualities between the
106 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
sexes, not because we have nothing to say, but because
we have too much: to discuss this one point tolerably
would need all the space we have to bestow on the
entire subject.* But if those, who assert that the
“ proper sphere” for women is the domestic, mean by
this that they have not shown themselves qualified for
any other, the assertion evinces great ignorance of life
and of history. Women have shown fitness for the
highest social functions exactly in proportion as they
have been admitted to them. By a curious anomaly,
though ineligible to even the lowest offices of State,
they are in some countries admitted to the highest of
all, —-the regal; and, if there is any one function for
which they have shown a decided vocation, it is that
of reigning. Not to go back to ancient history, we
look in vain for abler or firmer rulers than Elizabeth;
than Isabella of Castile; than Maria Teresa; than
Catherine of Russia; than Blanche, mother of Louis
* An excellent passage on this part of the subject, from one of Sydney
Smith’s contributions to the “Edinburgh Review,” we will not refrain from
quoting: “A great deal has been said of the original difference of capacity
between men and women; as if women were more quick, and men more
judicious; as if women were more remarkable for delicacy of association,
and men for stronger powers of attention. All this, we confess, appears to
us very fanciful. That there is a difference in the understandings of the
men and the women we every day meet with, everybody, we suppose, must
perceive; but there is none surely which may not be accounted for by the
difference of circumstances in which they have been placed, without refer-
ring to any conjectural difference of original conformation of mind. As
long as boys and girls run about in the dirt, and trundle hoops together,
they are both precisely alike. If you catch up one-half of these creatures,
and train them to a particular set of actions and opinions, and the other
half to a perfectly opposite set, of course their understandings will differ,
as one or the other sort of occupations has called this or that talent into
action. There is surely no occasion to go into any deeper or more abstruse
reasoning, in order to explain so very simple a phenomenon.” — Sydney
Smith’s Works, vol. i. p. 200.
ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 107
IX. of France; than Jeanne d’Albret, mother of
Henri Quatre. There are few kings on record who
contended with more difficult circumstances, or over-
came them more triumphantly, than these. Even in
semi-barbarous Asia, princesses who have never been
seen by men other than those of their own family, or
ever spoken with them unless from behind a curtain,
have as regents, during the minority of their sons, ex-
hibited many of the most brilliant examples of just and
vigorous administration. In the Middle Ages, when the
distance between the upper and lower ranks was greater
than even between women and men, and the women of
the privileged class, however subject to tyranny from
the men of the same class, were at a less distance below
them than any one else was, and often, in their absence,
represented them in their functions and authority, -—
numbers of heroic ch’atelaines, like Jeanne de Montfort,
or the great Countess of Derby as late even as the time
of Charles I., distinguished themselves not only by
their political but their military capacity. In the cen-
turies immediately before and after the Reformation,
ladies of royal houses, as diplomatists, as governors
of provinces, or as the confidential advisers of kings,
equalled the first statesmen of their time; and the
treaty of Cambray, which gave peace to Europe, was
negotiated, in conferences where no other person was
present, by the aunt of the Emperor Charles the Fifth,
and the mother of Francis the First.
Concerning the fitness, then, of women for politics,
there can be no question ; but the dispute is more likely
to turn upon the fitness of politics for women. When
the reasons alleged for excluding women from active
108 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
life in all its higher departments are stripped of their
garb of declamatory phrases, and reduced to the simple
expression of a meaning, they seem to be mainly three :
first, the incompatibility of active life with maternity,
and with the cares of a household; secondly, its alleged
hardening effect on the character; and, thirdly, the
inexpediency of making an addition to the already
excessive pressure of competition in every kind of pro-
fessional or lucrative employment.
The first, the maternity argument, is usually laid
most stress upon; although (it needs hardly be said)
this reason, if it be one, can apply only to mothers. It
is neither necessary nor just to make imperative on
women that they shall be either mothers or nothing ; or
that, if they have been mothers once, they shall be noth-
ing else during the whole remainder of their lives.
Neither women nor men need any law to exclude them
from an occupation, if they have undertaken another
which is incompatible with it. N 0 one proposes to
exclude the male sex from Parliament because a man
may be a soldier or sailor in active service, or a mer-
chant whose business requires all his time and energies.
Nine-tenths of the occupations of men exclude them
de facto from public life as effectually as if they were
excluded by law; but that is no reason for making laws
to exclude even the nine-tenths, much less the remaining
tenth. The reason of the case is the same for women
as for men. There is no need to make provision by
law, that a woman shall not carry on the active details of
a household, or of the education of children, and at the
same time practise a profession, or be elected to Parlia-
ment. Where incompatibility is real, it will take care
ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 109
of itself; but there is gross injustice in making the
incompatibility a pretence for the exclusion of those in
whose case it does not exist: and these, if they were
free to choose, would be a very large proportion. The
maternity argument deserts its supporters in the case
of single women, —a large and increasing class of the
population ; a fact which, it is not irrelevant to remark,
by tending to diminish the excessive competition of
numbers, is calculated to assist greatly the prosperity
of all. There is no inherent reason or necessity that
all women should voluntarily choose to devote their
lives to one animal function and its consequences.
Numbers of women are Wives and mothers only because
there is no other career open to them, — no other occu-
pation for their feelings or their activities. Every im-
provement in their education, and enlargement of their
faculties, every thing which renders them more qualified
for any other mode of life, increases the number of those
to whom it is an injury and an oppression to be denied
the choice. To say that women must be excluded from
active life because maternity disqualifies them for it, is
in fact to say that every other career should be forbid-
den them, in order that maternity may be their only
resource.
But, secondly, it is urged, that to give the same free-
dom of occupation to women as to men would be an
injurious addition to the crowd of competitors, by whom
the avenues to almost all kinds of employment are
choked up, and its remuneration depressed. This argu-
ment, it is to be observed, does not reach the political
question. It gives no excuse for withholding from
women the rights of citizenship. The suffrage, the
110 ENFRANGHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
jury-box, admission to the legislature and to office, it
does not touch. It bears only on the industrial branch
of the subject. Allowing it, then, in an economical
point of view, its full force; assuming that to lay open
to women the employments now monopolized by men
would tend, like the breaking-down of other monopo-
lies, to lower the rate of remuneration in those employ-
ments,—— let us consider what is the amount of this evil
consequence, and what the compensation for it. The
worst ever asserted, much worse than is at all likely
to be realized, is, that, if women competed with men, a
man and a woman could not together earn more than is
now earned by the man alone. Let us make this sup
position, the most unfavorable supposition possible : the
joint income of the two would be the same as before;
while the woman would be raised from the position of a
servant to that of a partner. Even if every woman, as
matters now stand, had a claim on some man for sup-
port, how infinitely preferable is it that part of the
income should be of the woman’s earning, even if the
aggregate sum were but little increased by it, rather
than that she should be compelled to stand aside in
order that men may be the sole earners, and the sole
dispensers of what is earned I Even under the present
laws respecting the property of women, a woman who
contributes materially to the support Of the family can-
not be treated in the same contemptuously tyrannical
manner as one, who, however she may toil as a domestic
drudge, is a dependant on the man for subsistence.”
* The truly horrible effects of the present state of the law among the
lowest of the working population is exhibited in those cases of hideous
maltreatment of their wives by working-men, with which every newspaper,
ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 111
As for the depression of wages by increase of competi-
tion, remedies will be found for it in time. Palliatives
might be applied immediately,—-for instance, a more
rigid exclusion of children from industrial employment
during the years in which they ought to be working
only to strengthen their bodies and minds for after-life.
Children are necessarily dependent, and under the power
of others; and their labor, being not for themselves,
but for the gain of their parents, is a proper subject for
legislative regulation. “With respect to the future, we
neither believe that improvident multiplication, and the
consequent excessive difficulty of gaining a subsistence,
will always continue; nor that the division of mankind
into capitalists and hired laborers, and the regulation of
the reward Of laborers mainly by demand and supply,
will be for ever, or even much longer, the rule of the
world. But, so long as competition is the general law
of human life, it is tyranny to shut out one-half of the
competitors. All who have attained the age of self-
government have an equal claim to be permitted to sell
whatever kind of useful labor they are capable of, for
the price which it will bring.
The third objection to the admission of women to
political or professional life, its alleged hardening ten-
dency, belongs to an age now past, and is scarcely to be
comprehended by people of the present time. There
are still, however, persons whp say that the world and
its avocations render men selfish and unfeeling; that
every police report, teems. Wretches, unfit to have the smallest authority
over any living thing, have a helpless woman for their household slave.
These excesses could not exist if women both earned, and had the right to
possess, a part of the income of the family.
112 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
the struggles, rivalries, and collisions of business and
of politics make them harsh and unamiable; that, if
half the species must unavoidably be given up to these
things, it is the more necessary that the other half should
be kept free from them; that to preserve women from
the bad influences of the world is the only chance of
preventing men from being wholly given up to them.
There would have been plausibility in this argument
when the world was still in the age of violence; when
life was full of physical conflict, and every man had to
redress his injuries, or those of others, by the sword or
by the strength of his arm. Women, like priests, by
being exempted from such responsibilities, and from
some part of the accompanying dangers, may have been
enabled to exercise a beneficial influence. But, in the
present condition of human life, we do not know where
those hardening influences are to be found, to which
men are subject, and from which women are at present
exempt. Individuals now-a-days are seldom called
upon to fight hand to hand, even with peaceful weap-
ons; personal enmities and rivalities count for little
in worldly transactions; the general pressure of cir-
cumstances, not the adverse will of individuals, is the
obstacle men now have to make head against. That
pressure, when excessive, breaks the spirit, and cramps
and sours the feelings ; but not less of women than of
men, since they suffer certainly not less from its evils.
There are still quarrels and dislikes ; but the sources of
them are changed. The feudal chief once found his
bitterest enemy in his powerful neighbor; the minister
or courtier, in his rival for place: but opposition of
interest in active life, as a cause of personal animosity,
ENFRANGHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 113
is out of date; the enmities of the present day arise not
from great things, but small; from what people say of
one another, more than from what they do ; and if there
are hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, they are to
be found among women fully as much as among men.
In the present state of civilization, the notion of guard-
ing women from the hardening influences of the world
could only be realized by secluding them from society
altogether. The common duties of common life, as at
present constituted, are incompatible with any other
softness in women than weakness. Surely weak minds
in weak bodies must ere long cease to be even supposed
to be either attractive or amiable.
But, in truth, none of these arguments and consider-
ations touch the foundations of the subject. The real
question is, whether it is right and expedient that one-
half of the human race should pass through life in a state
of forced subordination to the other half. If the best
state of human society is that of being divided into two
parts, one consisting of persons with a will and a sub-
stantive existence, the other of humble companions to
these persons, attached, each of them to one, for the
purpose of bringing up his children, and making his
home pleasant to him, —- if this is the place assigned to
women, it is but kindness to educate them for this;
to make them believe that the greatest good fortune
which can befall them is to be chosen by some man for
this purpose; and that every other career which the
world deems happy or honorable is closed to them by
the law, not of social institutions, but of nature and
destiny.
When, however, we ask why the existence of one-
VOL. 111. 8
114 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
half the species should be merely ancillary to that of the
other; why each woman should be a mere appendage
to a man, allowed to have no interests of her own, that
there may be nothing to compete in her mind with his
interests and his pleasure, —- the only reason which can
be given is, that men like it. It is agreeable to them
that men should live for their own sake, women for the
sake of men ; and the qualities and conduct in subjects
which are agreeable to rulers, they succeed for a long
time in making the subjects themselves consider as their
appropriate virtues. Helvetius has met with much ob-
loquy for asserting that persons usually mean by virtues
the qualities which are useful or convenient to them-
selves. How truly this is said of mankind in general,
and how wonderfully the ideas of virtue set afloat by
the powerful are caught and imbibed by those under
their dominion, is exemplified by the manner in which
the world were once persuaded that the supreme virtue
of subjects was loyalty to kings, and are still persuaded.
that the paramount virtue of womanhood is loyalty to
men. Under a nominal recognition of a moral code com-
mon to both, in practice self-will and self-assertion form
the type of what are designated as manly virtues, while
abnegation of self, patience, resignation, and submis-
sion to power, unless when resistance is commanded
by other interests than their own, have been stamped by
general consent as pre-eminently the duties and graces
required of women; the meaning being merely, that
power makes itself the centre of moral obligation, and
that a man likes to have his own will, but does not like
that his domestic companion should have a will different
from his.
ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 115
We are far from pretending, that, in modern and civ-
ilized times, no reciprocity of obligation is acknowledged
on the part‘ of the stronger. Such an assertion would
be very wide of the truth. But even this reciprocity,
which has disarmed tyranny—at least in the higher and
middle classes —- of its most revolting features, yet,
when combined with the original evil of the dependent
condition of women, has introduced in its turn serious
evils.
In the beginning, and among tribes which are still
in a primitive condition, women were and are the slaves
of men for purposes of toil. All the hard bodily labor
devolves on them. The Australian savage is idle, while
women painfully dig up the roots on which he lives.
An American Indian, when he has killed a deer, leaves
it, and sends a woman to carry it home. In a state
somewhat more advanced, as in Asia, women were and
are the slaves of men for purposes of sensuality. In
Europe, there early succeeded a third and milder domin-
ion, secured not by blows, nor by locks and bars, but
by sedulous inculcation on the mind: feelings also of
kindness, and ideas of duty, such as a superior owes
to inferiors under his protection, became more and
more involved in the relation. But it did not, for many
ages, become a relation of companionship, even between
unequals. The lives of the two persons were apart.
The wife was part of the furniture of home, — of the
resting-place to which the man returned from business
or pleasure. His occupations were, as they still are,
among men: his pleasures and excitements also were,
for the most part, among men, —-among his equals.
He was a patriarch and a despot within four walls ; and
116 ENFRANOHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
irresponsible power had its effect, greater or less accord-
ing to his disposition, in rendering him domineering,
exacting, self-worshipping, when not capriciously or
brutally tyrannical. But, if the moral part of his nature
suffered, it was not necessarily so, in the same degree,
with the intellectual or the active portion. He might
have as much vigor of mind and energy of character as
his nature enabled him, and as the circumstances of his
times allowed. He might write the " Paradise Lost,”
or win the battle of Marengo. This was the condition
of the Greeks and Romans, and of the moderns until a
recent date. Their relations with their domestic sub-
ordinates occupied a mere corner, though a cherished
one, of their lives. Their education as men, the forma-
tion of their character and faculties, depended mainly
on a different class of influences.
It is otherwise now. The progress of improvement
has imposed on all possessors of power, and of domestic
power among the rest, an increased and increasing sense
Of correlative Obligation. No man now thinks that his
wife has no claim upon his actions but such as he may
accord to her. All men of any conscience believe that
their duty to their wives is one of the most binding of
their obligations. Nor is it supposed to consist solely
in protection ; which, in the present state of civilization,
women have almost ceased to need : it involves care for
their happiness, and consideration of their wishes, with
a not unfrequent sacrifice of their own to them. The
power of husbands has reached the stage which the
power of kings had arrived at when opinion did not
yet question the rightfulness of arbitrary power, but in
theory, and to a certain extent in practice, condemned
ENFRANGHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 117
the selfish use of it. This improvement in the moral
sentiments of mankind, and increased sense of the con-
sideration due by every man to those who have no one
but himself to look to, has tended tog make home more
and more the centre of interest, and domestic circum-
stances and society a larger and larger part of life, and
of its pursuits and pleasures. The tendency has been
strengthened by the changes of tastes and manners
which have so remarkably distinguished the last two or
three generations. In days not far distant, men found
their excitement and filled up their time in violent bodily
exercises, noisy merriment, and intemperance. They
have now, in all but the very poorest classes, lost their
inclination for these things, and for the coarser pleasures
generally: they have now scarcely any tastes but those
which they have in common with women; and, for the
first time in the world, men and women are really com-
panions. A most beneficial change, if the companion-
ship were between equals ; but, being between unequals,
it produces what good observers have noticed, though
without perceiving its cause, —- a progressive deteriora-
tion among men in what had hitherto been considered the
masculine excellences. Those who are so careful that
women should not become men do not see that men
are becoming what they have decided that women should
be, -— are falling into the feebleness which they have so
long cultivated in their companions. Those who are
associated in their lives tend to become assimilated in
character. In the present closeness of association be-
tween the sexes, men cannot retain manliness unless
women acquire it.
There is hardly any situation more unfavorable to the
118 ENFRANGHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
maintenance of elevation of character, or force of intel—
lect, than to live in the society, and seek by preference
the sympathy, of inferiors in mental endowments. Why
is it that we constantly see in life so much of intellectual
and moral promise followed by such inadequate per-
formance, but because the aspirant has compared him-
self only with those below himself, and has not sought
improvement or stimulus from measuring himself with
his equals or superiors? In the present state of social
life, this is becoming the general condition of men.
They care less and less for any sympathies, and are less
and less under any personal influences but those of the
domestic roof. Not to be misunderstood, it is neces-
sary that we should distinctly disclaim the belief that
women are even now inferior in intellect to men. There
are women who are the equals in intellect of any men
who ever lived; and, comparing ordinary women with
ordinary men, the varied though petty details which com-
pose the occupation of most women call forth probably
as much of mental ability as the uniform routine of the
pursuits which are the habitual occupation of a large
majority of men. It is from nothing in the faculties
themselves, but from the petty subjects and interests on
which alone they are exercised, that the companionship
of women, such as their present circumstances make
them, so often exercises a dissolvent influence on high
faculties and aspirations in men. If one of the two
has no knowledge and no care about the great ideas and
purposes which dignify life, or about any of its practical
concerns, save personal interests and personal vanities,
her conscious, and still more her unconscious influence,
will, except in rare cases, reduce to a secondary place
ENFRAN CHISEMEN T OF WOMEN. 1 1 9
in his mind, if not entirely extinguish, those interests
which she cannot or does not share.
Our argument here brings us into collision with what
may be termed the moderate reformers of the education
of women; a sort of persons who cross the path of
improvement on all great questions; those who would
maintain the old bad principles, mitigating their conse-
quences. These say that women should be, not slaves
nor servants, but companions, and educated for that
office (they do not say that men should be educated to
be the companions of women). But since uncultivated
women are not suitable companions for cultivated men,
and a man who feels interest in things above and beyond
the family circle wishes that his companion should sym-
pathize with him in that interest, they therefore say, let
women improve their understanding and taste, acquire
general knowledge, cultivate poetry, art, even coquet
with science; and some stretch their liberality so far as
to say, inform themselves on politics, not as pursuits,
but sufficiently to feel an interest in the subjects, and to
be capable of holding a conversation on them with the
husband, or at least of understanding and imbibing his
wisdom. Very agreeable to him, no doubt, but, un-
fortunately, the reverse of improving. It is from hav-
ing intellectual communion only with those to whom
they can lay down the law, that so few men continue to
advance in wisdom beyond the first stages. The most
eminent men cease to improve, if they associate only
with disciples. When they have overtopped those who
immediately surround them, if they wish for further
growth, they must seek for others of their own stature
to consort with. The mental companionship which is
120 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
improving is communion between active minds, not
mere contact between an active mind and a passive.
This inestimable advantage is even now enjoyed, when
a strong-minded man and a strong-minded woman are,
by a rare chance, united ; and would be had far oftener,
if education took the same pains to form strong-minded
women which it takes to prevent them from being
formed. The modern, and what are regarded as the
improved and enlightened, modes of education of wo-
men, abjure, as far as words go, an education of mere
show, and profess to aim at solid instruction, but mean,
by that expression, superficial information on solid sub-
jects. Except accomplishments, which are new gene-
rally regarded as to be taught well if taught at all,
nothing is taught to women thoroughly. Small por-
tions only of what it is attempted to teach thoroughly
to boys are the whole of what it is intended or desired
to teach to women. What makes intelligent beings is
the power of thought : the stimuli which call forth that
power are the interest and dignity of thought itself, and
a field for its practical application. Both motives are
cut off from those who are told from infancy that
thought, and all its greater applications, are other peo-
ple’s business, while theirs is to make themselves agree-
able tO other people. High mental powers in women
will be but an exceptional accident, until every career is
open to them, and until they, as well as men, are edu-
cated for themselves and for the world, -—not one sex
for the other.
In what we have said on the effect of the inferior
position of women, combined with the present constitu—
tion of married life, we'have thus far had in view only
ENFRANCHISEMENT OE WOMEN. 121
the most favorable cases,-—those in which there is some
real approach to that union and blending of characters
and of lives which the theory of the relation contem-
plates as its ideal standard. But, if we look to the
great majority of cases, the effect of women’s legal
inferiority, on the character both of women and of men,
must be painted in far darker colors. \Ve do not speak
here of the grosser brutalities, nor of the man's power
to seize on the woman’s earnings, or compel her to live
with him against her will. We do not address our-
selves to any one who requires to have it proved that
these things should be remedied. We suppose average
cases, in which there is neither complete union nor com-
plete disunion of feelings and character; and we affirm,
that, in such cases, the influence of the dependence on
the woman’s side is demoralizing to the character of
both.
The common opinion is, that, whatever may be the
case with the intellectual, the moral influence of women
over men is almost always salutary. It is, we are often
told, the great counteractive of selfishness. However
the case may be as to personal influence, the influence
of the position tends eminently to promote selfishness.
The most insignificant of men, the man who can obtain
influence or consideration nowhere else, finds one place
where he is chief and head. There is one person, often
greatly his superior in understanding, who is obliged to
consult him, and whom he is not obliged to consult.
He is judge, magistrate, ruler, over their joint con-
cerns; arbiter of all differences between them. The
justice or conscience to which her appeal must be made
is his justice and conscience: it is his to hold the
122 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
balance and adjust the scales between his own claims or
wishes and those of another. His is now the only
tribunal, in civilized life, in which the same person is
judge and party. A generous mind, in such a situa
tion, makes the balance incline against its own side,
and gives the other not less, but more, than a fair
equality; and thus the weaker side may be enabled to
turn the very fact of dependence into an instrument of
power, and, in default of justice, take an ungenerous
advantage of generosity; rendering the unjust power,
to those who make an unselfish use of it, a torment and
a burthen. But how is it when average men are invested
with this power, without reciprocity and without re-
sponsibility? Give such a man the idea that he is first
in law and in opinion; that to will is his part, and hers
to submit : it is absurd to suppose that this idea merely
glides over his mind, without sinking into it, or having
any effect on his feelings and practice. The propensity
to make himself the first object of consideration, and
others at most the second, is not so rare as to be
wanting where every thing seems purposely arranged
for encouraging its indulgence. If there is any self-
will in the man, he becomes either the conscious or
unconscious despot of his household. The wife, indeed,
Often succeeds in gaining her Objects ; but it is by some
of the many various forms of indirectness and manage-
ment. .
Thus the position is corrupting equally to both: in
the one, it produces the vices of power; in the other,
those of artifice. Women, in their present physical
and moral state, having stronger impulses, would natu-
rally be franker and more direct than men; yet all the
ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 123
old saws and traditions represent them as artful and
dissembling. Why? Because their only way to their
objects is by indirect paths. In all countries where
women have strong wishes and active minds, this conse-
quence is inevitable; and, if it is less conspicuous in
England than in some other places, it is because Eng-
lish women, saving occasional exceptions, have ceased
to have either strong Wishes or active minds.
We are not now speaking of cases in which there
is any thing deserving the name of strong affection on
both sides. That, where it exists, is too powerful a
principle not to modify greatly the bad influences of the
situation. It seldom, however, destroys them entirely.
Much oftener, the bad influences are too strong for the
affection, and destroy it. The highest order of durable
and happy attachments would be a hundred times more
frequent than they are, if the affection which the two
sexes sought from one another were that genuine friend-
ship which only exists between equals in privileges, as
in faculties. But with regard to what is commonly
called affection in married life, -—the habitual and almost
mechanical feeling of kindliness, and pleasure in each
other’s society, which generally grows up between per-
sons who constantly live together, unless there is actual
dislike, —— there is nothing in this to contradict or qual-
ify the mischievous influence of the unequal relation.
Such feelings often exist between a sultan and his fa-
vorites; between a master and his servants: they are
merely examples of the pliability of human nature,
which accommodates itself in some degree even to the
worst circumstances, and the commonest natures always
the most easily.
124 ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
With respect to the influence personally exercised by
women over men, it no doubt renders them less harsh
and brutal : in ruder times, it was often the only soften-
ing influence to which they were accessible. But the
assertion, that the wife’s influence renders the man less
selfish, contains, as things now are, fully as much error
as truth. Selfishness towards the wife herself, and
towards those in whom she is interested, the children,
though favored by her dependence, the wife’s influence,
no doubt, tends to counteract. But the general effect
on him of her character, so long as her interests
are concentrated in the family, tends but to substitute
for individual selfishness a family selfishness, wearing
an amiable guise, and putting on the mask of duty.
How rarely is the wife’s influence on the side of public
virtue I how rarely does it do otherwise than discourage
any effort of principle by which the private interests or
worldly vanities of the family can be expected to suffer !
Public spirit, sense of duty towards the public good, is
of all virtues, as women are now educated and situated,
the most rarely to be found among them: they have
seldom even ——what in men is often a partial substitute
for public spirit -— a sense of personal honor connected
with any public duty. Many a man, whom no money
or personal flattery would have bought, has bartered his
political opinions against a title, or invitations for his
wife ; and a still greater number are made mere hunters
after the puerile vanities of society, because their wives
value them. As for opinions, in Catholic countries
the wife’s influence is another name for that of the
priest: he gives her, in the hopes and emotions con-
nected with a future life, a consolation for the sufferings
ENFRANGHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 125
and disappointments which are her ordinary lot in
this. Elsewhere, her weight is thrown into the scale
either of the most commonplace or of the most out-
wardly prosperous opinions; either those by which
censure will be escaped, or by which worldly advance-
ment is likeliest to be procured. In England, the wife’s
influence is usually on the illiberal and anti-popular
side: this is generally the gaining side for personal
interest and vanity; and what to her is the democracy
or liberalism in which she has no part, -— which leaves
her the Pariah it found her? The man himself, when
he marries, usually declines into conservatism; begins
to sympathize with the holders of power more than
with its victims, and thinks it his part to be on the
side of authority. As to mental progress, except those
vulgarer attainments by which vanity or ambition are
promoted, there is generally an end to it in a man who
marries a woman mentally his inferior; unless, indeed,
he is unhappy in marriage, or becomes indifferent.
From a man of twenty—five or thirty, after he is mar-
ried, an experienced observer seldom expects any further
progress in mind or feelings. It is rare that the prog-
ress already made is maintained. Any spark of the
mens divinior, which might otherwise have spread and
become a flame, seldom survives for any length of time
unextinguished. For a mind which learns to be satis-
fied with what it already is; which does not inces-
santly look forward to a degree of improvement not yet
reached,—becomes relaxed, self-indulgent, and loses
the spring and the tension which maintain it even at the
point already attained. And there is no fact in human
nature to which experience bears more invariable testi-
126 ENFRANGHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
mony than to this, —- that all social or sympathetic
influences which do not raise up, pull down: if they
do not tend to stimulate and exalt the mind, they tend
to vulgarize it.
For the interest, therefore, not only of women, but
of men, and of human improvement in the widest sense,
the emancipation of women, which the modern world
often boasts of having effected, and for which credit is
sometimes given to civilization, and sometimes to Chris- '
tianity, cannot stop where it is. If it were either
necessary or just that one portion of mankind should
remain mentally and spiritually only half developed, the
development of the other portion ought to have been
made, as far as possible, independent of their influ-
ence. Instead of this, they have become the most
intimate, and, it may now be said, the only intimate,
associates of those to whom yet they are sedulously kept
inferior; and have been raised just high enough to drag
the others down to themselves.
We have left behind a host of vulgar objections,
either as not worthy of an answer, or as answered by
the general course of our remarks. A few words,
however, must be said on one plea, which in England
is made much use of for giving an unselfish air to
the upholding of selfish privileges, and which, with
unobserving, unreflecting people, passes for much more
than it is worth. Women, it is said, do not desire,
do not seek, what is called their emancipation : on the
contrary, they generally disown such claims when made
in their behalf, and fall with acharnement upon any one
of themselves who identifies herself with their common
cause.
ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 127
Supposing the fact to be true in the fullest extent
ever asserted, if it proves that European women ought
to remain as they are, it proves exactly the same with
respect to Asiatic women ; for they too, instead of mur-
muring at their seclusion, and at the restraint imposed
upon them, pride themselves on it, and are astonished
at the effrontery of women who receive visits from
male acquaintances, and are seen in the streets unveiled.
Habits of submission make men as well as women ser-
vile-minded. The vast population of Asia do not desire
or value, probably would not accept, political liberty;
nor the savages of the forest, civilization: which does
not prove that either of those things is undesirable for
them, or that they will not, at some future time, enjoy
it. Custom hardens human beings to any kind of
degradation, by deadening the part of their nature
which would resist it. And the case of women is, in
this respect, even a peculiar one; for no other inferior
caste that we have heard of have been taught to regard
their degradation as their honor. The argument, how-
ever, implies a secret consciousness that the alleged
preference of women for their dependent state is merely
apparent, and arises from their being allowed no choice ;
for, if the preference be natural, there can be no neces-
sity for enforcing it by law. To make laws compelling
people to follow their inclination has not hitherto been
thought necessary by any legislator. The plea, that
women do not desire any change, is the same that has
been urged, times out of mind, against the proposal of
abolishing any social evil, — " there is no complaint : ”
which is generally not true; and, when true, only so
because there is not that hope of success, without which
128 ENFRANOHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
complaint seldom makes itself audible to unwilling
ears. How does the objector know that women do
not desire equality and freedom? He never knew a
woman who did not, or would not, desire it for her-
self individually. It would be very simple to suppose,
that, if they do desire it, they will say so. Their
position is like that of the tenants or laborers who vote
against their own political interests to please their land-
lords or employers; with the unique addition, that
submission is inculcated on them from childhood, as
the peculiar attraction and grace of their character.
They are taught to think, that to repel actively even
an admitted injustice done to themselves is somewhat
unfeminine, and had better be left to some male friend
or protector. To be accused of rebelling against any
thing which admits of being called an " ordinance of
society,” they are taught to regard as an imputation of
a serious offence, to say the least, against the proprieties
of their sex. It requires unusual moral courage as well
as disinterestedness in a woman to express opinions
favorable to women’s enfranchisement, until at least
there is some prospect of obtaining it. The comfort of
her individual life, and her social consideration, usually
depend on the good-will of those who hold the undue
power; and, to possessors of power, any complaint, how-
ever bitter, of the misuse of it, is a' less flagrant act of
insubordination than to protest against the power itself.
The professions of women in this matter remind us of
the State offenders of old, who, on the point of execu-
tion, used to protest their love and devotion to the sov-
ereign by whose unjust mandate they suffered. Griselda
herself might be matched from the speeches put by
ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 129
Shakspeare into the mouths of male victims of kingly
caprice and tyranny, —-the Duke of Buckingham, for
example, in " Henry the Eighth; ” and “even Wolsey.
The literary class of women, especially in England, are
ostentatious in disclaiming the desire for equality or
citizenship, and proclaiming their complete satisfaction
with the place which society assigns to them ; exercising
in this, as in many other respects, a most noxious influ-
ence over the feelings and opinions of men, who unsus—
pectingly accept the servilities of toadyism as concessions
to the force of truth, not considering that it is the
personal interest of these women to profess whatever
opinions they expect will be agreeable to men. It is
not among men of talent, sprung from the people, and
patronized and flattered by the aristocracy, that we look
for the leaders of a democratic movement. Successful
literary women are just as unlikely to prefer the cause
of women to their own social consideration. They
depend on men’s opinion for their literary as well as for
their feminine successes ; and such is their bad opinion
of men, that they believe there is not more than one in
ten thousand who does not dislike and fear strength,
sincerity, or high spirit, in a woman. They are there-
fore anxious to earn pardon and toleration for whatever
of these qualities their writings may exhibit on other
subjects, by a studied display of submission on this,
that they may give no occasion for vulgar men to say
(what nothing will prevent vulgar men from saying)
that learning makes women unfeminine, and that lite-
rary ladies are likely to be bad wives.
But enough of this; especially as the fact which
affords the occasion for this notice makes it'impos-
vOL. 111. 9
130 ENFRANOHISEMENT OF WOMEN.
sible any longer to assert the universal acquiescence
of women (saving individual exceptions) in their de-
pendent condition. In the United States, at least,
there are women, seemingly numerous, and now or-
ganized for action on the public mind, who demand
equality in the fullest acceptation of the word, and
demand it by a straightforward appeal to men’s sense
of justice, not plead for it with a timid deprecation of
their displeasure.
Like other popular movements, however, this may
be seriously retarded by the blunders of its adherents.
Tried by the ordinary standard of public meetings,
the speeches at the Convention are remarkable for the
preponderance of the rational over the declamatory
'element: but there are some exceptions ; and things to
which it is impossible to attach any rational meaning
have found their way into the resolutions. Thus the
resolution which sets forth the claims made in behalf of
women, after claiming equality in education, in indus—
trial pursuits, and in political rights, enumerates, as
a fourth head of demand, something under the name
of " social and spiritual union,” and " a. medium of ex-
pressing the highest moral and spiritual views of just-
ice,” with other similar verbiage, serving only to mar
the simplicity and rationality of the other demands;
resembling those who would weakly~attempt to com-
bine nominal equality between men and women with
enforced distinctions in their privileges and functions.
“That is wanted for women is equal rights, equal ad—
mission to all social privileges; not a position apart,
a,.sort of sentimental priesthood. To this, the only
just and rational principle, both the resolutions and
ENFRANGHISEMENT OF WOMEN. 181
the speeches, for the most part, adhere. They contain
so little which is akin to the nonsensical paragraph in
question, that we suspect it .not to be the work of the
same hands as most of the other resolutions. The
strength of the cause lies in the support of those who
are influenced by reason and principle; and to attempt
to recommend it by sentimentalities, absurd in reason,
and inconsistent with the principle on which the move-
ment is founded, is to place a good cause on a level
with a bad one.
There are indications that the example of America
will be followed on this side of the Atlantic; and the
first step has been taken in that part of England where
every serious movement in the direction of political
progress has its commencement, -— the manufacturing
districts of the North. On the 13th of February,
1851, a petition of women, agreed to by a public
meeting at Sheffield, and claiming the elective fran-
chise, was presented to the House of Lords by the Earl
of Carlisle.
132
DR. WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.*

IF the worth of Dr. Whewell’s writings could be
measured by the importance and amplitude of their
subjects, no writer of the age could vie with him in
merit or usefulness. He has aspired to be, not only
the historian, but the philosopher and legislator, of
almost all the great departments of human knowledge;
reducing each to its first principles, and showing how it
might be scientifically evolved from these as a connected
whole. After endeavoring, in his " History and Philos—
ophy of the Inductive Sciences,” to place physics, and
incidentally metaphysics, on a philosophic foundation,
he has made an almost equally ambitious attempt on
the subjects of morals and government, of which the
two works before us are the results. He is thus en-
titled to the praise of having done his best to wipe off
from the two endowed universities, in one of which he
holds a high place, the reproach to which they have so
long been justly liable, of neglecting the higher regions
of philosophy. By his writings and influence, he has
been an agent in that revival of speculation on the most
* Westminster Review, October, 1852.—1. “Lectures on the History
of Moral Philosophy in England.” By William Whewell, D.D., Master of
Trinity College, and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University
of Cambridge. 1 vol. 8vo. 1852.
2. “Elements of Morality, including Polity.” By the same Author.
2 vols. 8vo. 1845.
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 183
difficult and highest subjects, which has been noticeable
for some years past within as well as without the pale
of Oxford and Cambridge. And inasmuch as mental
activity of any kind is better than torpidity, and bad
solutions of the great questions of philosophy are pref-
erable to a lazy ignoring of their existence, whoever
has taken so active a part as Dr. Whewell in this intel-
lectual movement may lay claim to considerable merit.
Unfortunately, it is not in the nature of bodies
constituted like the English universities, even when
stirred up into something like mental actiyity, to send
forth thought of any but one description. There have
been universities (those of France and Germany have
at some periods been practically conducted on this prin-
ciple) which brought together into a body the most
vigorous thinkers and the ablest teachers, whatever the
conclusions to which their thinking might have led
them. But, in the English universities, no thought can
find place, except that which can reconcile itself with
orthodoxy. They are ecclesiastical institutions; and
it is the essence of all churches to vow adherence to a
set of opinions made up and prescribed, it matters little
whether three or thirteen centuries ago. Men will
some day open their eyes, and perceive how fatal a
thing it is, that the instruction of those who are in-
tended to be the guides and governors of mankind
should be confided to a collection of persons thus
pledged. If the opinions they are pledged to were
every one as true as any fact in physical science, and
had been adopted, not as they almost always are, on
trust and authority, but as the result of the most dili-
gent and impartial examination of which the mind of
184 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
the recipient was capable,— even then, the engagement
under penalties always to adhere to the opinions once
assented to would debilitate and lame the mind, and
unfit it for progress, still more for assisting the progress
of others. The person who has to think more of what
an opinion leads to, than of what is the evidence of it,
cannot be a philosopher, or a teacher of philosophers.
Of what value is the opinion, on any subject, of a man
of whom every one knows, that, by his profession, he
must hold that opinion? and how can intellectual vigor
be fostered by the teaching of those, who, even as a
matter of duty, would rather that their pupils were
weak and orthodox, than strong with freedom of
thought? Whoever thinks that persons thus tied are
fitting depositaries of the trust of educating a people
must think that the proper object of intellectual educa-
tion is, not to strengthen and cultivate the intellect, but
to make sure of its adopting certain conclusions ; that,
in short, in the exercise of the thinking faculty, there
is something, either religion or conservatism or peace,
or whatever it be, more important than truth. Not to
dilate further on this topic, it is nearly inevitable, that
when persons bound by the vows, and placed in the
circumstances, of an established clergy, enter into the
paths of higher speculation, and endeavor to make a
philosophy, either purpose or instinct will direct them
to the kind of philosophy best fitted to prop up the
doctrines to which they are pledged; and, when these
doctrines are so prodigiously in arrear of the general
progress of thought as the doctrines of the Church of
England now are, the philosophy resulting will have a
tendency, not to promote, but to arrest, progress.
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 185
Without the slightest wish to speak in disparagement
of Dr. Whewell’s labors, and with no ground for ques-
tioning his sincerity of purpose, we think the preceding
remark thoroughly applicable to his philosophical specu-
lations. We do not say the intention, but certainly the
tendency, of his efforts, is to shape the whole of philos-
ophy, physical as well as moral, into a form adapted to
serve as a support and a justification to any opinions
which happen to be established. A ’writer who has
gone beyond all his predecessors in the manufacture of
necessary truths, that is, of propositions, which, accord-
ing to him, may be known to be true, independently of
proof; who ascribes this self-evidence to the larger
generalities of all sciences (however little obvious at
first) as soon as they have become familiar, —-was still
more certain to regard all moral propositions familiar to
him from his early years as self-evident truths. His
“ Elements of Morality ” could be nothing better than a
classification and systematizing of the opinions which
he found prevailing among those who had been edu-
cated according to the approved methods of his own
country; or, let us rather say, an apparatus for con-
verting those prevailing opinions on matters of morality
into reasons for themselves.
This, accordingly, is what we find in Dr. Whewell’s
volumes ; while we have sought in vain for the numer-
ous minor merits which give a real~scientific value to
his previous works. If the "Philosophy of the Inductive
Sciences ” was, as we think, an erroneous philosophy,
it contained much that was not unfit to find place in
a better, and was often calculated to suggest deeper
thoughts than it possessed of its own. But, in the
186 WHEWELL ON MoRAL PHILOSOPHY.
" Elements of Morality,” he leaves the subject so exactly
as he found it; the book is so mere a catalogue of
received opinions, containing nothing to correct any
Of them, and little which can work with any potency
even to confirm them, -—— that it can scarcely be counted
as any thing more than one of the thousand waves on
the dead sea of commonplace, affording nothing. to in-
vite or to reward a separate examination. We should
not, therefore, have felt called upon to concern our-
selves specially about it, if Dr. Whewell had not, in
his more recent publication, “ Lectures on the History
Of Moral Philosophy in England,” undertaken to char-
acterize and criticise, from his own point of view, all
other English writers on moral philosophy, and par-
ticularly those who derive their ethical conclusions, not
from internal intuition, but from an external standard.
So long as he contented himself with giving what we
think bad reasons for common Opinions, there was not
much inducement to interfere with them; but assaults
on the only methods of philosophizing from which any
improvement in ethical opinions can be looked for
ought to be repelled. And, in doing this, it is necessary
to extend our comments to some of Dr. Whewell’s sub-
stantive opinions also. lVhen he argues in condemna-
tion of any external standard, and especially of utility,
or tendency to happiness, as the principle or test of
morality, it is material to examine how he gets on with-
out it; how he fares in the attempt to construct a cohe-
rent theory of morals on any other basis. WVe shall
make use of his larger work in so far only as it is
evidence on this point.
Even with the " Lectures,” considered as giving an
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 187
account of English speculations on moral philosophy
previous to the age of Bentham and Paley, it is not our
purpose to meddle: Hobbes, therefore, and Locke,
must be left in the hands of Dr. Whewell, without any
attempt either to correct his estimate of their opinions,
or to offer any judgment of our own. This historical
sketch suggests, however, one remark of an historical
character, not new to any one who is conversant with
the writings of English thinkers on ethical subjects.
During the greater part of the eighteenth century, the
received opinions in religion and ethics were chiefly
attacked, as by Shaftesbury, and even by Hume, on the
ground of instinctive feelings of virtue, and the theory
of a moral taste or sense. As a consequence of this,
the defenders of established opinions, both lay and cleri-
cal, commonly professed utilitarianism. To the many
writers on the side of orthodoxy, of the utilitarian
school, mentioned by Dr. Whewell, might be’added
several of at least equal note whom he has omitted; as
John Brown, the author of " Essays on the Character-
istics ;” Soame J enyns, and his more celebrated re-
viewer, Dr. Johnson; all of whom, as explicitly as
Bentham, laid down the doctrine, that utility is the
foundation of morals. This series of writers attained
its culmination in Paley, whose treatise, proclaiming
without evasion or circumlocution, not only expediency
as the end, but (a very different doctrine) simple self-
interest as the motive, of virtue, and deducing from
these premises all the orthodox conclusions, became the
text—book of moral philosophy in one of the two uni-
versities of the Church of England. But a change
ensued ; and the utilitarian doctrine, which had been the
188 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
favorite theory of the defenders of orthodoxy, began to
be used by its assailants. In the hands of the French
philosophers, and in those of Godwin and of Bentham,—
who, though earlier than Godwin in date, was later
in acquiring popular influence, —a moral philosophy
founded on utility led to many conclusions very unac-
ceptable to the orthodox. For a whole generation, so
effectual a fight was kept up against those conclusions,
by bayonets in the field, and prosecutions in the courts
of justice, that there seemed no necessity for taking
much concern about the premises : but when those car-
nal weapons fell into disuse, and the spirit which had
wielded them was laid; when the battle of established
opinions in Church and State had again to be fought by
argument, — a demand arose for metaphysics and moral
philosophy, of the kind most remote from that which
appeared so full of danger to received opinions. Utility
was now abjured as a deadly heresy, and the doctrine
of d-prz'orz' or self-evident morality—an end in itself,
independent of all consequences -— became the orthodox
theory. Having once entered into this course, and
gone in search of a philosophical system to be extracted
from the mind itself, without any external evidence, the
defenders of orthodoxy were insensibly led to seek their
system where it exists in the most elaborate shape, —-
in the German metaphysicians. It was not without
reluctance that they found themselves engaged in this
path; for German metaphysics in Germany lay under
as grave a suspicion of religious scepticism as the rival
I philosophy in England or France. But it was found,
on trial, that philosophy of this cast admitted of easy
adaptation, and would bend to the very Thirty-nine
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 189
Articles; as it is the essence of a philosophy which
seeks its evidence in internal conviction, that it bears
its testimony with equal ease for any conclusions in
favor of which there is a predisposition, and is sceptical
with the sceptical, and mystical with the mystical.
Accordingly, the tone of religious metaphysics, and of
the ethical speculations connected with religion, is now
altogether Germanized; and Dr. WVhewell, by his writ-
ings, has done no little to impress upon the metaphysics
of orthodoxy this change of character.
It has always been indistinctly felt that the doctrine
of (Z-prz'orz' principles is one and the same doctrine,
whether applied to the 611 or the 6&0», -— to the knowledge
of truth, or to that of duty; that it belongs to the same
general tendency of thought, to extract from the mind
itself, without any outward standard, principles and
rules of morality, and to deem it possible to discover, by
mere introspection into our minds, the laws of external
nature. Both forms of this mode of thought attained
a brilliant development in Descartes, the real founder
of the modern anti-inductive school of philosophy. The
Cartesian tradition was never lost, being kept alive by
direct descent through Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Kant, to
Schelling and Hegel : but the speculations of Bacon and
Locke, and the progress of the experimental sciences,
gave a long period of predominance to the philosophy
of experience; and though many followed out that
philosophy into its natural alliances, and acknowledged
not only observation and experiment as rulers of the
speculative world, but utility of the practical, others
thought that it was scientifically possible to separate
the two opinions, and professed themselves Baconians
140 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
in the physical department, remaining Cartesians in the
moral. It will probably be thought by posterity to
be the principal merit of the German metaphysicians
of the last and present age, that they have proved the
impossibility of resting on this middle ground of com-
promise; and have convinced all thinkers of any force,
that, if they adhere to the doctrine of d-prz'orz' princi-
ples of morals, they must follow Descartes and Hegel
in ascribing the same character to the principles of
physics.
On the present occasion, it is only with the moral
branch of the subject that we have to deal; and we
shall begin by showing in what manner Dr. Whewell
states the question between us.
“ Schemes of morality, that is, modes of deducing the
rules of human action, are of two kinds, —those which assert
it to be the law of human action to aim at some external
object (external, that is, to the mind which aims), as, for
example, those which in ancient or modern times have assert-
ed pleasure or utility, or the greatest happiness of the great-
est number, to be the true end of human action; and those
which would regulate human action by an internal principle
or relation, as conscience, or a moral faculty, or duty, or
rectitude, or the superiority of reason to desire. These two
kinds of schemes may be described respectively as dependent
and independent morality. Now, it is here held that independ-
ent morality is the true scheme. We maintain, with Plato,
that reason has a natural and rightful authority over desire
and affection; with Butler, that there is a difference of kind
in our principles of action ;- with the general voice of mankind,
that we must do what is right, at whatever cost of pain and
loss. We deny the doctrine of the ancient Epicureans, that
pleasure is the supreme good; of Hobbes, that moral rules
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 141
are only the work of men’s mutual fear; of Paley, that What
is expedient is right, and that there is no difference among
pleasures except their intensity and duration; and of Bentham,
that the rules of human action are to be obtained by casting
up the pleasures which actions produce. But though we thus
take our stand upon the ground of independent morality, as
held by previous writers, we hope that we are (by their aid
mainly) able to present it in a more systematic and connected
form than has yet been done.”—Introductory Lecture, pp.
IX. X.
There is, in this mode of stating the question, great
unfairness to the doctrine of " dependent morality,” as
Dr. Whewell terms it, though the word “independent”
is fully as applicable to it as to the intuition doctrine.
He appropriates to his own side of the question all the
expressions, such as conscience, duty, rectitude, with
which the reverential feelings of mankind towards moral
ideas are associated; and cries out, “I am for these
noble things: you are for pleasure or utility.” We
cannot accept this as a description of the matter in
issue. Dr. Whewell is assuming to himself what be-
longs quite as rightfully to his antagonists. We are
as much for conscience, duty, rectitude, as Dr. Whe-
well. The terms, and all the feelings connected with
them, are as much a part of the ethics of utility as of
that of intuition. The point in dispute is, what acts
are the proper objects of those feelings; whether we
ought to take the feelings as we find them, as accident
or design has made them, or whether the tendency of
actions to promote happiness affords a test to which
the feelings of morality should conform. In the same
spirit, Dr. ‘Vhewell announces it as his opinion, as
142 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
the side he takes in this great controversy, " that we
must do what is right, at whatever cost of pain and
loss,”—- as if this was not everybody’s opinion; as if
it was not the very meaning of the word " right.” The
matter in debate is, what is right, not whether what is
right ought to be done. Dr. Whewell represents his
opponents as denying an identical proposition, in order
that he may claim a monopoly of high principle for his
own opinions. The same unfairness pervades the whole
phraseology. It is not only Dr. Whewell who “ main-
tains, with Plato, that reason has a rightful authority
over desire and affection; ” everybody maintains it:
only, what is reason? and by what rule is it to guide
and govern the desires and affections? The description
of Bentham, as obtaining his rule of conduct by " cast-
ing up the pleasures which actions produce,” ought to
be ‘° casting up the pleasures and pains which actions
produce,”-— a very different thing.
As might be expected from the historical character
of the Lectures, the discussion of Opinions mostly as-
sumes the form of criticism on writers. Dr. Whewell’s
objections to utility, or the " greatest happiness,” as the
standard of morals, are chiefly contained in his animad-
versions on Paley and on Bentham. It would be quite
open to a defender of the principle of utility to refuse
encumbering himself with a defence of either of those
authors. The principle is not bound up with what they
have said in its behalf, nor with the degree of felicity
which they may have shown in applying it. As for
Paley, we resign him without compunction to the tender
mercies of Dr. Whewell. It concerns Dr. Whewell
more than ourselves to uphold the reputation of a
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 148
writer, who, whatever principle of morals he professed,
seems to have had no object but to insert it as a foun- <
dation underneath the existing set of opinions, ethical
and political; who, when he had laid down utility as
the fundamental axiom, and the recognition of general
rules as the condition of its application, took his leave
of scientific analysis, and betook himself to picking
,up utilitarian reasons by the wayside, in proof of all
accredited doctrines, and in defence of most tolerated
practices. Bentham was a moralist of another stamp.
WVith him, the first use to be made of his ultimate
principle, was to erect on it, as a foundation, secondary
or middle principles, capable of serving as premises for
a body of ethical doctrine not derived from existing
opinions, but fitted to be their test. \Vithout such
middle principles, an universal principle, either in science
or in morals, serves for little but a thesaurus of com-
monplaces for the discussion of questions, instead of a
means of deciding them. If Bentham has been regard-
ed, by subsequent adherents of a morality grounded on
the " greatest happiness,” as in a peculiar sense the found-
er of that system of ethics, it is not because, as Dr.
Whewell imagines (p. 190), he either thought himself,
or was thought by others, to be the " discoverer of the
principle,” but because he was the first, who, keeping
clear of the direct and indirect influences of all doctrines
inconsistent with it, deduced a set of subordinate gener-
alities from utility alone, and by these consistently
tested all particular questions. This great service, pre-
viously to which a scientific doctrine of ethics on the
foundation of utility was impossible, has been performed
by Bentham (though with a view to the exigencies of
144 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
legislation more than to those of morals) in a manner,
as far as it goes, eminently meritorious, and so as to
indicate clearly the way to complete the scheme. We
must at the same time qualify our approbation by add-
ing, not that his practical conclusions in morals were
often wrong, —-for we think, that, as far as they went,
they were mostly right,—- but that there were large de-
ficiencies and hiatuses in his scheme of human nature
and life, and a consequent want of breadth and com-
prehension in his secondary principles, which led him
often to deduce just conclusions from premises so nar-
row as to provoke many minds to a rejection of what
was nevertheless truth. It is by his method chiefly,
that Bentham, as we think, justly earned a position in
moral science analogous to that of Bacon in physical.
It is because he was the first to enter into the right
mode of working ethical problems, though he worked
many of them, as Bacon did physical, on insufficient
data. Dr. “Thewell’s shafts, however, seldom touch
Bentham where he is really vulnerable: they are mostly
aimed at his strong points.
Before commencing his attack on Bentham’s opin-
ions, Dr. Whewell gives a sketch of his life. In this
there is an apparent desire to be just to Bentham, as
far as the writer’s opinions allow. But there is, in some
of the strictures, a -looseness of expression scarcely
excusable in an extemporaneous lecture, and still less
in a printed book. “ He (Bentham) showed very early
that peculiar one—sidedness, in his mode of asserting
and urging his opinions, which made him think all mod-
eration with regard to his opponents superfluous and
absurd” (p. 189). What is here called " one-sidedness
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 145
in his mode of asserting and urging his opinions ” must
mean one-sidedness in the opinions themselves. It
could not be Bentham’s " mode of asserting his opin-
ions” that " made him think” whatever he did think.
This is as if any one should say, " His speaking only
English made him unable to understand French; ” or,
“ His peculiar habit of fighting made him think it su-
perfluous and absurd to keep the peace.” Again
(p. 190) : " Bentham appears to have been one of those
persons to whom every thing which passes through
their own thoughts assumes quite a different character
and value from that which the same thing had when it
passed through the thoughts of other persons.” If a
thought in a person’s own mind did not assume a differ-
ent character from what the same thought had in other
minds, people might as well think by deputy.
A more serious injustice to Bentham is that of citing,
as is constantly done in this volume, the book called
" Deontology ” as the authentic exposition of Bentham's
philosophy of morals. Dr. Whewell would, no doubt,
justify this by saying, that the book in question is the
only treatise, expressly and exclusively on morals, which
we have from Bentham. It is true that we have no
other; but the “Deontology” was not, and does not
profess to be, written by Bentham. Still less ought
that book to be represented as the embodiment of the
opinions and mental characteristics of all who share
Bentham’s general conception of ethics. After char-
ging the compiler of the "Deontology ” with profound
ignorance, and saying that it is almost " superfluous to
notice misstatements so gross, and partiality so blind,”
Dr. Whewell adds, that " such misrepresentations and
VOL. 111. 10
146 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
such unfairness are the usual style of controversy of
him (Bentham) and his dispiples ; and it is fit that we,
in entering upon the consideration of their writings,
should be aware of this.” Who are the persons here
included under the name of Bentham’s " disciples,” we
are not enabled to judge; nor are we aware that Ben-
tham ever had any disciples, in Dr. Whewell’s sense of
the term. As far as our means of observation have
gone, which in this matter are considerably greater than
Dr. Whewell’s, those who, from the amount of their
intellectual obligations to Bentham, would be the most
likely to be classed by Dr. Whewell as Benthamites,
were and are persons in an unusual degree addicted to
judging and thinking for themselves ; persons remarka—
ble for learning willingly from all masters, but swearing
blind fealty to none. It is also a fact, with which Dr.
WVhewell cannot be altogether unacquainted, that among
them there have been men of the widest and most accu-
rate acquirements in history and philosophy, against
whom the accusation of ignorance of the opinions which
they controverted would be as unfounded as the imputa-
tion of blind partiality. We protest against including
them and Bentham in an imaginary sect of which the
“Deontology” is to be considered the gospel. Ben-
tham’s merits or demerits must stand on what is con-
tained in the books written by himself.
Among these, the one in which the doctrine of utility
is expressly discussed, and contrasted with the various
ethical doctrines opposed to it, is the “Introduction to
the Principles of Morals and Legislation,” published
in 1789. On this, Dr. Whewell comments as fol-
lows : —
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 147
“The first chapter of this work is ‘On the Principle of
Utility; ’ the second, ‘ On Principles adverse to that of Utili-
ty.’ These adverse principles are stated to be two, —the
Principle of Asceticism, and the Principle of Sympathy.”
(Bentham calls it, the Principle of Sympathy and Antipathy,
which is already a considerable difference.) “ The principle
of asceticism is that principle which approves of actions in
proportion as they tend to diminish human happiness; and,
conversely, disapproves of them as they tend to augment it.
The principle of sympathy is that which approves or dis-
approves of certain actions, merely because a man finds
himself disposed to approve or disapprove of them; holding
up that approbation or disapprobation as a sufficient reason
for itself, and disclaiming the necessity of looking out for any
extrinsic ground.”
And these two principles are, it seems, according to
Bentham’s view, the only principles which are, or which
can be, opposed to the principle of utility!
“ N ow, it is plain that these are not only not fair represen-
tations of any principles ever held by moralists, or by any
persons speaking gravely and deliberately, but that they are
too extravagant and fantastical to be accepted even as carica-
tures of any such principles. For who ever approved of
actions because they tend to make mankind miserable? or
who ever said any thing which could, even in an intelligible
way of exaggeration, be so represented? . . . But who, then,
are the ascetic school who are thus ridiculed? We could not,
I think, guess from the general description thus given; but,
from a note, it appears that he had the Stoical philosophers
and the religious ascetics in his mind. With regard to the
Stoics, it would, of course, be waste of time and thought to
defend them from such coarse bulfoonery as this; which does
not touch their defects, whatever these may be,” &c. ——
p. 202.
148 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
Not solely for the due estimation of Bentham, but
for the right understanding of the utilitarian contro-
versy, it is important to know what the truth is re-
specting the points here in issue between Bentham and
Dr. Whewell. '
Undoubtedly, no one has set up, in opposition to the
" greatest-happiness ” principle, a “ greatest-unhappi-
ness ” principle, as the standard of virtue. But it was
Bentham’s business, not merely to discuss the avowed
principles of his opponents, but to draw out those,
which, without being professed as principles, were im-
plied in detail, or were essential to support the judg-
ments passed in particular cases. His own doctrine
being that the increase of pleasure and the prevention
Of pain were the proper ends Of all moral rules, he had
for his opponents all who contended that pleasure could
ever be an evil, or pain a good, in itself, apart from its
con-sequences. N ow, this, whatever Dr. Whewell may
say, the religious ascetics really did. They held that
self-mortification, or even self-torture, practised for its
own sake, and not for the sake of any useful end, was
meritorious. It matters not that they may have ex-
pected to be rewarded for these merits by consideration
in this world, or by the favor of an invisible tyrant in
a world to come. So far as this life was concerned,
their doctrine required it to be supposed that pain was
a thing to be sought, and pleasure to be avoided.
Bentham generalized this into' a maxim, which he called
the principle of asceticism. The Stoics did not go so
far as the ascetics: they stopped half-way. They did
not say that pain is a good, and pleasure an evil. But
they said, and boasted of saying, that pain is no evil,
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 149
and pleasure no good; and this is all, and more than
all, that Bentham imputes to them, as may be seen by
’ any one who reads that chapter of his book. This,
however, was enough to place them, equally with the
ascetics, in direct opposition to Bentham, since they
denied his supreme end to be an end at all. And
hence he classed them and the ascetics together, as pro-
fessing the direct negation of the utilitarian standard.
In the other division of his opponents he placed
those, who, though they did not deny pleasure to be a
good, and pain an evil, refused to consider the pain or
the pleasure which an action or a class of actions tends
to produce as the criterion of its morality. As the
former category of opponents were described by Ben-
tham as followers of the " principle of asceticism,” so
he described these as followers of " the principle of
sympathy and antipathy,” not because they had them-
selves generalized their principle of judgment, or would
have acknowledged it when placed undisguised before
them, but because, at the bottom of what they imposed
on themselves and others as reasons, he could find
nothing else ; because they all, in one phrase or another,
placed the test of right and wrong in a feeling Of appro-
bation or disapprobation, thus making the feeling its
own reason and its own justification. This portion of
Bentham’s doctrine can only be fairly exhibited in his
own words : —-
“ It is manifest that this [the principle of sympathy and
antipathy] is rather a principle in name than in reality: it is
not a positive principle of itself, so much as a term employed
to signify the negation of all principle. \Vhat one expects to
find in a principle is something that points out some external
150 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
consideration as a means of warranting and guiding the inter-
nal sentiments of approbation and disapprobation: this ex-
pectation is but ill fulfilled by a proposition which does
neither more nor less than hold up each of these sentiments
as a ground and standard for itself.
“ In looking over the catalogue of human actions (says a
partisan of this principle), in order to determine which of them
are to be marked with the seal of disapprobation, you need
but to take counsel of your own feelings: whatever you find
in yourself a propensity to condemn, is wrong for that very
reason. For the same reason, it is also meet for punishment:
in what proportion it is adverse to utility, or whether it be
adverse to utility at all, is a matter that makes no difference.
In that same proportion also is it meet for punishment: if you
hate much, punish much; if you hate little, punish little:
punish as you hate. If you hate not at all, punish not at all:
the fine feelings of the soul are not to be overborne and
tyrannized by the harsh and rugged dictates of political
utility.
“The various systems that have been formed concerning
the standard of right and wrong may all be reduced to the
principle of sympathy and antipathy. One account may serve
for all of them. They consist, all of them, in so many con-
trivances for avoiding the obligation of appealing to any
external standard, and for prevailing upon the reader to
accept of the author’s sentiment or opinion as a reason for
itself. The phrase is different, but the principle the same.
“It is curious enough to observe the variety of inventions
men have hit upon, and the variety of phrases they have
brought forward, in order to conceal from the world, and, if
possible, from themselves, this very general, and therefore
very pardonable, self-sufficiency.
“One man says he has a thing made on purpose to tell
him what is right and what is wrong, and that it is called a
moral sense; and then he goes to work at his case, and says
W'HEVVELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
such a thing is right, and such a thing is wrong: why?
“Because my moral sense tells me it is.”
“Another man comes, and alters the phrase; leaving out
moral, and putting in common in the room of it. He then
tells you, that his common sense teaches him what is right
and wrong, as much as the other’s moral sense did: meaning,
by common sense, a sense, of some kind or other, which; he
says, is possessed by all mankind; the sense of those whose
sense is not the same as the author’s being struck out of the
account, as not worth taking. This contrivance does better
than the other; for, a moral sense being a new thing, a man
may feel about him a good while without being able to find
it out: but common sense is as old as the creation ; and there
is no man but would be ashamed to be thought not to have as
much of it as his neighbors. It has another great advantage:
by appearing to share power, it lessens envy; for when a
man gets up upon this ground, in order to anathematize those
who differ from him, it is not by a sic volo sic juheo, but by a
velitis juheatis.
“ Another man comes, and says, that, as to a moral sense
indeed, he cannot find that he has any such thing; that, how-
ever, he has an understanding, which will do quite as well.
This understanding, he says, is the standard of right and
wrong: it tells him so and so. All good and wise men under-
stand as he does: if other men’s understandings differ in any
point from his, so much the worse for them; it is a sure sign
they are either defective or corrupt.
“Another man says that there is an eternal and immutable
rule of right; that that rule of right dictates so and so: and
then he begins giving you his sentiments upon any thing that
comes uppermost; and these sentiments (you are to take for
granted) are so many branches of the eternal rule of right.
“Another man, or perhaps the same man (it’s no matter),
says that there are certain practices conformable, and others
repugnant, to the fitness of things; and then he tells you at
s
152 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
I!
his leisure what practices are conformable, and what repug-
nant, just as he happens to like a practice or dislike it.
“A great multitude of people are continually talking of
the law of nature; and then they go on giving you their sen-
timents about what is right and What is wrong; and these
sentiments, you are to understand, are so many chapters and
sections of the law of nature.
“\Ve have one philosopher who says there is no harm
in any thing in the world but in telling a lie ; and that, if, for
example, you were to murder your own father, this would
only be a particular way of saying he was not your father.
Of course, when this philosopher sees any thing that he does
not like, he says it is a particular way of telling a lie. It is
saying that the act ought to be done, or may be done, when,
in truth, it ought not to be done.”— Chap.
To this, Dr. WVhewell thinks it a sufficient answer to
call it extravagant ridicule, and to ask, " Who ever
asserted that he approved or disapproved of actions
merely because he found himself disposed to do so,
and that this was reason sufficient in itself for his
moral judgments?” Dr. Whewell will find that this
by no means disposes of Bentham’s doctrine. Bentham
did not mean that people “ ever asserted” that they
approved or condemned actions only because they felt
disposed to do so. He meant that they do it without
asserting it; that they find certain feelings of approba-_
tion and disapprobation in themselves, take for granted
that these feelings are the right ones, and, when called
on to say any thing in justification of their approbation
or disapprobation, produce phrases which mean nothing
but the fact of the approbation or disapprobation itself.
If the bearer or reader feels in the same way, the
phrases pass muster; and a great part of all the ethical
I
TVHE\VELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
reasoning in books and in the world is of this sort. All
this is not only true, but cannot consistently be denied
by those who, like Dr. Whewell, consider the moral
feelings as their own justification. Dr. Whewell will
doubtless say that the feelings they appeal to are not
their own individually, but a part Of universal human
nature. Nobody denies that they say so: a feeling of
liking or aversion to an action, confined to an individual,
would have no chance of being accepted as a reason.
The appeal is always to something which is assumed to
belong to all mankind. But it is not of much conse-
quence whether the feeling which is set up as its own
standard is the feeling of an individual human being
or of a multitude. A feeling is not proved to be right,
and exempted from the necessity of justifying itself,
because the writer or speaker is not only conscious of
it in himself, but expects to find it in other people;
because, instead of saying “I,” he says " you and I.”
If it is alleged that the intuitive school require, as
an authority for the feeling, that it should in fact
be universal, we deny it. They assume the utmost
latitude of arbitrarily determining whose votes deserve
to be counted. They either ignore the existence of
dissentients, or leave them out of the account, on the
pretext that they have the feeling which they deny hav-
ing; or, if not, that they ought to have it. This falsi-
fication of the universal suffrage, which is ostensibly
appealed to, is not confined, as is Often asserted, to
cases in which the only dissentients are barbarous tribes.
The same measure is dealt out to whole ages and na-
tions, the most conspicuous for the cultivation and
development of their mental faculties, and to individ-
154 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
uals among the best and wisest of their respective coun-
tries. The explanation of the matter is, the inability
of persons in general to conceive that feelings of right
and wrong, which have been deeply implanted in their
minds by the teaching they have from infancy received
from all around them, can be sincerely thought by any
one else to be mistaken or misplaced. This is the
mental infirmity which Bentham’s philosophy tends
especially to correct, and Dr. Whewell’s to perpetuate.
Things which were really believed by all mankind, and
for which all were convinced that they had the un-
equivocal evidence Of their senses, have been proved to
be false; as that the sun rises and sets. Can immunity
from similar error be claimed for the moral feelings?
when all experience shows that those feelings are emi-
nently artificial, and the product of culture; that, even
when reasonable, they are no more spontaneous than
the growth of corn and wine (which are quite as natu-
ral) ; and that the most senseless and pernicious feel-
ings can as easily be raised to the utmost intensity by
inculcation, as hemlock and thistles could be reared to
luxuriant growth by sowing them instead of wheat.
Bentham, therefore, did not judge too severely a kind
Of ethics whereby any implanted sentiment which is
tolerably general may be erected into a moral law,
binding, under penalties, on all mankind. The con-
test between the morality which appeals to an external
standard, and that which grounds itself on internal
conviction, is the contest of progressive morality against
stationary, —of reason and argument against the dei-
fication of mere opinion and habit. The doctrine that
the existing order of things is the natural order, and
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 155
that, being natural, all innovation upon it is criminal,
is as vicious in morals as it is now at last admitted to
be in physics and in society and government.
Let us now consider Dr. Whewell’s objections to
utility as the foundation of ethics. ‘
“Let it be taken for granted, as a proposition which is
true, if the terms which it involves be duly understood, that
actions are right and virtuous in proportion as they promote
the happiness of mankind ; the actions being considered upon
the whole, and with regard to all their consequences. Still,
I say, we cannot make this truth the basis of morality, for
two reasons: first, we cannot calculate all the consequences of
any action, and thus cannot estimate the degree in which it
promotes human happiness; second, happiness is derived from
moral elements, and therefore we cannot properly derive
morality from happiness. The calculable happiness resulting
from actions cannot determine their virtue: first, because the
resulting happiness is not calculable; and, secondly, because
the virtue is one of the things which determine the resulting
happiness.”——p. 210.
The first of these arguments is an irrelevant truism.
" We cannot calculate all the consequences of any
action.” If Dr. Whewell can point out any department
of human affairs in which we can do all that would be
desirable, he will have found something new. But,
because we cannot foresee every thing, is there no such
thing as foresight? Does Dr. Whewell mean to say
that no estimate can be formed of consequences, which
can be any guide for our conduct, unless we can calcu-
late all consequences? that, because we cannot predict
every effect which may follow from a person’s death,
we cannot know that the liberty of murder would be
156 WHEWELL ON MOR‘AL PHILOSOPHY.
~__.~ R

destructive to human happiness? Dr. Whewell, in his
zeal against the morality of consequences, commits the
error of proving too much. Whether morality is or is
not a question of consequences, he cannot deny that
prudence is ; and, if there is such a thing as prudence,
it is because the consequences of actions can be calcu-
lated. Prudence, indeed, depends on a calculation of
the consequences of individual actions; while, for the
establishment of moral rules, it is only necessary to cal-
culate the consequences of classes of actions, — a much
easier matter. It is certainly a very effectual way of
proving that morality does not depend on expediency,
to maintain that there is no such thing as expediency;
that we have no means of knowing whether any thing
is expedient or not. Unless Dr. Whewell goes this
length, to what purpose is what he says about the un-
certainty of consequences? Uncertain or certain, we
are able to guide ourselves by them: otherwise human
life could not exist. And there is hardly any one con-
cerned in the business of life who has not daily to
decide questions of expediency far more knotty than
those which Dr. Whewell so coolly pronounces to be
insoluble.
But let us examine more closely what Dr. Whewell
finds to say for the proposition, that, “ if we ask whether
a given action will increase or diminish the total amount
Of human happiness, it is impossible to answer with any
degree of certainty.”
“ Take ordinary cases. I am tempted to utter a flattering
falsehood; to gratify some sensual desire contrary to ordinary
moral rules. How shall I determine, on the greatest-happi—
ness principle, whether the act is virtuous, or the contrary?
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 157
In the first place, the direct effect of each act is to give pleas-
ure, to another by flattery, to myself by sensual gratification;
and pleasure is the material of happiness, in the scheme we
are now considering. But, by the flattering lie, I promote
falsehood, which is destructive of confidence, and so of human
comfort. Granted that I do this in some degree; although
I may easily say that I shall never allow myself to speak
falsely, except when it will give pleasure; and thus I may
maintain that I shall not shake confidence in any casein which
it is of any value. But granted that-I do, in some degree,
shake the general fabric of mutual human confidence by my
flattering lie: still the question remains, how much I do
this; whether in such a degree as to overbalance the pleasure,
which is the primary and direct consequence of the act. How
small must be the effect of my solitary act upon the whole
scheme of human action and habit! how clear and decided is
the direct effect of increasing the happiness of my hearerl
And in the same way we may reason concerning the sensual
gratification. Who will know it? Who will be influenced
by it of those who do know it? What appreciable amount of
pain will it produce in its consequences, to balance the palpa-
ble pleasure, which, according to our teachers, is the only real
” good? It appears to me that it is impossible to answer these
questions in any way which will prove, on these principles,
mendacious flattery and illegitimate sensuality to be vicious
and immoral. They may possibly produce, take in all their
effects, a balance of evil : but, if they do, it is by some process
which we cannot trace with any clearness; and the result is
one which we cannot calculate with any certainty, or even pro-
bability ; and therefore, on this account, because the resulting
evil of such falsehood and sensuality is not calculable or appre-
ciable, we cannot, by calculation of resulting evil, show false-
hood and sensuality to be vices. And the like is true of other
vices; and, on this ground, the construction of a scheme of mo-
rality on Mr. Bentham’s plan is plainly impossible ”-—p. 211.
158 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
Dr. Whewell supposes his self-deceiving utilitarian
to be very little master of his own principles. If the
effect of a " solitary act upon the whole scheme of hu-
man action and habit” is small, the addition which the
accompanying pleasure makes to the general mass of
human happiness is small likewise. SO small, in the
0 ‘;great majority of cases, are both, that we have no scales
\ ‘to weigh them against each other, taken singly. W'e
must look at them _multiplied, and in large masses.
The portion of the tendencies of an action which belong)
to it — not individually, but as a violation of a general I
rule—are as certain and as calculable as any other‘
consequences : only they must be examined, not in the1
individual case, but in classes of cases. Take, for ex-
ample, the case of murder. There are many persons,
to kill whom would be to remove men who are a cause
of no good to any human being, of cruel physical and
moral suffering to several, and whose whole influence
tends to increase the mass of unhappiness and vice.
Were such a man to be assassinated, the balance of
traceable consequences would be greatly in favor of the
act. The counter-consideration, on the principle of
utility, is, that unless persons were punished for killing,
and taught not to kill ; that if it were thought allowable
for any one to put to death at pleasure any human being
whom he believes that the world would be well rid of,
—nobody’s life would be safe. To this, Dr. Whewell
HIISWOI'S 2 ——
'1
t
l
l
l
l
i
l
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N
“ How does it appear that the evil, that is, the pain, arising
from violating a general rule once, is too great to be overbal-
anced by the pleasurable consequences of that single viola-
tion? The actor says, I acknowledge the general rule: I
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 159
h“‘_,,_._,_____
do not deny its value; but I do not intend that this one act
should be drawn into consequence.”—- p. 212.
But it does not depend on him whether or not it
shall be drawn into consequence. If one person may
break through the rule on his own judgment, the same
liberty cannot be refused to others; and, ,since no one
could rely on the rule’s being observed, the rule would
cease to exist. If a hundred infringements would pro-
duce all the mischief implied in the abrogation of the
rule, a hundredth part of that mischief must be debited
to each one of the infringements, though we may not
be able to trace it home individually. And this hun-
dredth part will generally far outweigh any good expect-
ed tO arise from the individual act. We say generally,
not universally; for the admission of exceptions to
rules is a necessity equally felt in all systems of morali—
ty. To take an obvious instance: the rule against
homicide, the rule against deceiving, the rule against
taking advantage of superior physical strength, and
various other important moral rules, are suspended
against enemies in the field, and partially against male-
factors in private life ; in each case, suspended as far as
is required by the peculiar nature of the case. That
(the moralities arising from the special circumstances of
lthe action may be so important as to overrule those
‘arising from the class of acts to which it belongs, per-
‘haps to take it out of the category of virtues into that
’of crimes, or vice versa‘, is a liability common to all
fethical systems.
And here it may be observed, that Dr. Whewell, in
his illustration drawn from flattering lies, gives to the
1 60 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOHPY.
side he advocates a color of rigid adherence to principle
which the fact does not bear out. Is none of the inter-
course of society carried on by those Who hold the
common opinions by means of what is here meant by
" flattering lies”? Does no one of Dr. Whewell’s way
of thinking say, or allow it to be thought, that he is
glad to see a visitor whom he wishes away? Does
he never ask acquaintances or relatives to stay when he
would prefer them to go, or invite them when he hopes
that they will refuse? Does he never Show any interest
in persons and things he cares nothing for, or send peo-
ple away believing in his friendly feeling, to whom his
real feeling is indifference, or even dislike? Whether
these things are right, we are not now going to discuss.
For our part, we think that flattery should be only per-
mitted to those who can flatter without lying, as all
persons of sympathizing feelings and quick perceptions
can. At all events, the existence of exceptions to moral
rules is no stumbling-block peculiar to the principle of
futility. The essential is, that the exception should be
litself a general rule; so that, being of definite extent,
and not leaving the expediencies to the partial judgment
fof the agent in the individual case, it may not shake
'the stability of the wider rule in the cases to which the
(reason of the exception does not extend. This is an
ample foundation for " the construction of a scheme of
morality.” WVith respect to the means of inducing peo-
ple to conform in their actions to the scheme so formed,
}the utilitarian system depends, like all other schemes of
morality, on the external motives supplied by law and
, opinion, and the internal feelings produced by education
1 or reason. It is thus no worse off in this respect
I
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l
I
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 161
than any other scheme, —-we might rather say, much
better; inasmuch as people are likely to be more willing
to conform to rules when a reason is given for them.
Dr. Whewell’s second argument against the happi-
ness principle is, that the morality of actions cannot
depend on the happiness they produce, because the hap-
piness depends on the morality.
“ Why should a man be truthful and just? Because acts
of veracity and justice, even if they do not produce immediate
gratification to him and his friends in other ways (and it may
easily be that they do not), at least produce pleasure in this
way, that they procure him his own approval and that of all
good men. To us this language is intelligible and significant;
but the Benthamite must analyze it further. What does it
mean, according to him? A man’s own approval of his act
means that he thinks it virtuous. And therefore the mat-
ter stands thus: He (being a Benthamite) thinks it virtuous
because it gives him pleasure; and it gives him pleasure be-
cause he thinks it virtuous. This is a vicious circle, quite as
palpable as any of those in which Mr. Bentham is so fond
of representing his adversaries as revolving. And in like
manner with regard to the approval of others. The action is
virtuous, says the Benthamite, because it produces pleasure;
namely, the pleasure arisipg from the approval of neighbors:
they approve it, and think it virtuous, he also says, because it
gives pleasure. The virtue depends upon the pleasure; the
pleasure depends upon the virtue. Here, again, is a circle
from which there is no legitimate egress. We may grant, that
taking into account all the elements of happiness; the pleas-
ures of self-approval; of peace of mind and harmony within
us, and of the approval of others; Of the known sympathy of
all good men, —- we may grant, that, including these elements,
virtue always does produce an overbalance of happiness; but
VOL. 111. 11
162 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
then we cannot make this moral truth the basis of morality,
because we cannot extricate the happiness and the virtue, the
one from the other, so as to make the first, the happiness, the
foundation of the second, the virtue.” --p. 215.
’ In Dr. Whewell’s first argument against utility, he
was obliged to assert that it is impossible for human
beings to know that some actions are useful, and others
hurtful. In the present, he forgets against what prin-
ciple he is combating, and draws out an elaborate argu-
ment- against something else. I’Vhat he now appears
to be contending against is the doctrine (whether really
held by any one or not), that the test of morality is the
greatest happiness of the agent himself. It argues total
ignorance of Bentham to represent him as saying that
an action is virtuous because it produces " the appro-
bation of neighbors,” and as making so “ fluctuating” a
thing as “ public opinion,” and such a " loose and wide
abstraction as education,” the "' basis of morality."
When Bentham talks of public opinion in connection
with morality, he is not talking of the " basis of moral-
ity” at all. He was the last person to found the
morality of actions upon anybody’s opinion of them.
He founded it upon facts; namely, upon the observed
tendencies of the actions. Nor did he ever dream of
defining morality to be the self-interest of the agent.
His " greatest-happiness principle” was the greatest
happiness Of mankind, and of all sensitive beings.
When he talks of education, and of " the popular or
moral sanction,” meaning the opinion of our fellow-
creatures, it is not as constituents or tests of virtue, but
as motives to it; as means of making the self-interest
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 163
of the individual accord with the greatest-happiness
principle . *
Dr. Whewell’s remark, therefore, that the approval
of our fellow-creatures, presupposing moral ideas, can-
not be the foundation of morality, has no application
against Bentham, nor against the principle of utility.
It may, however, be pertinently remarked, that the
moral- ideas which this approval presupposes are no
other than those of utility and hurtfulness. There is
no great stretch of hypothesis in supposing, that, in
proportion as mankind are aware of the tendencies of
actions to produce happiness or misery, they will like
and commend the first, abhor and reprobate the second.
How these feelings of natural complacency, and natural
dread and aversion directed towards actions, come to
* It is curious, that while Dr. Whewell here confounds the Happiness
theory of Morals with the theory of Motives sometimes called the Selfish
System, and attacks the latter as Bentham’s, under the name of the former,
Dr. Whewell himself, in his larger work, adopts the Selfish theory. Happi-
ness, he says (meaning, as he explains, our own happiness), is “our being‘s
end and aim: ” we cannot desire any thing else, unless by identifying it
with our happiness (Elements, i. 859). To this we should have nothing
to object, if by identification was meant that what we desire unselfishly
must first, by a mental process, become an actual part of what we seek as
our own happiness; that the good of others becomes our pleasure because
we have learnt to find pleasure in it: this is, we think, the true philo—
sophical account of the matter. But we do not understand this to be Dr.
\Vhewell’s meaning; for, in an argument to prove that there is no virtue
without religion, he says that religion alone can assure us of the identity
of happiness with duty. Now, if the happiness connected with duty were the
happiness we find in our duty, self-consciousness would give us a full account
of this, without religion. The happiness, therefore, which Dr. Whewell
means, must consist, not in the thing itself, but in a reward appended to it;
and when he says that there can be no morality unless we believe that happi-
ness is identical with duty, and that we cannot believe this apart from “the
belief in God’s government of the world,” he must mean that no one would
act virtuously unless he believed that God would reward him for it. In Dr.
Whewell’s view of morality, therefore, disinterestedness has no place.
164 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
assume the peculiar character of what we term moral
feelings, is not a question of ethics, but of meta-
physics, and very fit to be discussed in its proper place.
Bentham did not concern himself with it. He left it to
other thinkers. It sufficed him that the perceived in-
fluence of actions on human happiness is cause enough,
both in reason and in fact, for strong feelings of favor
to some actions, and Of hatred towards others. ‘From
the sympathetic re-action of these feelings in the imagi-
nation and self-consciousness of the agent naturally
arise the more complex feelings of self-approbation and
self-reproach; or, to avoid all disputed questions, we
will merely say, of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with
ourselves. All this must be admitted, whatever else
may be denied. Whether the greatest happiness is the
principle of morals or not, people do desire their own
happiness, and do, consequently, like the conduct in
other people which they think promotes it, and dislike
that which visibly endangers it. This is absolutely all
that Bentham postulates. Grant this, and you have
his popular sanction, and its re-action on the agent’s
own mind; two influences tending, in proportion to
mankind’s enlightenment, to keep the conduct of each
in the line which promotes the general happiness.
Bentham thinks that there is no other true morality
than this, and that the so-called moral sentiments,
whatever their origin or composition, should be trained
to act in this direction only. And Dr. Whewell’s
attempt to find any thing illogical or incoherent in this
theory only proves that he does not yet understand it.
Dr. Whewell puts the last hand to his supposed
refutation of Bentham’s principle by what he thinks a
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 165
crushing rcdactz'o ad absarclam. The reader might
make a hundred guesses before discovering what this is.
We have not yet got over our astonishment, not at
Bentham, but at Dr. Whewell. See, he says, to what
consequences your greatest~happiness principle leads !
Bentham says that it is as much a moral duty to regard
the pleasures and pains of other animals as those of
human beings. We cannot resist quoting the admira-
ble passage which Dr. Whewell cites from Bentham,
with the most nat'f persuasion that everybody will regard
it as reaching the last pitch of paradoxical absurdity :—
“ Under the Gentoo and Mahometan religion, the interests
of the rest of the animal kingdom seem to have met with
some attention. Why have they not universally, with as
much as those of human creatures, allowance made for the
difference in point of sensibility? Because the laws that are
have been the work of mutual fear; a sentiment which the
less rational animals have not had the same means as man has
of turning to account. Why ought they not? N 0 reason
can be given. The day may come when the rest of the ani-
mal creation may acquire those rights which never could have
been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. It
may come one day to be recognized, that the number of the
legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os
sacrum, are reasons insufficient for abandoning a sensitive
being to the caprice of a tormentor. What else is it that
should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason,
or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse
or dog is beyond comparison a ‘more rational as well as a
more conversable animal than an infant of a day, a week, or
even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise,
what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason?
nor, Can they speak? but, Can they suffer ?”
166 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
This noble anticipation, in 1780, of the better mo-
rality of which a firstdawn has been seen in the laws
enacted nearly fifty years afterwards against cruelty to
animals, is, in Dr. WVhewell’S eyes, the finishing proof
that the morality of happiness is absurd!
“ The pleasures of animals are elements of a very different
order from the pleasures of man. \Ve are bound to endeavor
to augment the pleasures of men, not only because they are
pleasures, but because they are human pleasures. We are
bound to men by the universal tie Of humanity, of human
brotherhood. We have no such tie to animals.”
Thisythen, is Dr. Whewell’s noble and disinterested
ideal of virtue. Duties, according to him, are only
duties to ourselves and our like.
“We are to be humane to them, because we are human,
not because we and they alike feel animal pleasures. . . . The
morality which depends upon the increase of pleasure alone
would make it our duty to increase the pleasures of pigs or
of geese, rather than that of men, if we were sure that the
pleasures we could give them were greater than the pleasures
of men. . . . It is not only not an Obvious, but to most persons
not a tolerable, doctrine, that we may sacrifice the happiness
of men, provided we can in that way produce an overplus of
pleasure to cats, dogs, and hogs.” —- pp. 223—5.
It is “ to most persons ” in the Slave States of Amer-
ica not a tolerable doctrine that we may sacrifice any
portion of the happiness of white men for the sake of
a greater amount Of happiness to black men. It would
have been intolerable five centuries ago, " to most per-
sons ” among the feudal nobility, to hear it asserted, that
the greatest pleasure or pain of a hundred serfs ought
not to give way to the smallest of a nobleman. Ac—
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 167
cording to the standard of Dr. WVhewell, the Slave-
masters and the nobles were right. They, too, felt
themselves " bound ” by a " tie of brotherhood” to the
white men and to the nobility, and felt no such tie to
the negroes and serfs. And, if a feeling on moral
subjects is right because it is natural, their feeling was
justifiable. Nothing is more natural to human beings,
nor, up to a certain point in cultivation, more univer-
sal, than to estimate the pleasures and pains of others
as deserving of regard exactly in proportion tO their
likeness to ourselves. These superstitions Of selfishness
had the characteristics by which Dr. lVhewell recog—
nizes his moral rules ; and his Opinion on the rights of
animals shows, that, in this case at least, he is consist-
ent. We are perfectly willing to stake the whole ques—
tion on this one issue. Granted that any practice causes
more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man: is
that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in
proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the
Slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer,
" Immoral,” let the morality of the principle of utility
be for ever condemned.
There cannot be a fitter transition than this subject
affords from the Benthamic standard of ethics to that
of Dr. Whewell. It is not enough to Object to the
morality of utility. It is necessary also to Show that
there is another and a better morality. This is what Dr.
lVhewell proposes to himself in his Introductory Lec-
ture, and in the whole of his previous work, " Elements
of Morality." “7e shall now, therefore, proceed to ex—
amine Dr. lVhewell’S achievements as the constructer
of a scientific foundation for the theory of morals.
168 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
" The moral rule of human action,” Dr. Whewell
says, is, that “ we must do what is right ” (" Lectures,”
p. xi.) . Here, at all events, is a safe proposition, since
to deny it would be a contradiction in terms. But
what is meant by " right” ? According to Dr. WVhewell,
" what we must do.” This, he says, is the very defini-
tion Of right.
“The definition of rightful, or of the adjective right, is,
I conceive, contained in the maxim which I have already
quoted as proceeding from the general voice of mankind;
namely, this, that we must do what is right, at whatever cost.
That an action is right is a reason for doing it, which is para-
mount to all other reasons, and 0verweighS them all when
they are on the contrary Side. It is painful; but it is right:
therefore we must do it. It is a loss; but it is right: there-
fore we must do it. It is unkind; but it is right: therefore -
we must do it. These are self-evident” [he might have said
identical] “propositions. That a thing is right is a supreme
reason for doing it. Right implies this supreme, unconquer-
able reason, and does this especially and exclusively. No
other word does imply such an irresistible cogency in its
effect, except in SO far as it involves the same notion. What
we ought to do, what we should do, that we must do, though
it bring pain and loss. But why? Because it is right. The
expressions all run together in their meaning. And this
supreme rule, that we must do what is right, is also the moral
rule of human action.” —pp. x. xi.
R ight means that which we must do ; and the rule of
action is, that we must do what is right; that we must
do that which we must do. This we will call vicious
circle the first. But let us not press hardly on Dr.
Whewell at this stage : perhaps he only means that the
foundation of morals is the conviction that there is
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 169
something which we must do at all risks; and he ad-
mits that we have still to find what this something is.
" What is right, what it is that we ought to do, we
must have some means Of determining, in order to com-
plete our moral scheme.” ——p. xi.
Attempting, then, to pick out Dr. Whewell’s leading
propositions, and exhibit them in connection, we find,
first, that “ the supreme rule of human action, Right-
ness,” ought to control the desires and affections, or
otherwise that these are " to be regulated so that they
may be right ” (xii. xiii.). This does not help towards
showing what is right.
But, secondly, we come to a " condition which is
Obviously requisite.” In order that the desires and
affections which relate to " other men” may be right,
" they must conform to this primary and universal con-
dition, that they do not violate the rights of others.
This condition may not be sufficient, but it is neces-
sary.”—- p. xiii.
This promises something. In tracing to its elements
the idea of Right, the adjective, we are led to the prior,
and, it is to be presumed, more elementary, idea of
Rights, the substantive. But, now, what are rights?
and how came they to be rights?
Before answering these questions, Dr. lVhewell gives
a classification of rights " commonly recognized among
men.” He says they are of five sorts,—-" those of
person, property, family, state, and contract” (xv.).
But how do we discover that they are rights? and what
is meant by calling them rights? Much to our surprise,
Dr. IVhewell refers us, on both these points, to the
law. And he asks, " In what manner do we rise from
170 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
mere legal rights to moral rightness ? ” and replies, " We
do so in virtue of this principle: that the supreme rule
of man’s actions must be a rule' which has authority
over the whole of man ; over his intentions as well as his
actions; over his affections, his desires, his habits, his
thoughts, his wishes.” We must not only not violate
the rights of others, but we must not desire to vio-
late them. " And thus we rise from legal obligation to
moral duty; from legality to virtue; from blameless-
ness in the forum of man to innocence in the court of
conscience . ”
And this, Dr. WVhewell actually gives as his scheme
of morality. His rule Of right is, to infringe no rights
conferred by the law, and to cherish no dispositions
which could make us desire such infringements! Ac-
cording to this, the early Christians, the religious
reformers, the founders of all free governments, Clark—
Son, WVilberforce, and all enemies of the rights of slave-
Owners, must be classed among the wicked. If this is
Dr. Whewell’s morality, it is the very Hobbism which
he reprobates, and this in its worst sense. But, though
Dr. WVhewell says that this is his morality, he presently
unsays it.
“ Our morality is not derived from the special commands
of existing laws, but from the fact that laws exist, and from
our classification of their subjects. Personal safety, property,
contracts. family and civil relations, are everywhere the sub-
jects of law, and are everywhere protected by law: therefore
we judge that these things must be the subjects Of morality,
and must be reverently regarded by morality. But we are
not thus bound to approve Of all the special appointments with
regard to those subjects which may exist at a given time in
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 171
the laws of a given country. On the contrary, we may con-
demn the laws as being contrary to morality. We cannot
frame a morality without recognizing property, and property
exists through law; but yet the law of property, in a par-
ticular country, may be at variance with that moral purpose
for which, in our eyes, laws exist. Law is the foundation and
necessary condition of justice: but yet laws may be unjust;
and, when unjust, ought to be changed.”—p. xvii.
The practical enormities consequent on Dr. Whewell’s
theory are thus got rid of; but, when these are gone,
there is nothing of the theory left. He undertook to
explain how we may know what is right. It appeared,
at first, that he was about to give a criterion, when he
said that it is not right to violate legal rights. Accord-
ing to this, when we want to know what is right, we
have to consult the law, and see what rights it recog-
nizes. But now it seems that these rights may be con-
trary to right; and all we can be sure of is, that it is
right there should be rights Of some sort. And we
learn, that, after all, it is for a " moral purpose,” that,
in Dr. Whewell’s Opinion, “ laws exist.” SO that, while
the meaning of ought is that we ought to respect rights,
it is a previous condition that these rights must be such
as ought to be respected. Morality must conform to
law; but law must first conform to morality. This is
vicious circle the second. Dr. Whewell has broken out
of the first; he has made, this time, a larger sweep;
the curve he describes is wider, but it still returns into
itself.
An adherent of " dependent morality” would say,
that, instead of deriving right from rights, we must
have a rule of right before it can be decided what ought
172 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
to be rights; and that, both in law and in morals, the
rights which ought to exist are those which, for the
general happiness, it is expedient should exist. And
Dr. Whewell anticipates that some one may even do
him what he thinks the injustice of supposing this to
be his opinion. He introduces an objector as saying,
" that, by making our morality begin from rights, we
really do found it upon expediency, notwithstanding our
condemnation of systems so founded; for, it may be
said, rights such as property exist only because they are
expedient.” Dr. lVhewell hastens to repel this impu-
tation; and here is his theory: “ We reply, as before,
that rights are founded on the whole nature of man, in
such a way that he cannot have a human existence with-
out them. He is a moral being, and must have rights,
because morality cannot exist where rights are not.”
Was ever an unfortunate metaphysician driven into
such a corner? We wanted to know what morality is,
and Dr. Whewell said that it is conforming to rights.
IVe ask how he knows that there are rights; and he
answers, Because otherwise there could be no morality.
This is vicious circle the third, and the most wonderful
of the three. The Indians placed their elephant on the
back of a tortoise; but they did not at the same time
place the tortoise on the back of the elephant.
Dr. WVhewell has failed in what it was impossible
to succeed in. Every attempt to dress up an appeal to
intuition in the forms of reasoning must break down in
the same manner. The system must, from the condi—
tions of the case, revolve in a circle. If morality is
not to gravitate to any end, but to hang self-balanced in
space, it is useless attempting to suspend one point of
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 173
it upon another point. The fact of moral rules sup-
poses a certain assemblage of ideas. It is to no purpose
detaching these ideas one from another, and saying
that one of them must exist because another does.
Press the moralist a step farther, and he can only say
that the other must exist because of the first. The
house must have a centre because it has wings, and wings
because it has a centre. But the question was about
the whole house, and how it comes to exist. It would
be much simpler to say, plainly, that it exists because it
exists. This is what Dr. Whewell is in the end obliged
to come to; and he would have saved himself a great
deal of bad logic if he had begun with it.ale
So much as to the existence of moral rules: now as
to what they are.
“ We do not rest our rules of action upon the tendency of
actions to produce the happiness of others, or of mankind in
general ; because we cannot solve a problem so difficult as to
determine which of two courses of action will produce the
greatest amount of human happiness: and we see a simpler
and far more satisfactory mode of deducing such rules;
namely, by considering that there must be such rules; that
they must be rules for man, for man living among men, and
for the whole of man’s being. Since we are thus led directly
* In Dr. Whewell’s larger work, we find him resorting, after all, to an
“external object” as the ultimate ground for acknowledging any moral
rules whatever. He there says that “ the reason for doing what is abso-
lutely right is, that it is the will of God, through whom the condition and
destination of mankind are what they are ” (ElementS, i. 225). In the
Lectures, however, he admits that this renders nugatory the ascribing any
moral attributes to God. f‘ If we make holiness, justice, and purity the
mere result of God’s commands, we can no longer find any force in the
declaration that God is holy, just, and pure; since the assertion then becomes
merely an empty identical proposition” (p. 58). \Ve hope that this indi-
cates a change of opinion since the publication of the earlier work.
17 4 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
to moral rules by the consideration of the internal condition
of man’s being, we cannot think it wise to turn away from
this method, and to try to determine such rules by refer-
ence to an Obscure and unmanageable external condition the
amount of happiness produced.”—p. xx. '
If these were not Dr. Whewell’s own words, we
should expect to be charged, as he charges Bentham,
with caricature. This is given as a scientific statement
of the proper mode of discovering what are the rules of
morality! “Te are to " deduce such rules” from four
considerations. First, " that there must be such rules ; ”
a necessary preliminary, certainly. If we are to build
a wall, it is because it has been previously decided that
there must be a wall. But we must know what the
wall is for, what end it is intended to serve, or we
Shall not know what sort of wall is required. What
end are moral rules intended to serve? No end, accord-
ing to Dr. Whewell. They do not exist for the sake
of an end. To have them iS part of man’s nature, like
(it is Dr. Whewell’s own illustration) the circulation
of the blood. It is now, then, to be inquired what rules
are part of our nature. This is to be discovered from
three things, —that they must be " rules for man, for
man living among men, and for the whole of man’s
being.” This is only saying over again, in a greater
number of words, what we want, not how we are to
find it. First, they must be " rules for man : ” but we
are warned not to suppose that this means for man’s
benefit; it only means that they are for man to Obey.
This leaves us exactly where we were before. Next,
they are for " man living among men ; ” that is, for the
\VHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
conduct of man to men: but how is man to conduct
himself to men? Thirdly, they are “ for the whole of
man’s being; ” that is, according to Dr. Whewell’s
explanation, they are for the regulation of our desires as
well as Of our actions: but what we wanted to know
was, how we are to regulate our desires and our ac-
tions. 0f the four propositions given as premises from
which all moral rules are to be deduced, not one points
to any difference between one kind of moral rules and
another. Whether the rule is to love or to hate our
neighbor, it will equally answer all Dr. Whewell’s
conditions. These are the premises which are more
" simple and satisfactory ” than such " Obscure and un-
manageable” propositions, so utterly impossible to be
assured of, as that some actions are favorable, and others
injurious, to human happiness! Try a parallel case.
Let it be required to find the principles of the art of
navigation. Bentham says we must look to an "ex-
ternal end; ” getting from place to place on the water.
N 0, says Dr. Whewell: there is a " simpler and more
Satisfactory” mode; viz., to consider that there must
be such an art ; that it must be for a ship, — for a ship
at sea, and for all the parts of a Ship. Would Dr.
Whewell prevail on any one to suppose that these con-
siderations made it unnecessary to consider, with Ben-
tham, what a ship is intended to do?
This account is all we get from Dr. Whewell, in
the Lectures, of the mode of discovering and recogniz-
ing the rules of morality. But perhaps he succeeds
better in doing the thing than in explaining how it
ought to be done. At all events, having written two
volumes of " Elements of Morality,” he must have
176 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
performed this feat either well or ill; he must have
found a way of ‘° deducing moral rules.” We will
now, therefore, dismiss Dr. Whewell’s generalities, and
'try to estimate his method, not by what he says about
it, but by what we see him doing when he carries it into
practice.
We turn, then, to his " Elements of Morality,” and
to the third chapter of that work, which is entitled,
“ Moral Rules exist necessarily.” And here we at once
find something well calculated to surprise us. That
moral rules must exist, was, it may be remembered,
the first of Dr. Whewell’s four fundamental axioms,
and has been presented hitherto as a law of human
nature, requiring no proof. It must puzzle some of
his pupils to find him here proving it ; and, still more,
to find him proving it from utility.
“ In enumerating and describing, as we have done, certain
desires as among the most powerful springs of human action,
we have stated that man’s life is scarcely tolerable, if these
desires are not in some degree gratified; that man cannot be
at all satisfied without some security in such gratification;
that without property, which gratifies one of these desires,
man’s free agency cannot exist; that without marriage, which
gratifies another, there can be no peace, comfort, tranquillity,
or order. And the same may be said of all those springs of
actions which we enumerated as mental desires. Without
some provision for the tranquil gratification of these desires,
society is disturbed, unbalanced, painful. The gratification of
such desires must be a part of the order of the society.
There must be rules which direct the course and limits of
such gratification. Such rules are necessary for the peace
of society.” --Elements, i. 32.
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 177
This is a very different mode of treating the subject
from that which we Observed in the Lectures. We are
now among reasons: good or bad they may be, but
still reasons. Moral rules are here spoken of as means
to an end. We now hear of the peace and comfort of
society; of making man’s life tolerable; of the satis-
faction and gratification of human beings; of prevent-
ing a disturbed and painful state of society. This is
utility; this is pleasure and pain. When real reasons
are wanted, the repudiated happiness principle is always
the resource. It is true, this is soon followed by a
recurrence to the old topics, — of the necessity of rules
“ for the action of man as man ; ” and the impossibility
to “conceive man as man, without conceiving him as
subject to rules.” But any meaning it is possible to-
find in these phrases (which is not much) is all re-
flected from the utilitarian reasons given just before.
Rules are necessary, because mankind would have no
security for any of the things which they value, for any
thing which gives them pleasure, or shields them from
pain, unless they could rely on one another for doing,
and, in particular, for abstaining from, certain acts.
And it is true, that man could not be conceived “as
man ”-—- that is, with the average human intelligence—
if he were unable to perceive so obvious an utility.
Almost all the generalia of moral philosophy pre-
fixed to the “Elements” are in like manner derived
from utility. For example: that the desires, until
subjected to general rules, bring mankind into conflict
and opposition; but that, when general rules are es-
tablished, the feelings which gather round these “ are
sources, not of opposition, but of agreement;” that
vOL. III. 12
178 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
they “tend to make men unanimous; and that such
rules with regard to the affections and desires as tend to
control the repulsive and confirm the attractive forces
Which operate in human society, such as tend to unite
men, to establish concord, unanimity, sympathy, agree
with that which is the character of moral rules ” (i. 35).
This is Benthamism ; even approaching to Fourierism.
And again: in attempting a classification and defi-
nition of virtues, and a parallel one of duties corre-
sponding to them. The definitions of both the one and
the other are deduced from utility. After classing vir-
tues under the several heads of Benevolence, Justice,
Truth, Purity, and Order, Benevolence is defined
as “desire of the good of all men,” and, in a wider
sense, as the “absence Of all the affections which tend
to separate men, and the aggregate of the affections
which unite them” (i. 137—8) ; Justice, as “the de-
sire that each person should have his own” (p. 138).
Truth is defined “ an agreement of the verbal ex-
pression with the thought,” and is declared to be a
duty, because “lying and deceit tend to separate and
disunite men, and to make all actions implying mutual
dependence—that is, all social action and social life
—- impossible” (pp. 138—9). Purity is defined “the
control of the appetites by the moral sentiments and
the reason ; ” ()rder, as a conformity of our internal
dispositions to the laws and to moral rules; {why not
rather to good laws and good moral rules?) All
these definitions, though very open to criticism in de-
tail, are in principle utilitarian.* Though Dr. VVhe-
* The enumeration of duties does not always follow accurately the defi-
nition of the corresponding virtues. For example, the definition of purity
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 179
well will not recognize the promotion of happiness as
the ultimate principle, he deduces his secondary princi-
ples from it, and supports his propositions by utilitarian
reasons, as far as they will go. He is chiefly distin-
guished from utilitarian moralists of the more superfi-
cial kind by this, that he ekes out his appeals to utility
with appeals to “ our idea of man as man ; ” and when
reasons fail, or are not sufficiently convincing, then
“ all men think,” or “ we cannot help feeling,” serves as
a last resort, and closes the discussion.
()f this hybrid character is the ethics of Dr. Whe-
well’s “ Elements of Morality.” And in this he resem-
bles all other writers of the intuitive school of morals.
They are none of them frankly and consistently intui~
tive. To use a happy expression of Bentham in a
different case, they draw from a double fountain, —
utility, and internal conviction ; the tendencies of ac-
tions, and the feelings with which mankind regard
them. This is not a_ matter of choice with these
writers, but of necessity. It arises from the nature
of the morality of internal conviction. Utility, as a
standard, is capable of being carried out singly and
consistently: a moralist can deduce from it his whole
is one which suits temperance, “the control of the appetites by the moral
sentiments and the reason; ” but the scheme of duties set forth under this
head is rather as if the definition had been “the conformity of the appetites
to the moral opinions and customs of the country.” It is remarkable that
a writer who uses the word “purity ” so much out of its common meaning as
to make it synonymous with “temperance” should charge Bentham (Lec-
tures, p. 208), because he employs the word in another of its acknowledged
senses, with arbitrarily altering its signification. Bentham understands, by
the purity of a pleasure, its freedom from admixture of pain; as we speak
of pure gold, pure water, pure truth, of things purely beneficial, or purely
mischievous; meaning, in each case. freedom from alloy with any other
ingredient.
I
180 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
system of ethics, without calling to his assistance any
foreign principle. It is not so with one who relies on
moral intuition; for where will he find his moral intu-
itions? How many ethical propositions can be enu-
merated, of which the most reckless assertor will venture
to affirm that they have the adhesion of all mankind?
Dr. Whewell declares unhesitatingly, that the moral
judgment of mankind, when it is unanimous, must be
right. “ \Vhat are universally held as virtues must be
dispositions in conformity with this [the supreme] law :
what are universally reckoned vices must be wrong.”
This is saying much, when we consider the worth, in
other matters nearly allied to these, of what is compli-
mentarily called the general opinion of mankind; when
we remember what grovelling superstitions, what witch-
craft, magic, astrology, what oracles, ghosts, what gods
and demons scattered through all nature, were once
universally believed in, and still are so by the majority
of the human race. But where are these unanimously
recognized vices and virtues to be found? Practices the
most revolting to the moral feelings of some ages and
nations do not incur the smallest censure from others;
and it is doubtful whether there is a single virtue which
is held to be a virtue by all nations, in the same sense,
and with the same reservations. There are, indeed,
some moralities of an utility so unmistakable, so obvi-
ously indispensable to the common purposes of life,
that, as general rules, mankind could no more differ
about them than about the multiplication-table; but,
even here, there is the widest difference of sentiment
about the exceptions. The universal voice of mankind,
so often appealed to, is universal only in its discord-
WHEWELL OIN MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
ance. vWhat passes for it is merely the voice of the
majority, or, failing that, of any large number having
a strong feeling on the subject; especially if it be a
feeling of which they cannot give any account,, and
which, as it is not consciously grounded on any reasons,
is supposed to be better than reasons, and of higher
authority. With Dr. Whewell, a strong feeling, Shared
by most of those whom he thinks worth counting, is
always an ultima ratio from which there is no appeal.
He forgets that as much might have been pleaded, and
in many cases might still he pleaded, in defence of the
absurdest superstitions.
It seems to be tacitly supposed, that, however liable
mankind are to be wrong in their opinions, they are
generally right in their feelings, and especially in their
antipathies. On the contrary, there is nothing which
it is more imperative that they should be required to
justify by reasons. The antipathies of mankind are
mostly derived from three sources. One of these is an
impression, true or false, Of utility. They dislike what
is painful or dangerous, or what is apparently SO.
These antipathies, being grounded on the happiness
principle, must be required to justify themselves by it.
The second class of antipathies are against what they
are taught, or imagine, to be displeasing to some visible
or invisible power, capable of doing them harm, and
whose wrath, once kindled, may be wreaked on those
who tolerated, as well as on those who committed, the
Offence. The third kind of antipathies, often as strong
as either of the others, are directed towards mere dif-
ferences of opinion or of taste. Any of the three,
when nourished by education, and deriving confidence
182 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
from mutual encouragement, assumes to common minds
the character of a moral feeling. But to pretend that
any such antipathy, were it ever so general, gives the
smallest guaranty Of its own justice and reasonable-
ness, or has any claim to be binding on those who do
not partake in the sentiment, is as irrational as to
adduce the belief in ghosts or witches as a proof of
their real existence. I am not bound to abstain from
an action because another person dislikes it, however
he may dignify his dislike with the name of “ disap-
probation.”
We cannot take leave of Dr. WVhewell’s strictures
on Bentham, without adverting to some observations
made by him on Bentham’s character as a jurist rather
than as a moralist. In this capacity, Dr. WVhewell does
more justice to Bentham than in the department of
moral philosophy. But he finds fault with him for two
things: first, for not sufficiently recognizing what Dr.
Whewell calls the historical element of legislation; and
imagining, “ that, to a certain extent, his schemes of law
might be made independent of local conditions.” Dr.
Whewell admits it to be part of Bentham’s doctrine,
that different countries must, to a certain extent, have
different laws; and is aware that he wrote an “ Essay
on the Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Le-
gislation : ” but thinks him wrong in maintaining that
there should be a general plan, of which the details
only should be modified by local circumstances; and
contends that different countries require different
ground-plans of legislation.
“ There is, in every national code of law, a necessary and
fundamental historical element; not a few supplementary
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 183
provisions which may be added or adapted to the local cir-
cumstances after the great body of the code has been con-
structed; not a few touches of local coloring to be put in after
the picture is almost painted; but an element which belongs
to law from its origin, and penetrates to its roots, ——- a part of
the intimate structure, a cast in the original design. The
national views of personal status; property, and the modes
of acquisition; bargains, and the modes of concluding them;
family, and its consequences; government, and its origin,—
these affect even the most universal aspects and divisions
of penal offences: these affect still more every step of the
expository process which the civil law applies to rights in
defining penal offences.”—Lectures, p. 254.
WVhat Dr. vWhewell designates by the obscure and
misleading expression, “ an historical element,” and ac-
cuses Bentham of paying too little regard to, is the
existing opinions and feelings of the people. These
may, without doubt, in some sense be called historical,
as being partly the product of their previous history;
but whatever attention is due to those Opinions and
feelings in legislation, is due to them, not as matter of
history, but as social forces in present being. Now,
Bentham, in common with all other rational persons,
admitted that a legislator is obliged to have regard to
the opinions and feelings of the people to be legislated
for ; but with this difference, that he did not look upon
those opinions and feelings as affecting, in any great
degree, what was desirable to be done, but only what
could be done. Take one of Dr. Whewell’s instances,
“ the national views of personal status.” The “ national
views ” may regard slavery as'a legitimate condition of
human beings; and Mr. Livingstone, in legislating for
184 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
Louisiana, may have been obliged to recognize slavery
as a fact, and to make provision for it, and for its con-
sequences, in his code of laws: but he was bound to
regard the equality of human beings as the foundation
of his legislation, and the concession to the “ historical
element” as a matter of temporary expediency; and,
while yielding to the necessity, to endeavor, by all the
means in his power, to educate the nation into better
things. And so of the other subjects mentioned by Dr.
“Thewell, -— property, contracts, family, and govern-
ment. The fact, that, in any of these matters, a people
prefer some particular mode of legislation, on historical
grounds,——that is, because they have been long used
to it, -—is no proof of any original adaptation in it to
their nature or circumstances, and goes a very little
way in recommendation of it as for their benefit now.
But it may be a very important element in determin-
ing what the legislator can do, and, still more, the
manner in which he should do it; and, in both these
respects, Bentham allowed it full weight. WVhat he is
at issue with Dr. VVhewell upon is in deeming it right
for the legislator to keep before his mind an ideal
of what he would do if the people for whom he made
laws were entirely devoid of prejudice or accidental
prepossession; while Dr. WVhewell, by placing their
prejudices and accidental prepossessions “ at the basis of
the system,” enjoins legislation, not in Simple recog-
nition of existing popular feelings, but in obedience
to them.
The other Objection made by Dr. WVhewell to Ben-
tham as a writer on legislation (for we omit the criti-
cism on his classification of offences, as too much a
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 185
matter of detail for the present discussion) is, that he
does not fully recognize “the moral object of law ”
(p. 257). Dr. l/Vhewell says, in phraseology which
we considerably abridge, that law ought not only to
preserve and gratify man, but to improve and teach
him; not only to take care of him as an animal, but to
raise him to a moral life. Punishment therefore, he
says, “is to be, not merely a means of preventing suf
fering, but is also to be a moral lesson.” But Bentham,
as Dr. WVhewell is presently forced to admit, says the
same; and, in fact, carries this doctrine so far as to
maintain that legal punishment ought sometimes to be
attached to acts for the mere purpose of stigmatizing
them, and turning the popular sentiment against them.
No one, more than Bentham, recognizes that most
important but most neglected function of the legisla-
tor, -— the office of an instructor, both moral and intel-
lectual. But he receives no credit for this from Dr.
Whewell, except that of being false to his principles;
for Dr. Whewell seems to reckon it an impertinence in
anybody to recognize morality as a good, who thinks,
as Bentham does, that it is a means to an end. If any
one, who believes that the moral sentiments should be
guided by the happiness of mankind, proposes that
moral sentiments, so guided, should be cultivated and
fostered, Dr. WVhewell treats this as a deserting of utili-
tarian principles, and borrowing or stealing from his.
As an example of “Bentham’s attempt to exclude
morality, as such, in his legislation,” Dr. \Vhewell
refers to “ what he says respecting the laws of marriage,
and especially in favor of a liberty of divorce by com-
mon consent.” AS this is the only opportunity Dr.
186 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
I/Vhewell gives his readers of comparing his mode of
discussing a specific moral question with Bentham’s, we
shall devote a few words to it.
Having quoted from Bentham the observation, that a
government which interdicts divorce “takes upon itself
to decide that it understands the interests of individuals
better than they do themselves,” Dr. Wfhewell answers,
that this is an Objection to all laws ; that, in many other
cases, “government, both in its legislation and admin-
istration, does assume that it understands the interests
of individuals, and the public interest as afectecl by
them, better than they do themselves.” The words
which we have put in Italics adroitly change the ques-
tion. Government is entitled to assume that it will
take better care than individuals of the public interest,
but not better care of their own interest. It is one
thing for the legislator to dictate to individuals what
they shall do for their own advantage, and another
thing to protect the interest of other persons who may
be injuriously affected by their acts. Dr. Whewell’s
own instances suffice: “lVhat is the meaning of re-
straints imposed for the sake of public health, cleanli-
ness, and comfort? Why are not individuals left to do
what they like with reference to such matters? Plainly
because carelessness, ignorance, indolence, would pre—
vent their doing what is most for their own interest”
(p. 258). Say, rather, would lead them to do what is
contrary to the interest of other people. The proper
object of sanitary laws is not to compel people to take
care of their own health, but to prevent them from
endangering that of others. To prescribe, by law, what
they should do for their own health alone, would by
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 187
most people be justly regarded as something very like
tyranny.
Dr. WVhewell continues :—
“ But is lVIr. Bentham ready to apply consistently the prin-
ciple which he thus implies, that, in such matters, individuals
are the best judges of their own interests? Will he allow
divorce to take place whenever the two parties agree in desir-
ing it? . . . Such a facility of divorce as this leaves hardly
any difference possible between marriage and concubinage.
If a pair may separate when they please, why does the legis-
lator take the trouble to recognize their living together?”
Apply this to other cases. If a man can pay his
tailor when he and his tailor choose, why does the law
take the trouble to recognize them as debtor and cred-l
itor? Why recognize as partners in business, as land-
lords and tenants, as servants and employers, people
who are not tied to each other for life?
Dr. Whewell finds what he thinks an inconsistency
in Bentham’s view of the subject. He thus describes
Bentham’s opinions:—
“Marriage for life is, he [Bentham] says, the most natural
marriage: if there were no laws except the ordinary law of
contracts, this would be the most ordinary arrangement. So
far, good. But Mr. Bentham, having carried his argument
so far, does not go on with it. WVhat conclusion are we to
suppose him to intend? This arrangement would be very
general without law: therefore the legislator should pass a
law to make it universal? . . . No. The very next sentence
is employed in showing the absurdity of making the engage-
ment one from which the parties cannot liberate themselves
by mutual consent; and there is no attempt to reduce these
arguments, or their results, to a consistency."-— p. 259.
188 WHEWELL 0N MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
Dr. “Thewell’s ideas of inconsistency seem to be
peculiar. Bentham, he says, is of opinion, that, in the
majority of cases ,‘ it is best for the happiness of married
persons that they should remain together. Is it so?
(says Dr. WVhewell :) then why not force them to re-
main together, even when it would be best for their
happiness to separate?
Try, again, parallel cases. In choosing a profession,
a sensible person will fix on one in which he will find it
agreeable to remain: therefore it should not be lawful
to change a profession once chosen. A landlord, when
he has a good tenant, best consults his own interest by
not changing him : therefore all tenancy should be for
life. Electors who have found a good representative
will probably do wisely in re-electing ‘him: therefore
members of Parliament should be irremovable.
Dr. \Vhewell intended to show into what errors
Bentham was led by treating the question of marriage
apart from " moral grounds.” Yet part of his complaint
is that Bentham does consider moral grounds, which,
according to Dr. “Thewell, he has no right to do. If
one married person maltreats the other to procure con-
sent to a divorce,—
“ Bentham’s decision is, that liberty should be allowed to
the party maltreated, and not to the other. . . . Now, to this
decision, I have nothing to object; but I must remark, that
the view which makes it tolerable is its being a decision on
moral grounds, such as Mr. Bentham would not willingly
acknowledge. The man may not take advantage of his own
wrong: that is a maxim which quite satisfies us. But Mr.
Bentham, who only regards wrong as harm, would, I think,
find it difficult to satisfy the man that he was fairly used.”
WHEWELL or MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 189
Mr. Bentham would have found it difficult to con-
ceive that any one attempting to criticise his philosophy
could know so little of its elements. Dr. \Vhewell
Wonders what the reason can be, on Bentham’s prin-
ciples, for not allowing a man to benefit by his own
wrong. Did it never occur to him, that it is to take
away from the man his inducement to commit the
wrong?
Finally, Dr. WVhewell says, “No good rule can be
established on this subject, without regarding the mar-
riage union in a moral point of view ; Without assuming
it as one great object of the law to elevate and purify
men’s idea of marriage, -—to lead them to look upon it
as an entire union of interests and feelings, enjoyments
and hopes, between the two parties.” We cannot
agree in the doctrine, that it should be an object of the
law to " lead men to look upon” marriage as being
What it is not. Neither Bentham, nor any one who
thinks with him, would deny that this entire union is
the completest ideal of marriage; but it is bad philoso-
phy to speak of a relation as if it always was the best
thing that it possibly can be, and then infer, that when
it is notoriously not such, as in an immense majority of
cases, and even when it is the extreme contrary, as in a
considerable minority, it should nevertheless be treated
exactly as if the fact corresponded with the theory.
The liberty of divorce is contended for, because mar-
riages are not what Dr. IVhewell says they should be
looked upon as being; because a choice made by an
inexperienced person, and not allowed to be corrected,
cannot, except by a happy accident, realize the condi-
tions essential to this complete union.
190 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
We give these Observations, not as a discussion of
the question, but of Dr. WVhewell’s treatment of it; as
part of the comparison which he invites his readers to
institute between his method and that of Bentham.
lVere it our Object to confirm the general character we
have given of Dr. Whewell’s philosophy by a survey
in detail of the morality laid down by him, the two
volumes of “ Elements ” afford abundant materials.
“Te could show that Dr. “Thewell not only makes no
improvement on the old moral doctrines, but attempts
to set up afresh several of them which have been
loosened or thrown down by the stream of human
progress.
Thus we find him everywhere inculcating, as one of
the most sacred duties, reverence for superiors, even
when personally undeserving (i. 176—7) ; and Obedience
to existing laws, even when bad. “ The laws of the
State are to be “observed, even when they enact slave-
ry” (i. 351). " The morality of the individual,” he
says (i. 58), " depends on his not violating the law
of his nation.” It is not even the spirit of the law,
but the letter (i. 213), to which obedience is due.
The law, indeed, is accepted by Dr. WVhewell as the
fountain Of rights, —— of those rights which it is the pri-
mary moral duty not tO infringe; and mere custom
is of almost equal authority with express enactment.
Even in a matter so personal as marriage, the usage
and practice of the country is to be a paramount law.
" In some countries, the marriage of the child is a matter
usually managed by the parents: in such cases, it is
the child’s duty to bring the affections, as far as pos-
sible, into harmony with the custom” (i. 211) . “ Rev-
WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 191
erence and affection ” towards " the constitution of each
country” he holds (ii. 204) as " one of the duties of a
citizen.”
Again: Dr. Whewell affirms, with a directness not
usually ventured on in these days by persons of his
standing and importance, that to disbelieve either a
providential government of the world, or revelation, is
morally criminal; for that “ men are blamable in dis-
believing truths after they have been promulgated,
though they are ignorant without blame before the
promulgation” (ii. 91—94). This is the very essence
of religious intolerance, aggravated by the fact, that
among the persons thus morally stigmatized are noto-
riously included many Of the best men who ever lived.
He goes still further, and lays down the principle of
intolerance in its broad generality; saying, that " the
man who holds false opinions” is morally condem-
nable " when he has had the means Of knowing the
truth” (ii. 102) ; that it is " his duty to think ration-
ally” (z'.e., to think the same as Dr. v\Vhewell) ; that
it is to no purpose his saying that he has done all he
could to arrive at truth, since a man has never done
all he can to arrive at truth” (ii. 106). If a man
has never done all he can, neither has his judge done
all he can ; and the heretio may have more grounds for
believing his opinion true than the judge has for af-
firming it to be false. But the judge is on the side of
received opinions, which, according to Dr. IVhewell’s
standard, makes all right.
It is not, however, our object to criticise Dr. )Vhe-
well as a teacher of the details of morality. Our
design goes no farther than to illustrate his controversy
192 WHEWELL ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
with Bentham respecting its first principle. It may,
perhaps, be thought that Dr. WVhewell’s arguments
against the philosophy of utility are tOO feeble to re-
quire so long a refutation. But feeble arguments easily
pass for convincing, when they are on the same side as .
the prevailing sentiment: and readers in general are so
little acquainted with that or any other system Of moral
philosophy, that they take the word of anybody, es-
pecially an author in repute, who professes to inform
them what it is; and suppose that a doctrine must be
indeed absurd, to which mere truisms are offered as a
sufficient reply. It was, therefore, not unimportant to
show, by a minute examination, that Dr. Whewell has
misunderstood and misrepresented the philosophy of
utility; and that his attempts to refute it, and to con-
struct a moral philosophy without it, have been equally
failures.
193
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECER“
VOLs. IX. X. XI.
IN his eighth volume, Mr. Grote brought the narrative
of Grecian history to its great turning-point, —- the
subjugation of Athens by the Spartans and their con-
federates; including, as the immediate sequel of that
event, the sanguinary tyranny Of the Thirty; the rapid
relaction in Grecian feeling; the return of the exiles
under Thrasybulus, subsequently known at Athens by
the designation of " those from Phyle,” or " those from
Pirazus ; ” the restoration of Athens, under the toler-
ance of Sparta, to internal freedom, though denuded of
empire; and the inauguration Of a new era of concord
by the healing measures which made the archonship of
Euclides memorable to succeeding generations. The
recital of these stirring events was immediately followed
by those admirable chapters on the Sophists, and on
Socrates, which may be pronounced the most important
portion yet written of this History, whether we con-
sider the intrinsic interest of their subjects, the deep-
rooted historical errors which they tend to dispel, or
the great permanent instruction contained in their dis-
play of the characteristics Of one of the most eminent
* Edinburgh Review, October, 1853. Vida (vol. ii. p. 363) the review of
the first and second volumes. The articles in the Edinburgh Review on the
intermediate volumes of Mr. Grote’s History were not written by the author.
Some passages from shorter notices of those volumes, published as they
successively appeared, have been incorporated nith the following article.
VOL. III. 13
194 GROTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE.
men who ever lived, —a man unique in history, Of a
kind at all times needful, and seldom more needed than
now.*
The three volumes which we have here to notice
contain no delineations belonging to the same elevated
rank with that which closed so impressively the volume
immediately preceding. The exposition and estimate of
’5‘ \Ve have not space to give the smallest specimen of the delineation of
this remarkable character, now brought into clearer light than ever before;
a pl'iilosopher, inculcating, under a supposed religious impulse, pure reason,
and a rigid discipline of the logical faculty. But we invite attention to the
estimate, contained in this chapter, of the peculiarities of the Socratic teach-
ing, and of the urgent need, at the present and at all times, of such a
teacher. Socrates, in morals, is conceived by Mr. Grote as the parallel of
Bacon in physics. He exposed the loose, vague, confused, and misleading
character of the common notions of mankind on the most familiar subjects.
By apt interrogations, forcing the interlocutors to become conscious of the
want of precision in their own ideas, he showed that the words in popular
use on all moral subjects (words which. because they are familiar, all persons
fancy they understand) in reality answer to no distinct and well-defined
ideas; and that the common notions, which those words serve to express, all
require to be reconsidered. This is exactly what Bacon showed to be the
case with respect to the phrases and notions commonly current on physical
subjects. It is the fashion of the present day to decry negative dialcctics;
as if making men conscious of their ignorance were not the first step— and
an absolutely necessary one—towards inducing them to acquire knowledge.
_“ ()pinio copies,” says Bacon, “ maxima causa inopize est.” The war which
Bacon made upon confused general ideas, notlones temere a 'I‘éb’ltS abstractas,
was essentially negative; but it constituted the epoch from which alone
advancement in positive knowledge became possible. It is to Bacon that
we owe Newton and the modern physical science. In like manner, Socra-
tes, by convincing men of their ignorance, and pointing out the conditions
of knowledge, originated the positive movement which produced Plato and
Aristotle. With them and their immediate disciples that movement ceased,
and has never yet been so effectually revived as to be permanent. The
common notions of the present time on moral and mental subjects are as
incapable of supporting the Socratic cross-examination as those of his own
age: they are, just as much, the wild fruits of the undisciplined under-
standing,—of the intcllcctus sibi permissus, as Bacon phrases it; rough
generalizations of first impressions, or consecrations of accidental feelings,
without due analysis or mental circumscription.
eROTR’s HISTORY OF GREECE. 195
Plato, which alone would have afforded similar oppor-
tunities, though falling within the chronological period
comprised in the eleventh volume, is not included in it,
but reserved for one yet to come: except in so far as
the philosopher is personally involved in the series of
Sicilian transactions, through his connection with Dion,
whose remarkable and eminently tragic character and
career form the centre of interest in the most striking
chapter Of these volumes. There is little scope, in this
portion of the work, for bringing prominently forward
any great ethical or philosophical ideas ; and the illus-
trations it contains Of Grecian character and institu-
tions relate principally to points which the author had
largely illustrated before. In no other part of the book
is the continuity of the narrative so little broken by
dissertation or discussion; but in the rapid succession
of animating incidents, and the living display of inter-
esting individual characters, these volumes are not infe-
rior to any of the preceding.
They commence with the expedition of Cyrus, and
the retreat of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand; an
episode fertile in exemplifications of Grecian and of
Asiatic characteristics, and especially valuable as being
the only detailed account of the personal adventures of
any body of Geeeks, or even of any individual Greek,
which has been directly transmitted tO us by an eye-
witness and actor. Next follows the history of the
short-lived Lacedannonian asccndency ; its deplorable
abuse, and the conspicuous Nemesis which fell on that
selfish and domineering community, by the irreparable
prostration of her power through the arms of Thebes,
so many years the firm ally of Sparta, and for her
196 eROTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE.
treacherous conduct to whom, even more than for any
other of her misdeeds, she, in the general opinion of
Greece, deserved her fate. The chapters which de~
scribe this contest relate also the resurrection of Athens,
and her re-attainment, in diminished measure and for
a brief period, of something like imperial dignity. At
this halting-place Mr. Grote suspends the main course
Of his narrative, and takes up the thread of the history
of the Sicilian Greeks; the most interesting part of
whose story is included in the present volumes. He
illustrates, by the conduct and fortunes of the elder
Dionysius, the successive stages of the “despot’s prog-
ress.” Here, too, the avenging Nemesis attends; but,
as usual with the misdeeds of rulers, the punishment is
vicarious. The younger Dionysius, a weak and self-
indulgent but good-natured and rather well-meaning
inheritor Of despotic power, suffered the penalty of the
usurpation and the multiplied tyrannies of his ener-
getic and unscrupulous father. The decline and fall of
the Dionysian dynasty, and the restoration Of Sicilian
freedom, are related by Mr. Grote in his best style Of
ethical narrative, and with a biographical interest equal
to the historical. For as the chapters on the fall of
Sparta are animated and exalted by the great quali-
ties of Epaminondas,-—the first of Greeks in military
genius, surpassed only by Pericles in comprehensive
statesmanship, yet even more honorably distinguished
among Grecian politicians by the unostentatious dis—
interestedness of his public virtue, and the gentleness
and generosity of his sentiments towards Opponents, —
so the Sicilian chapters are lighted up, first by the high-
minded but checkered, and, even in his errors, emi-
eROTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE. 197
nently interesting, character of Dion, and afterwards
by the steadier and more unmixed brilliancy of the real
liberator of Sicily, the wise, just, and heroic Timoleon.
Last comes that gloomy period of Grecian history,—
the age of Philip of Macedon; during which, enfeebled
by the long and destructive wars which had successively
prostrated every one of her leading States, Greece fell
a prey to an able and enterprising neighbor, who, at
the head of a numerous population of hardy warriors
implicitly obedient to his will, was enabled to turn her
own military arts and discipline against herself. At the
time when Philip commenced his career of aggrandize-
ment, the only Grecian State in a condition to meet
him with any thing like equality of strength was Ath-
ens ; still free and prosperous, but so lowered in public
spirit and moral energy, that she threw away all her
opportunities, and only rallied with a vigor worthy
of her ancestors, when it was too late to do more than
perish honorably. These sad events, so far as their
course can be traced through the extreme imperfection
of our information, are related by Mr. Grote down
to the fatal day of Chaeroneia. And neither is this
melancholy recital destitute of the relief afforded by the
appearance, on the scene, of an illustrious character.
Even'in that age, Athens possessed a man of whom
posterity has ratified the proud boast, drawn from him
in self—vindication, that if there had been one such man
in every State of Greece, or even in Thessaly and Ar-
cadia alone, the attempts of Philip to reduce the Greeks
to subjugation would have been frustrated. What one
man of boundless energy, far-reaching political vision,
and an eloquence unmatched even at Athens, could do
198 eROTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE.
to save Greece from an inevitable doom, Demosthenes
did. His life was an incessant struggle against the
fatality of the time and the weaknesses of his country-
men; and though he failed in his object, and perished
with the last breath Of the freedom for which he had
lived, he has been rewarded by that immortal fame,
which, as he reminded the Athenians in the most cele-
brated passage of his greatest oration, is not deserved
only by the successful, and which he merited not more
by his unequalled Oi'atorical eminence, than by the
fact, that not one mean or selfish or narrow or ungener-
ous sentiment is appealed to throughout these splendid
addresses, in which he strove to rouse and nerve his
countrymen to the contest, or proudly mourned over its
unsuccessful issue.
The Chaeroneian catastrophe closes the epoch of Gre—
cian history. Though much that is highly interesting
remains, its interest is derived from other sources, — the
diffusion of Greek civilization through the Eastern
nations by the expedition of Alexander and its conse-
quences, and a few noble but vain efforts, against insu-
perable Obstacles, in Greece itself, to regain a freedom
and national independence irrecoverably lost. Of the
period of Grecian greatness, we have now from Mr.
Grote the completed history. “Te have the budding, the
blossoming, and the decay and death. The fruits which
survived, -—-the permanent gifts bequeathed by Greece
to the world, and constituting the foundation of all
subsequent intellectual achievements, —-—these he has not
yet, or has Only partially, characterized. But he has
produced a finished picture of the political and collective
life of Greece, and the distinctive characters of the form
eRO'rR’s HIs'rORY OF GREECE. 199
of social existence, during and by means Of which she
accomplished things so far transcending what has ever
elsewhere been achieved in so marvellously short a
space of time. From the legislation of Solon to the
field of Marathon, a hundred years of preparation;
from hlai'athon to Chmroneia, barely a hundred and
fifty years of maturity, —that century and a half is all
that separates the earliest recorded prose-writing from
Demosthenes and Aristotle; all that lies between the
first indication to the outer world of what Greece was
destined to be, and her absorption by a foreign con-
queror. A momentous interval, which decided for an
indefinite period the question, whether the human race
was to be stationary or progressive. That the former
condition is far more congenial to ordinary human
nature than the latter, experience unfortunately places
beyond doubt; and history points out no other people
in the ancient world who had any spring of unborrowed
progress within themselves. IVe have no knowledge
Of any other source from which freedom and intellectual
cultivation could have come, any other means by which
the light never since extinguished might have been
kindled, if the world had been left, without any elements
of Grecian origin, to be fought for between the unlet-
tered Romans and the priest-led and despot-governed
Asiatics. The people and the period on which this
depended must be important to posterity as long as
any portion of the past continues to be remembered;
and, by the aid Of l\Ir. Grote, we are now enabled to
see them with a clearness and accuracy, and judge them
with a largeness of comprehension, never before ap-
proached.
200 oROTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE.
To disparage what mankind owe to Greece, because
she has not left for their imitation a perfect type of
human character, nor a highly improved pattern of so-
cial institutions, would be to demand from the early
youth of the human race what is far from being yet
realized in its more advanced age. It would better
become us to consider whether we have, in these par-
ticulars, advanced as much beyond the best Grecian
model as might with reason have been expected after
more than twenty centuries; whether, having done no
more than we have done with all that we have inherited
from the Greeks, and all that has been since superadded
to their teachings, we ought not to look up with rever-
ent admiration to a people, who, without any of our
adventitious helps, and without the stimulus of pre-
ceding example, moved forward by their native strength
at so gigantic a pace, though in an earlier portion Of
the path. It is true, that in institutions, in manners,
and even in the ideal standard of human character as
existing in the best minds, there is an improvement.
All the great thinkers and heroic lives, from Christ
downward, would have done little for humanity, if, after
two thousand years, no single point could be added to
the type of excellence conceived by Socrates or Plato.
But it is not the moral conceptions of heroes or philos-
ophers which measure the difference between one age
and another, so much as the accepted popular standard
Of virtuous conduct. Taking that as the criterion, and
comparing the best Grecian with the best modern com-
munity, is the superiority wholly on the side of the
moderns? Has there not been deterioration as well as
improvement, and the former perhaps almost as marked
eROTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE. 201
as the latter? There is more humanity, more mildness
of manners, though this only from a comparatively
recent date: the sense of moral obligation is more
cosmopolitan, and depends less for its acknowledgment
on the existence of some special tie. But we greatly
doubt if most Of the positive virtues were not better
conceived and more highly prized by the public opinion
of Greece than by that of Great Britain, while nega-
tive and passive qualities have now engrossed the chief
part of the honor paid to virtue; and it may be ques-
tioned if even private duties are, on the whole, better
understood; while duties to the public, unless in cases
of special trust, have almost dropped out of the cata-
logue: that idea, so powerful in the free States of
Greece, has faded into a mere rhetorical ornament.
In political and social organization, the moderns, or
some of them at least, have a more unqualified superi-
ority over the Greeks. They have succeeded in making
free institutions possible in large territories, and they
have learnt to live and be prosperous without slaves.
The importance of these discoveries—for discoveries
they were—hardly admits of being overrated. For
want of the first, Greece lost her freedom, her virtue,
and her very existence as a people; and slavery was
the greatest blot in her institutions while she existed.
It is sufficient merely to mention another great blot, ——
the domestic and social condition of women (on which
point, however, Sparta, in a degree surprising for the
age, formed an honorable exception); since, in this
respect, the superiority of modern nations is not so
much greater as might be supposed. Even on the
subject of slavery, there are many and not inconsiderable
202 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
palliations. Slavery, in the ancient as in the Oriental
world. was a very different thing from American or
West-Indian slavery. The slaves were not a separate
race, marked out to the contempt of their masters by
indelible physical differences. When manumitted, they
mixed on equal terms with the general community;
and though, in Greece, seldom admitted, any more
than other aliens, to the complete political franchise of
their patron’s city, they could generally become full
citizens of some new colony, or be placed on the roll of
some Old commonwealth recruiting its numbers after a
disaster. The facility with which, in these small terri-
tories, slaves could escape across the frontier, must, at
the worst, have been a considerable check to ill usage.
The literature of the Athenians proves that they not
only cultivated, but counted on finding, moral virtues
in their slaves, which is not consistent with the worst
form of slavery. Neither, in Greece, did slavery pro-
duce that one of its effects by which, above all, it is an
obstacle to improvement, — that of making bodily labor
dishonorable. Nowhere in Greece, except at Sparta,
was industry, however mechanical, regarded as unwor—
thy of a freeman, or even of a citizen; least of all at
Athens, in whose proudest times a majority of the
Demos consisted of free artisans. Doubtless however,
in Greece as elsewhere, slavery was an odious institu-
tion; and its inherent evils are in no way lessened by
the admission, that as a temporary fact, in an early and
rude state Of the arts of life, it may have been, never-
theless, a great accelerator of progress. If we read
history with intelligence, we are led to think concern-
ing slavery, as concerning many other bad institutions,
eROTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE. 203
that the error was not so great of first introducing it
as of continuing it too loud.
Though Grecian history is crowded with objects of
interest, all others are eclipsed by Athens. Whatever
in Greece most merits the gratitude of postdrity, Athens
possessed in fullest measure. If the Hellenic nation is
in history the main source and most conspicuous rep-
resentative of progress, Athens may claim the same
honorable position in regard to Greece itself; for all
the Greek elements of progress, in their highest culmi-
nation, were united in that illustrious city. This was
not the effect of an original superiority of natural ,
endowments in the Athenian mind. In the first ex-
uberant outpourings of Grecian genius, Athens bore no
more than her share, if even so much. The many
famous poets and musicians who preceded the era of
Marathon, the early speculators in science and philoso-
phy, and even the first historians, were scattered through
all the divisions of the Greek name; with a preponder-
ance on the side of the Ionians of Asia Minor, the Sici-
lian and Italian Greeks, and the islanders, all of whom
attained prosperity much earlier, as well 'as lost it
sooner, than the inhabitants of Continental Greece.
Even Boeotia produced two poets of the first rank,
Pindar and Corinna, at a time when Attica had only
yet produced one.* By degrees, however, the whole
* By some oversight, Mr. Grote has passed over one whole generation of
Grecian poets. He has given as full an account as the materials permit
of the earlier poets, down to the age of Alcaeus and Sappho, and has spoken
at some length of the dramatists, but has said nothing (except incidentally)
of Pindar, Simonides, Anacreon, Baechylides, or the two Boeotian poetesses,
Myrtis and Corinna; the last of whom was five times crowned at Thebes in
competition with Pindar.
204 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
intellect of Greece, except the purely practical, gravi—
tated to Athens; until, in the maturity of Grecian
culture, all the great writers, speakers, and thinkers
were educated, and nearly all of them were born and
passed their lives, in that centre of enlightenment.
Of the other Greek States, such as were oligarchically
governed contributed little or nothing, except in a mili-
tary point of view, to make Greece illustrious. Even
those among them, which, like Sparta, were to a cer—
tain degree successful in providing for stability, did
nothing for progress, further than supplying materials
of study and experience to the great Athenian thinkers
and their disciples. Of the other democracies, not one
enjoyed the Eunomia, the unimpeded authority Of law,
and freedom from factions violence, which were quite as
characteristic of Athens as either her liberty or her
genius; and which, making life and property more
secure than in any other part of the Grecian world,
afforded the mental tranquillity which is also one of the
conditions of high intellectual or imaginative achieve-
ment. 1 a i
Wfhile Grecian history, considered philosophically, is
thus almost concentrated in Athens, so also, considered
aesthetically, it is an epic, of which Athens, as a collec—
tive personality, may be called the hero. The fate of
Athens speaks to the imagination and sympathies like
that of the Achilles or Odysseus of an heroic poem;
absorbing into itself even the interest excited by the
long series of eminent Athenians, who seem rather like
successive phases under which Athens appears to us,
than individuals independent and apart from it. No-
where does history present to us a collective body so
GRoTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE. 205
abounding in human nature as the Athenian Demos.
In them all the capacities, all the impulses and suscep-
tibilities, the strength and the infirmities, of human
character, stand out in large and bold proportions.
There is nothing that they do not seem capable of
understanding, of feeling, and of executing; nothing
generous or heroic to which they might not be roused ;
‘and scarcely any act of folly, injustice, or ferocity, into
which they could not be hurried, when no honest and
able adviser was at hand to recall them to their better
nature. - Ever variable, according to the character of
the leading minister of the time; alike prudent and
enterprising under the guidance of a Pericles; care-
lessly inert or rashly ambitious when their most influen-
tial politicians were a Nicias and an Alcibiades; yet
never abdicating their own guidance, always judging
for themselves, and, though often wrong, seldom choos-
ing the worse side when there was any one present
capable of advocating the better. Light-hearted too,
full of animal spirits and joyousness; revelling in the
fun of hearing rival orators inveigh against each other;
bursting with laughter at the mingled floods of coarse
buffoonery and fine Wit poured forth by the licensed
libellers of their comic stage against their orators and
statesmen, their poets, their gods, and even themselves,
_ —" that angry, waspish, intractable little old man,
Demos of Pnyx,”* the well-known laughing-stock of
one of the most successful comedies of Aristophanes,
They are accused of fickleness; but Mr. Grote has
* Mr. Grote’s paraphrase of —
'Aypoucog opyijv, Kvaym'péf, r’mpc'aXoZng,
Afiluog Hvvicimg, 6601:0101) yepévnov. —-Arist., Eq. 41.
206 GRorE’s HISTORY OF GREECE.
\
shown on how false an estimate of historical facts that
imputation rests,* and that they were much rather
remarkable for the constancy of their attachments.
They were not fickle, but (a very different quality,
vulgarly confounded with it) mobile; keenly suscepti-
ble individually, and of necessity still more collectively,
to the feeling and impression of the moment. The
Demos may be alternately likened to the commonly
received idea of a man, a woman, or a child, but never
a clown or a boor. Right or wrong, wise or foolish,
Athenians are never dwaidevrm; theirs are never the errors
of untaught or unexercised minds. They are always
the same Athenians who have thrilled with the grandeur
and pathos of ZEschylus and Sophocles; who were able
to ransom themselves from captivity by reciting the
verses of Euripides ; who have had Pericles or Demos-
thenes for their daily instructor and adviser; and have
heard every species of judicial case, public and private,
civil and criminal, propounded for their decision, in the
most finished compositions ever spoken to a public as-
sembly. They are the same Athenians, too, who live
and move among the visible memorials of ancestors, the
greatest of whose glories was that they had dared and suf-
fered all things rather than desert the liberty of Greece.
Their just pride in such progenitors, and their sense of
what was due to the dignity and fame of their city,
were ever ready to be evoked for any noble cause.
Even at the last, when their energies, too late aroused,
had been insufficient to save them, and they lay crushed
at the feet of a conqueror, they earned the admiration
* See this point admirably handled in the remarks, in the last chapter
but one of the fourth volume, on the condemnation of Miltiades.
eRo'rE’s HISTORY OF GREECE. 207
of posterity by bestowing, instead of displeasure, addi~
tional distinctions on the author and adviser of the
struggle which had preserved their honor, though not
their safety or their freedom.
In every respect, Athens deserved the high commen-
dation given her by Pericles, in his Funeral Oration,
of being the educator of Greece.ale And we cannot
better set forth the characteristics of this great com-
monwealth at its greatest period than by following
Mr. Grote in quoting some passages from that cele-
brated discourse.’f
“We live under a constitution such as noway to envy the
laws of our neighbors; ourselves an example to others, rather
than imitators. It is called a democracy, since its aim tends
towards the Many, and not towards the Few. In regard to
private matters and disputes, the laws deal equally with every
one; while, in respect to public dignity and importance, the
position of each is determined, not by class influence, but by
worth, according as his reputation stands in his particular
department: nor does poverty or obscure station keep him
back, if he has any capacity of benefiting the State. And
our social march is free, not merely in regard to public affairs,
but also in regard to tolerance of each other’s diversity of
tastes and pursuits. For we are not angry with our neighbor
for what he does to please himself; nor do we put on those
sour looks, which are offensive, though they do no positive
damage. Thus conducting our private social intercourse with
reciprocal indulgence, we are restrained from misconduct in
public matters by fear and reverence of our magistrates for
the time being, and of our laws, especially such laws as are
it Tfiv wdaav milw Ti/g‘ 'Ellédog WGZdé‘UUt’D eivat. —Thuc., ii. 41.
’r Vol. vi. pp. 193-196. lVe have ventured to change a few expres-
sions in Mr. Grote’s translation, in order, though at the expense of smooth-
ness, to bring it closer to the literal meaning of the original.
208 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
instituted for the protection of the wronged, and such as,
though unwritten, are enforced by a common sense of shame.
Besides this, we have provided for our minds numerous recrea-
tions from toil, partly by our customary solemnities of sacrifice
and festival throughout the year, partly by the elegance of
our private arrangements, the daily charm of which banishes
pain and annoyance. From the magnitude of our city, the
products of the whole earth are brought to us, so that our
enjoyment of foreign luxuries is as much our own, and assured,
as of those which we produce at home. In respect to training
for war, we differ from our opponents (the Lacedaemonians)
on several material points. First, we lay open our city as a
common resort: we apply no xenelasy to exclude any one
from any lesson or spectacle, for fear lest an enemy should see
and profit by it; for we trust less to manoeuvres and artifices,
than to native boldness of spirit, for warlike efficiency. Next,
in regard to education: while the Lacedaemonians, even from
their earliest youth, subject themselves to an irksome exercise
for the attainment of courage, we, with our easy habits of life,
are not less prepared than they to encounter all perils within
the measure of our strength. . . .
“ We combine taste for the beautiful with frugality of life,
and cultivate intellectual speculation without being enervated:
we employ wealth for the service of our occasions, not for the
ostentation of talk; nor is it disgraceful to any one who is
poor to confess himself so, though he may be blamed for not
actively bestirring himself to get rid of his poverty. Our
politicians are not exempted from attending to their private
affairs, and our private citizens have a competent knowledge
of public matters; for we stand alone in regarding the man
who keeps aloof from politics, not as a blameless person, but
as a useless one. Far from accounting discussion an impedi-
ment to action, we think it an evil not to have been instructed
by deliberation before the time for execution arrives. For, in
truth, we combine, in a remarkable manner, boldness in ac-
GROTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE. 209
tion, with full debate beforehand on that which we are going
about; whereas, with others, ignorance alone imparts daring,
debate induces hesitation. Assuredly those ought to be re-
garded as the stoutest of heart, who, knowing most accurately
both the terrors of war and the sweets of peace, are still not
the less willing to encounter peril.”
This picture, drawn by Pericles and transmitted by
Thucydides, of ease of living, and freedom from social
intolerance, combined with the pleasures of cultivated
taste, and a lively interest and energetic participation in
public affairs, is one of the most interesting passages
in Greek history; placed, as it is, in the speech in
which the first of Athenian statesmen professed to Show
“ by What practices and by what institutions and man-
ners the city had become great.” * This remarkable
testimony, as Mr. Grote has not failed to point out,
wholly conflicts, so far as Athens is concerned, with
what we are so Often told about the entire sacrifice, in
the ancient republics, of the liberty of the individual to
an imaginary good of the State. In the greatest Greek
commonwealth, as described by its most distinguished
citizen, the public interest was held of paramount obli-
gation in all things which concerned it: but, with that
part of the conduct of individuals which concerned only
themselves, public opinion did not interfere; while, in
the ethical practice of the moderns, this is exactly re-
* It is worthy of notice, that in the speech of Nicias to his troops, pre—
ceding their final death-struggle in the harbor of Syracuse, he, too (if
correctly reported by Thucydides), reminds them of the same feature in their
national institutions and habits, the unrivalled freedom of the individual in
respect to his mode of life:—
warpidog re Ti]; élsvflepwn'myg 1'nroptpw'7mcwv, ml 17"); iv az’n'fi dvsmrélcrov
'miaw ég 1'7‘711 diam-av é§ovaZa§.-—— T lama, vii. 69.
VOL. III. 14
210 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
versed, and no one is required by opinion to pay any
regard to the public, except by conducting his own
private concerns in conformity to its expectations. ()n
this vital question of social morals, Mr. Grote’s re-
marks, though belonging to an earlier volume than
those which we are reviewing, are too valuable, as well
as too much to the purpose, to require any apology for
quoting them (vol. vi. pp. 200-2) :—
“ The stress which he (Pericles) lays upon the liberty of
thought and action at Athens, not merely from excessive
restraint of law, but also from practical intolerance between
man and man, and tyranny of the majority over individual
dissenters in taste and pursuits, deserves serious notice, and
brings out one of those points in the national character upon
which the intellectual development of the time mainly de-
pended. The national temper was indulgent in a high degree
to all the varieties of positive impulses: the peculiar prompt-
ings in every individual bosom were allowed to manifest
themselves, and bear fruit, without being suppressed by ex-
ternal opinion, or trained into forced conformity with some
assumed standard: antipathies against any of them formed no
part of the habitual morality of the citizen. While much of
the generating causes of human hatred was thus rendered
inoperative, and while society was rendered more comfortable,
more instructive, and more stimulating, all its germs of pro-
ductive fruitful genius, so rare everywhere, fbund in such an
atmosphere the maximum of encouragement. Within the
limits of the law, assuredly as faithfully observed at Athens
as anywhere in Greece, individual impulse, taste, and even
eccentricity, were accepted with indulgence, instead of being
a mark, as elsewhere, for the intolerance of neighbors or of
the public. This remarkable feature in Athenian life will
help us in a future chapter to explain the striking career of
Socrates ; and it farther presents to us, under another face, a
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. 211
great part of that which the censors of Athens denounced
under the name of “democratical license.” The liberty and
diversity of individual life in that city were offensive to
Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle, —- attached either to the
monotonous drill of Sparta, or to some other ideal standard,
which, though much better than the Spartan in itself, they
were disposed to impress upon society with a heavy-handed
uniformity. That liberty of individual action, not merely
from the over-restraints of law, but from the tyranny of
jealous opinion, such as Pericles depicts in Athens, belongs
more naturally to a democracy, where there is no select One
or Few to receive worship and set the fashion, than to any
other form of government. But it is very rare, even in
democracies ; nor can we dissemble the fact, that none of the
governments of modern times, democratical, aristocratical, or
monarchical, presents any thing like the picture of generous
tolerance towards social dissents, and spontaneity of individual
taste, which we read in the speech of the Athenian statesman
In all of them, the intolerance of the national opinion cuts
down individual character to one out of a few set types, to
which every person or every family is constrained to adjust
itself, and beyond which all exceptions meet either with hatred
or with derision. To impose upon men such restraints, either
of law or of opinion, as are requisite for the security and
comfort of society, but to encourage rather than repress the
free play of individual impulse subject to those limits, is an
ideal, which, if it was ever approached at Athens, has cer-
tainly never been attained, and has indeed comparatively been
little studied or cared for, in any modern society.”
The difference here pointed out between the temper
of the Athenian and that of the modern mind is most
closely connected with the wonderful display of indi-
vidual genius which made Athens illustrious, and with
the comparative mediocrity of modern times. Origi-
212 eROTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE.
nality is not always genius, but genius is always
originality; and a society which looks jealously and
distrustfully on original people -— which imposes its
common level of opinion, feeling, and conduct, on all
its individual members -— may have the satisfaction of
thinking itself very moral and respectable, but it must
do without genius. It may have persons of talent, who
bring a larger than usual measure of commonplace
ability into the service of the common notions of the
time : but genius, in such a soil, is either fatally stunted
in its growth; or, if its native strength forbids this, it
usually retires into itself, and dies without a Sign.
The ambitious external policy of Athens is one of
the points in Greek history which have been most
perversely misjudged and misunderstood. Modern his-
torians seem to have succeeded to the jealous animosity
of the Corinthians, and other members of the Spartan
alliance, at the opening of the Peloponnesian War,
though by no means at one with them in the reasons
they are able to assign for it. The Athenians certainly
were not exempt from the passion, universal in the
ancient world, for conquest and dominion. It was a
blemish, when judged by the universal standard of
right; but, as a fact, it was most beneficial to the
world, and could not have been other than it was with-
out crippling them in their vocation as the organ of
progress. There was scarcely a possibilit§r of perma-
nent improvement for mankind, until intellect had first
asserted its superiority, even in a military sense, over
brute force. With the barbarous part of the species
pressing in all round to crush every early germ of im-
provement, all would have been lost if there had not
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. 213
also been an instinct in the better and more gifted por-
tions of mankind to push for dominion over the duller
and coarser. Besides, in a small but flourishing free
community like Athens, ambition was the simple dictate
of prudence. No such community could have had any
safety for its own freedom but by acquiring power.
Instead of reprobating the Athenian maritime empire,
the whole of mankind, beginning with the subject States
themselves, had cause to lament that it was not much
longer continued; for that the fate of Greek civiliza-
tion was bound up with it, is proved by the whole
course of the history. When the jealousies of the other
Greek States stripped Athens of her empire, and nomi-
nally restored the subject allies to an independence
which they were wholly incapable of maintaining, Greece
lost her sole chance of making successful head against
Macedonia or Rome. And, considering what the short
period of Athenian greatness has done for the world, it
is painful to think in how much more advanced a stage
human improvement might now have been, if the
Athens of Pericles could have lived on in undimin-
ished spirit and energy for but one century more.
The Athenian Empire was the purest in its origin of
all the empires of antiquity. It was at first a free and
equal confederacy for defence against the Persians,
organized by Aristides with a justice worthy of his
name. It never would have become any thing else,
but that the majority of the allies, consisting of the
comparatively unwarlike and energetic Asiatic Greeks,
chose to make their contribution in money instead of
personal service; preferring to pay Athens for protect-
ing them, rather than protect themselves. Even the re-
Q
214 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
moval of the treasury of the confederacy from Delos to
Athens was no act of the Athenians, but of the synod
of the confederacy, on the proposition of Samos. When,
at a later date, some of the States attempted to secede
from the alliance, and enjoy the peace and security
which it afforded, without Sharing in the cost, the gen-
eral sentiment of the confederates at first went along
with Athens in bringing back the recusants by force Of
arms. But, with these small town communities, to be
defeated was to be conquered; and the conquered, by
the universal custom of antiquity, received the law from
the conqueror. That law, in the case of Athens, was
only occasionally either harsh or onerous ; yet thus, by
degrees, the once equal allies sunk into tributaries.
The few who had neither revolted, nor commuted per-
sonal service for pecuniary payment, retained their
naval and military force, and their immunity from trib-
ute, and had nothing to complain of, but that, like the
dependencies of England or of any modern nation, they
were compelled to join in the wars of the dominant
State, without having any voice in. deciding them. They
do not seem to have alleged any other practical griev-
ances against the Athenian community: their com-
plaints, recorded by Thucydides, turn almost solely
upon offence to the Grecian Sentiment of city inde-
pendence and dignity. Under the protection of the
powerful Athenian navy, the allied States enjoyed a
security never before known in Greece, and which no
one of them could possibly have acquired by its own
efforts. Many of them grew rich and prosperous.
With their internal government, Athens, as a general
rule, did not interfere; in Mr. Grote’s opinion, not '
v
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. 215
even to make it democratical, when it did not happen
to be so already. Like all the weak States of antiquity,
whether called independent or not, they were liable to
extortion and oppression ; not, however, from the Athe-
nian people, but from rich and powerful Athenians in
command of expeditions, against whom the Demos, when
judicially appealed to, was ready to give redress. The
most express testimony is borne to this general fact by
the able oligarchical conspirator Phrynichus, as reported
by the oligarchically inclin‘ed Thucydides, in his ac—
count of that remarkable incident in Athenian history,
the revolution of the Four Hundred. The historian
represents Phrynichus as reminding his fellow-conspi-
rators that they could expect neither assistance nor
good-will from the allies, since these well knew that it
was from the oligarchical Athenians they were liable to
injury, and looked upon the Demos as their protector.ale
The reality of the protection is exemplified by the case
of Paches, the victorious general who had just before
captured Mitylene. The resentment of the Athenians
against that revolted city was such, that they were (as
is well known) persuaded by Cleon to pass a decree for
putting the whole military population to death, though
they recalled the mandate before it had been executed.
Yet Paches, having abused his victory by violating two
women of Mitylene (having first put their husbands to
death), was prosecuted by them before the Athenian
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216 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
dicastery; and, the facts being proved, was so over-
whelmed by the general burst of indignation, that he
slew himself in open court. This incident (which, until
its real circumstances had been hunted out by Niebuhr,
was one of the stock examples of Athenian and popular
ingratitude) is a striking illustration of the difference
between the Athenian Empire and the Lacedaemonian ;
for when Spartan citizens, in repeated instances, com-
mitted similar enormities, not against conquered ene-
mies, but friendly allies, no redress could be obtained.
It required the field of Leuctra to avenge the daughters
of Skedasus, or appease the manes of the victims of
the harmost Aristodemus.
However unpopular the dominion of Athens may have
been among her subjects, though it appears to have been
so with the leading men rather than with the majority,
they had reason enough to regret it after it was at an
end; for not only was the' little finger of Lacedaemon
heavier than the whole body of Athens, but many of
them only exchanged Greek dominion for that of the
Barbarians. Sparta was never able, for more than a
few years, to protect the Asiatic Greeks even against
Persia; and at the height of her power, as soon as the
obligation of defending them became inconvenient, she,
by the peace of Antalcidas, actually ceded the whole of
that great division of Greece to the Persian king, to
whom it remained subject until the invasion of Alexan-
der. Several of the most prosperous of the islanders
fared no better: Cos, Chios, and Rhodes, when by the
Social War they succeeded in detaching themselves
from the second Athenian Empire, fell almost imme—
diately into dependence on the Carian despot Mausolus,
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. 217
against whom the Rhodians had soon to appeal again to
their enemy, Athens, for assistance. So mere a name
was that universal autonomy, which was used so suc-
cessfully to stir up the feelings of the Hellenic world
against its noblest member; so entirely did the inde-
pendence of Greece turn on the maintenance of some
cohesion among her multifarious particles, while the
political instincts of her people obstinately rejected
the merging of the single city-republic in any larger
unity.
The intellectual and moral pre-eminence which made
Athens the centre of good to Greece, and of the good
to after-generations of which Greece has been the me-
dium, was wholly the fruit of Athenian institutions. It
was the consequence, first of democracy, and secondly
of the wise and well-considered organization by which
the Athenian democracy was distinguished among the
democratic constitutions of antiquity. The term " de-
mocracy” may perhaps be deemed inapplicable to any of
the Grecian governments, on account of the existence
of slavery; and it is inapplicable to them in the purest
and most honorable sense Of the term. But in another
sense, not altogether inappropriate, those governments,
the first to which the word " democracy ” was applied,
must be considered entitled to the name: in the same
manner as it is given to the Northern States of Amer—
ica, although women are there excluded from the rights
of citizenship ; an exclusion which, equally with that of
slaves, militates against the democratic principle. The
Athenian Constitution was so far a democracy, that it
was government by a multitude, composed in majority
of poor persons, —- small landed proprietors and arti-
218 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
sans. It had the additional democratic characteristic,
far more practically important than even the political
franchise,—-—it was a government of boundless publicity
and freedom of speech. It had the liberty of the bema,
of the dicastery, the portico, the palaestra, and the stage ;
altogether a full equivalent for the liberty of the press.
Further, it was the only government of antiquity which
possessed this inestimable advantage in the same degree,
or retained it as long. Enemies and friends alike tes-
tify that the mppnoia of Athens was paralleled in no
other place in the known world. Every oflice and
honor was open to every citizen, not, as in the aristo-
cratic Roman republic (or even the British monarchy),
almost nominally, but really; while the daily working
of Athenian institutions (by means of which every citi-
zen was accustomed to hear every sort of question,
public and private, discussed by the ablest men of the
time, with the earnestness of purpose, and fulness of
preparation, belonging to actual business, deliberative
or judicial) formed a course of political education, the
equivalent of which modern nations have not known
how to give even to those whom they educate for states-
men. To their multitudinous judicial tribunals the
Athenians were also indebted for that habitual love of
fair play, and of hearing both sides of a case, which
was more or less a quality of the Greeks generally, but
had so firm a hold on the Athenians, that it did not de-
sert them under the most passionate excitement. The
potency of Grecian democracy in making every indi-
vidual in the multitude identify his feelings and interests
with those of the State, and regard its freedom and
greatness as the first and principal of his own personal
GROTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE. 219
concerns, cannot be better described than in the words
of Mr. Grote. After quoting a remarkable passage
from Herodotus, descriptive of the unexpected outburst
of patriotic energy at Athens after the expulsion of the
Pisistratidae, and the establishment of the Cleisthenean
Constitution,* Mr. Grote proceeds as follows (vol. iv.
pp. 23 7—9) :—
“ Democracy in Grecian antiquity possessed the privilege,
not only of kindling an earnest and unanimous attachment to
the constitution in the bosoms of the citizens, but also of
creating an energy of public and private action such as could
never be obtained under an oligarchy, where the utmost that
could be hoped for was a passive acquiescence and obedience.
Mr. Burke has remarked, that the mass of the people are
generally very indifferent about theories of government: but
such indifference (although improvements in the practical
working of all governments tend to foster it) is hardly to be
expected among any people who exhibit decided mental ac-
tivity and'spirit on other matters; and the reverse was un-
questionably true, in the year 500 B.C., among the communities
of ancient Greece. Theories of government were there any
thing but a dead letter: they were connected with emotions
of the strongest as well as of the most opposite character.
The theory of a permanent ruling One, for example, was
universally odious: that of a ruling. Few, though acquiesced
in, was never positively attractive, unless either where it was
associated with the maintenance of peculiar education and
habits, as at Sparta, or where it presented itself as the only
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Icarepyég'eafiat. -—Her0d., v. 78.
220 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
antithesis to democracy; the latter having, by peculiar circum-
stances, become an object of terror. But the theory of de-
mocracy was pre-eminently seductive; creating in' the mass
of the citizens an intense positive attachment, and disposing
them to voluntary action and suffering on its behalf, such as
no coercion on the part of other governments could entail.
Herodotus, in his comparison of the three sorts of government,
puts in the front rank of the advantages of democracy “its
most splendid name and promise, ”—-its power of enlisting
the hearts of the citizens in support of their constitution, and
of providing for all a common bond of union and fraternity.
This is what even democracy did not always do; but it was
what no other government in Greece could do,-—a reason
alone sufficient to stamp it as the best government, and pre-
senting the greatest chance of beneficent results. . . . Among
the Athenian citizens, certainly, it produced a strength and
unanimity of positive political sentiment such as has rarely
been seen in the history of mankind; which excites our
surprise and admiration the more, when we compare it with
the apathy which had preceded, and which is even implied as
the natural state of the public mind in Solon’s famous proc-
lamation against neutrality in a sedition. Because democracy
happens to be unpalatable to most modern readers, they
have been accustomed to look upon the sentiment here de-
scribed only in its least honorable manifestations, -—-in the
caricatures of Aristophanes, or in the empty commonplaces
of rhetorical declaimers. But it is not in this way that the
force, the earnestness, or the binding value, of democratical
sentiment at Athens is to be measured. We must listen to it
as it comes from the lips of Pericles, while he is strenuously
enforcing upon the people those active duties for which it
both implanted the stimulus and supplied the courage; or
from the oligarchical Nikias in the harbor of Syracuse, when
he is endeavoring to revive the courage of his despairing
troops for one last death-struggle, and when he appeals to
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. 221
their democratical patriotism as to the only flame yet alive
and burning even in that moment of agony. From the time
of Kleisthenes downward, the creation of this new mighty
impulse makes an entire revolution in the Athenian charac-
ter; and, if the change still stood out in so prominent a
manner before the eyes of Herodotus, much more must it
have been felt by the contemporaries among whom it oc-
curred.”
The influences here spoken of were those of democ-
racy generally. For the peculiar and excellent organ-
ization of her.own democracy, Athens was indebted to
a succession of eminent men. The earliest was her
great legislator, Solon; himself the first capital prize‘
which Athens drew in the dispensations of the Desti-
nies; a man whose personal virtue ennobled the city
by which he was chosen to legislate, and the merit of
whose institutions was a principal Source of the deep-
rooted respect for the laws which distinguished Athens
beyond any other of the ancient democracies. The
salutary forms of business established by Solon, and
calculated to secure as much caution and deliberation
as were compatible with ultimate decision by a sovereign
Ecclesia, lived through the successive changes by which
the constitution was rendered more and more democrat-
ic. And though it is commonly supposed that popular
passion in a democracy is peculiarly liable to trample
on forms when they stand between it and its object, -—
which is indeed, without question, one of the dangers
of a democracy, —there is no point in the character of
the Athenians more remarkable than their respect and
attachment to the forms of their constitution. In the
height of their anger against Pericles for not leading
222 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
them out to defend their lands and houses from the
ravages of the Peloponnesians, -—because he, standing
on his privilege as a magistrate, abstained from calling
an assembly, no assembly met. There is indeed but
one marked instance known to us, in Athenian history,
of that violation of forms which was the daily practice
of most of the oligarchical governments. That one
was a case of great and just provocation,—the cause
céle‘bre of the six generals who neglected to ‘save their
drowning countrymen after the sea-fight of Arginusae;
and there was, as Mr. Grote has shown, no injustice in
the fact of their condemnation by the people, though
-there was a blamable violation of the salutary rules
of criminal procedure established for the protection of
the innocent. It was in this case that the philosopher
Socrates, accidentally that month a senator of the pre-
siding tribe, as firm against the cim'um ardor prcwa
jubentz'um as afterwards against the vultus instantis
tyranni, singly refused to join in putting the question
to the assembly contrary to the laws; adding one to
the proofs that the man of greatest intellect at that
time in Athens was also its most virtuous citizen.
After Solon (omitting the intervening usurpation of
Pisistratus) , the first great constitutional change was
the reformation of Cleisthenes; an eminent man, to
whose character and historical importance no one before
Mr. Grote had done justice. The next was that in
which the immediate mover was Aristides, at the re-
establishment of the city after the Persian War, when
the poorest class of citizens was first admitted to Share
in public employments. The final measures which
completed the democratic constitution were those of
I
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. 223
Pericles and Ephialtes ; more particularly the latter, —
a statesman of whom, from the unfortunate absence of
any cotemporary history of the period between the Per-
sian and Peloponnesian wars except the brief introduc-
tory sketch of Thucydides, we have to lament that too
little is known, but of whom the recorded anecdotes
indicate a man worthy to have been the friend of Peri-
cles.’le Ephialtes perished by assassination; a victim to
the rancorous hatred of the oligarchical party. Assas-
sination afterwards disappears from Athenian public
life, until re-introduced on a regular system by the same
party, to effect the revolution of the Four Hundred.
The Athenian Many, of whose democratic irritability
and suspicion we hear so much, are rather to be ac-
cused of too easy and good—natured a confidence, when
we reflect that they had living in the midst of them the
very men, who, on the first Show of an opportunity,
were ready to compass the subversion of the democracy
by the dark deeds of Peisander' and Antiphon; and,
when they had effected their object, perpetrated all the
villanies of Critias and his associates. These men
ought always to be present to the mind, not merely as
a dark background to the picture of the Athenian Re-
public, but as an active power in it. They were no
obscure private individuals, but men of rank and for-
tune; not only prominent as politicians and public
speakers, but continually trusted with all the great
Offices of State. Truly Athens was in more danger
from these men than from the demagogues: they were
indeed themselves the worst of the demagogues; de-
scribed by Phrynichus, their confederate, as for their
* See particularly Elian, V. H. xi. 9, and xiii. 39.
224 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
own purposes, the leaders and instigators of the Demos
to its most blamable actions, aopwflk Kai tom/mar r611 Kam'bv a?)
dip/an, éE (511 rd whim aorodg érpeZsZcBat.
These are a few of the topics on which a flood of
light is let in by Mr. Grote’s History, and from which
those who have not read it may form some notion of
the interest which pervades it, especially the part relat-
ing to the important century between 500 and 400 B.C.
The searching character of Mr. Grote’s historical criti-
cism is not suspiciously confined to matters in which
his own political opinions may be supposed to be inter-
ested. Though the statement has the air of an exag-
geration, yet, after much study of Mr. Grote’s book, we
do not hesitate to assert, that there is hardly a fact of
importance in Grecian history which was perfectly
understood before his re-examination of it. This will
not seem incredible to those who are aware how new
an art that of writing history is; how very recently it
is that we possess histories, of events not cotemporary
with the writer, which, apart from literary merit, have
any value otherwise than as materials; how utterly
uncritical, until lately, were all historians, even as to
the most important facts in history; and how much,
even after criticism had commenced, the later writers
merely continued to repeat after the earlier. In our
own generation, N iebuhr has effected a radical revolu-
tion in the opinions of all educated persons respecting
Roman history. Grecian events subsequent to the
Homeric period are more authentically recorded; but
there, too, a very moderate acquaintance with the evi-
dence was sufficient to show how superficially it had
hitherto been examined.
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. ’ 225
That the Sophists, for example, were not the knaves
and profligates they are so often represented to have
been, could be gathered even from the statements of the
hostile witnesses on whose authority they were con-
demned. The "Protagoras ” alone, of their great enemy
Plato, is a sufficient document. But Mr. Grote has
been the first to point out clearly what the Sophists
really were. That term was the common designation for,
speculative inquirers generally, and more particularly for
instructors of youth; and was applied to Socrates and
Plato as much as to those whom they confuted. The
Sophists formed no school, had no common doctrines,
but speculated in the most conflicting ways on physics
and metaphysics; while, with respect to morals, those
among them who professed to prepare young men for
active life taught the current morality of the age in its
best form. The apologue of the " Choice of Hercules ”
was the composition of a Sophist. It is most unjust to
the Sophists to adopt, as the verdict of history upon
them, the severe judgment Of‘ Plato; although, from
Plato’s point of view, they deserved it. He judged them
from the superior elevation of a great moral and social
reformer : from that height he looked down contemptu-
ously enough, not on them alone, but on statesmen,
orators, artists, -— on the whole practical life of the
period, and all its institutions, popular, oligarchical, or
despotic; demanding a reconstitution of society from its
foundations, and a complete renovation of the human
mind. One who had these high aspirations had natu—
rally little esteem for men who did not see, or aspire to
see, beyond the common ideas of their age ; but, as Mr.
Grote remarks, to accept his judgment of them would
v0L. III. 15
226 GROTE’s HISTORY OF GREECE.
be like characterizing the teachers and politicians of the
present time in the words applied to them by Owen or
Fourier. Even Plato, for the most part, puts the im-
moral doctrines ascribed to the Sophists (such as the
doctrine that might makes right) into the mouths, not
of Sophists, but of ambitious active politicians like
Callicles. The Sophists, in Plato, almost always ex-
press themselves not only with decorum, but with good
sense and feeling, on the subject of social duties ; though,
by his Socratic dialectics, he always succeeds in puzzling
them, and displaying the confusion of their ideas, or
rather of the common ideas of mankind, of which they
are the exponents.
Again: the Athenian democracy had been so out-
rageously, and without measure, misrepresented, that
whoever had read (as so few have done) Thucydides and
the orators with decent intelligence and candor could
easily perceive that the vulgar representation was very
wide of the truth ; just as any one who had read Livy
could see, and many did see, that the agrarian law was
not the unjust spoliation that was pretended: but, as it
required Niebuhr to detect with accuracy what the agra-
rian law actually was, so no less profound a knowledge
of Greek literature than that of Mr. Grote, combined
with equal powers of reasoning and reflection, would
have sufliced to make the effective working of the Athe-
nian Constitution as well known to us as it may now be
pronounced to be. The mountain of error which had
accumulated and hardened over Greek history, the
removal of which had been meritoriously commenced by
Dr. Thirlwall, has not only been shaken off, but the out-
lines of the real object are now made visible. And so
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. 227
cautious and sober is Mr. Grote in the estimate of evi-
dence, so constantly on his guard against letting his
conclusions outrun his proofs, as to make it a matter of
wonder, that, among so much that is irreparably lost, his
researches have enabled him to arrive at so consider-
able an amount of positive and certifiable result.
This conscientious scrupulousness in maintaining the
demarcation between conjecture and proof is more
indispensable than any other excellence in a historian,
and, above all, in one who sets aside the common notion
of many of the facts which he relates, and replaces it by
a version of his own. Without this quality, such an
innovator on existing beliefs inspires no reliance, and
can only at most unsettle historical opinion without
helping to restore it. Anybody can scrawl over the can-
vas with the commonplaces of rhetoric or the catchwords
of party politics; and many, especially in Germany,
can paint in a picture from the more or less ingenious
suggestions of a learned imagination. But Mr. Grote
commands the confidence/of the reader by his sobriety
in hypothesis ; by never attempting to pass off an infer-
ence as a fact; and, when he differs from the common
opinion, explaining his reasons with the precision and
minuteness of one who neither desires nor expects that
any thing will be taken upon trust. He has felt that
a history of Greece, to be of any value, must be also a
running commentary on the evidence; and he has
endeavored to put the reader in a position to judge for
himself On every disputable point. But the discussions,
though to a historical taste as interesting as the narra-
tive, are not carried on at its expense. Wherever the
facts, authentically known, allow a consecutive stream
228 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
of narrative to be kept up, the story is told in a more
interesting manner than it has anywhere been told
before, except in the finest passages of Thucydides.
We are indeed disposed to assign to this history
almost as high a rank in narrative as in thought. It is
open, no doubt, to minute criticism ; and many writers
are superior to Mr. Grote in rapidity, grace, and pictu-
resqueness of style. But, even in these respects, there
is no such deficiency as amounts to a fault ; while in two
qualities far more important to the interest, not to say
the value , of his recitals, he has few equals, and probably
no superior. The first is, that, at each point in the
series of events, he makes it his primary object to fill his
own mind and his reader’s with as correct and complete
a conception as can be formed of the situation; so that
we enter at once into the impressions and feelings of the
actors, both collective and individual. N iebuhr had
already, in his " Lectures on Ancient History,” carried
his characteristic liveliness of conception into the repre-
sentation of the leading characters of Greek history;
depicting them, often, we fear, with insufficient warrant
from evidence, like persons with whom he had long
lived and been familiar: but for clearness and correct-
ness in conceiving the surrounding circumstances, and
the posture of affairs at each particular moment, we do
not think him at all comparable to Mr. Grote.
One of the beneficial fruits of this quality is, that it
makes the history a philosophic one without apparent
effort. There is no need of lengthened discussion to
connect causes with their effects: the causes and effects
are parts of the same picture, and the causes are seen
in action before it appears what they are to produce.
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. 229
For example : the reader whose mind is filled with the
greatness attained by Athens, while her councils were
ruled by the commanding intellect and self-restraining
prudence of Pericles, might almost anticipate the com-
ing disasters, when he finds, in the early chapters of the
seventh volume, into the hands of what advisers Athens
had already fallen. And mark well: these evil advi-
sers were not the demagogues, but the chiefs of the
aristocracy, the richest and most high-born men in
the republic, -— Nicias and Alcibiades. Mr. Grote had
already Shown grounds for believing, that Cleon and
men of his stamp had been far too severely dealt with
by historians ; not that they did not frequently deserve
censure, but that they were by no means the worst
misleaders of the Athenian people. The demagogues
were, as he observes, essentially opposition speakers.
The conduct of affairs was habitually in the hands of the
rich and great, who had by far the largest share of per-
sonal influence, and on whose mismanagement there
would have been hardly any check, but for the dema-
gogues and their hostile criticism. These opinions
receive ample confirmation from the course of affairs,
when, there being no longer any low-born Cleon or
Hyperbolus to balance their influence, Nicias and Alci-
biades had full scope to ruin the commonwealth. The
contrary vices of these two men, both equally fatal,
are exemplified in the crowning act of their maladminis-
tration; the one having been the principal adviser of
the ill-starred expedition to Syracuse, while the other
was the main cause of its ruinous failure by his intel-
lectual and moral incapacity.
This genuine realization of the successive situations
230 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
also renders the narrative itself a picture of the Greek
mind. Carrying on, throughout, the succession of
feelings concurrently with that of events, the writer
becomes, as it were, himself a Greek, and takes the
reader along with him; and hence, if every discussion
or dissertation in the book were omitted, it would still
be wonderfully in advance of any former‘ history in -
making the Greeks intelligible. For example: no
modern writer has made the reader enter into the
religious feelings of the Greeks as Mr. Grote does.
Other historians let it be supposed, that, except in some
special emergencies, beliefs and feelings relating to the
unknown world counted for very little among the, deter-
mining causes of events ; and it is a kind of accredited
opinion, that the religion of the ancients sat almost as
lightly on them as if it had been to them—what it is
in modern literature— a mere poetical ornament. But
the case was quite otherwise: religion was one of the
most active elements in Grecian life, with an effect, in
the early rude times, probably on the whole beneficial,
but growing more and more injurious as civilization
advanced. Mr. Grote is the first historian who has
given an adequate impression of the omnipresence of
this element in Grecian life; the incessant reference to
supernatural hopes and fears which pervaded public and
private transactions, as well as the terrible power with
which those feelings were capable of acting, and not
unfrequently did act, on the Hellenic susceptibilities.
While our admiration is thus increased for the few
superior minds, who, like Pericles and Epaminondas,
rose above at least the vulgarer parts of the religion of
their country, or, like Plato, probably rejected it alto-
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. ' 231
gether, we are enabled to see the explanation of much.
that would otherwise be enigmatical, and to judge the
Greeks with the same amount of allowance for errors
produced by their religion, which, in parallel cases, is
always conceded to the moderns.
The other eminent quality which distinguishes Mr.
iGrote’s narrative is its pervading iitiog‘; the moral inter-
est, which is so much deeper and more impressive than
picturesque interest, and exists in portions of the his-
tory which afford no materials for the latter. The events
do not always admit of being vividly depicted to the
mental eye; and, when they do, the author does not
always make use of the opportunity: but one thing he
never fails in, — the moral aspect of the events and of
the persons is never out of Sight, and gives the predom-
inating character to the recital. We use the word
" moral” not solely in the restricted sense of right and
wrong, but as inclusive of the whole of the sentiments
connected with the occasion. Along with the clear light
of the scrutinizing intellect, there is the earnest feeling
of a sympathizing contemporary. This rich source of
impressiveness in narration is often wanting in writers
of the liveliest fancy, and the most brilliant faculty of
delineating the mere outside of historical facts.
Nor is the narrative deficient in the commoner sources
of interest. The apt selection and artistic grouping of
the details of battles and sieges, Mr. Grote had found
done to his hand by the consummate narrators whom he
follows ; and in this respect he could do no better than
simply to reproduce their recital. There is much more
that belongs peculiarly to himself, in the series of
remarkable characters whom he exhibits before us, not
232 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
so much (generally speaking) in description or analy-
sis as in action. In the earlier period, the prominent
characters are Themistocles and Aristides, -— Themisto-
cles, the most sagacious, the most far-Sighted, the most
judiciously daring, the craftiest, and unfortunately also
one of the most unprincipled, of politicians; who first
saved, then aggrandized, and at last would have sold,
his country : Aristides, the personification of public and
private integrity, the one only Grecian statesman who
finds grace before the somewhat pedantically rigid tri-
bunal of the Platonic Socrates.
The figure which most brightly illuminates the mid-
dle period of Mr. Grote’s History is Pericles,—" the
Thunderer ; ” " the Olympian Zeus,” as he was called by
his libellers, the comic dramatists of Athens. Seldom,
if ever, has there been seen, in a statesman of any age,
such a combination of great qualities as were united in
this illustrious man: unrivalled in eloquence; eminent
in all the acquirements, talents, and accomplishments
of his country; the associate of all those among his
cotemporaries who were above their age, either in posi-
tive knowledge or in freedom from superstition ; though
an aristocrat by birth and fortune, a thorough democrat
in principle and conduct, yet never stooping to even the
pardonable arts of courting popularity, but acquiring
and maintaining his ascendency solely by his command-
ing qualities; never flattering his countrymen save on
what was really admirable in them, and which it was for
their good to be taught to cherish, but the determined
enemy of their faults and follies ; ever ready to peril his
popularity by giving disagreeable advice, and, when not
appreciated, rising up against the injustice done him,
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. 233
with a scornful dignity almost amounting to defiance.
Such was Pericles: and that such a man should have
been practically first minister of Athens during the
greatest part of a long political life is not so much hon—
orable to him as to the imperial people who were willing
to be so led ; who, though in fits of temporary irritation
and disappointment, excusable in the circumstances,
they several times withdrew their favor from him,
always hastened to give it back; and over whom, while
he lived, no person of talents and virtues inferior to his
was able to obtain any mischievous degree of influence.
It is impossible to estimate how great a Share this one
man had in making the Athenians what they were. A
great man had, in the unbounded publicity of Athenian
political life, extraordinary facilities for moulding his
country after his own image; and seldom has any peo-
ple, during a whole generation, enjoyed such a course
of education as forty years of listening to the lofty spirit
and practical wisdom of Pericles must have been to the
Athenian D'emos.
AS the next in this gallery of historical portraits, we
quote the character of another, but a far inferior, Athe-
nian statesman; whom Mr. Grote is, we think, the very
first to appreciate correctly, and bring before us in the
colors and lineaments of life.
“ Though N ikias, son of Nikeratus, had been for some time
conspicuous in public life, and is said to have been more than
once Strategus along with Pericles, this is the first occasion on
which Thucydides introduces him to our notice. He was now
one of the Strategi, or generals, of the commonwealth; and
appears to have enjoyed, on the whole, a greater and more
constant personal esteem than any citizen of Athens, from the
234 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
present time down to his death. In wealth and in family, he
ranked among the first class of Athenians; in political char-
acter, Aristotle placed him, together with Thucydides, son of
Melesias, and Theramenes, above all other names in Athenian
history,—seemingly even above Pericles. Such a criticism
from Aristotle deserves respectful attention, though the facts
before us completely belie so lofty an estimate. It marks,
however, the position occupied by Nikias in Athenian politics,
as the principal person of what may be called the oligarchical
party, succeeding Kimon and Thucydides, and preceding The-
ramenes. In looking to the conditions under which this party
continued to subsist, we shall see, that during the interval
between Thucydides, son of Melesias, and Nikias, the demo-
cratical forms had acquired such confirmed ascendency, that it
would not have suited the purpose of any politician to betray
evidence of positive hostility to them prior to the Sicilian ex-
pedition, and the great embarrassment in the foreign relations
of Athens which arose out of that disaster. After that change,
the Athenian oligarchs became emboldened and aggressive, so
that we shall find Theramenes among the chief conspirators in
the revolution of the Four Hundred; but Nikias represents
the oligarchical party in its previous state of quiescence and
torpidity, accommodating itself to a sovereign democracy, and
existing in the form of common sentiment rather than of com-
mon purposes. And it is a remarkable illustration of the real
temper of the Athenian people, that a man of this character,
known as an oligarch, but not feared as such, and doing his
duty sincerely to the democracy, should have remained until
his death the most esteemed and influential man in the city.
He was a man of a sort of even mediocrity in intellect, in
education, and in oratory; forward in his military duties, and
not only personally courageous in the field, but also competent
as a general under ordinary circumstances; assiduous in the
discharge of all political duties at home, especially in the post
0f Strategus or one of the ten generals of the State, to which
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. 235
he was frequently chosen and rechosen. Of the many valuable
qualities combined in his predecessor Pericles, the recollec-
tion of whom was yet fresh in the Athenian mind, Nikias pos-
sessed two, on which, most of all, his influence rested; though,
properly speaking, that influence belongs to the sum total of
his character, and not to any special attributes in it. First, he
was thoroughly incorruptible as to pecuniary gains, -- a quality
so rare in Grecian public men of all the cities, that, when
a man once became notorious for possessing it, he acquired a
greater degree of trust than any superiority of intellect could
have bestowed upon him; next, he adopted the Periclean view
as to the necessity of a conservative or stationary foreign pol-
icy for Athens, and of avoiding new acquisitions at a distance,
adventurous risks, or provocation to fresh enemies. With this
important point of analogy, there were at the same time ma-
terial differences between them even in regard to foreign policy.
Pericles was a conservative, resolute against submitting to loss
or abstraction of empire, as well as refraining from aggran-
dizement. Nikias was in policy faint-hearted, averse to ener-
getic effort for any purpose whatever, and disposed not only to
maintain peace, but even to purchase it by considerable sacri-
fices. Nevertheless, he was the leading champion of the
conservative party of his day, always powerful at Athens; and
as he was constantly familiar with the details and actual course
of public affairs, capable of giving full effect to the cautious
and prudential point of view, and enjoying unqualified credit
for honest purposes, his value as a permanent counsellor was
steadily recognized, even though in particular cases his counsel
might not be followed.
“ Besides these two main points, which Nikias had in com-
mon with Pericles, he was perfect in the use of those minor
and collateral modes of standing well with the people, which
that great man had taken little pains to practise. While
Pericles attached himself to Aspasia, whose splendid qualities
did not redeem in the eyes of the public either her foreign
236 GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE.
origin or her unchastity, the domestic habits of Nikias appear
to have been strictly conformable to the rules of Athenian
decorum. Pericles was surrounded by philosophers, N ikias by
prophets, whose advice was necessary both as a consolation
to his temperament, and as a guide to his intelligence under
difficulties: one of them was constantly in his service and con-
fidence; and his conduct appears to have been sensibly affected
by the difference of character between one prophet and another,
juSt as the government of Louis XIV. and other Catholic
princes has been modified by the change of confessors. To a
life thus rigidly decorous and ultra-religious —both eminently
acceptable to the Athenians -— Nikias added the judicious em-
ployment of a large fortune with a view to popularity. Those
liturgies (or expensive public duties undertaken by rich men,
each in his turn, throughout other cities of Greece as well as
in Athens) which fell to his lot were performed with such
splendor, munificence, and good taste, as to procure for him
universal encomiums; and so much above his predecessors, as
to be long remembered and extolled. Most of these liturgies
were connected with the religious service of the State; so that
Nikias, by his manner of performing them, displayed his zeal
for the honor of the gods, at the same time that he laid up for
himself a store of popularity. Moreover, the remarkable cau-
tion and timidity —-not before an enemy, but in reference to
his own fellow-citizens -- which marked his character rendered
him pre-eminently scrupulous as to giving offence or making
personal enemies. While his demeanor towards the poorer
citizens generally was equal and conciliating, the presents
which he made were numerous, both to gain friends and to
Silence assailants. We are not surprised to hear, that various
bullies, whom the comic writers turn to scorn, made their
profit out of this susceptibility; but, most assuredly, Nikias
as a public man, though he might occasionally be cheated out
of money, was greatly assisted by the reputation which he
thus acquired.”
GROTE’S HISTORY OF GREECE. 237
We have the more willingly extracted this passage,
because, like many others in these volumes, it contains
lessons applicable to other times and circumstances than
those of Greece; Nikias being a perfect type of one
large class of the favorites of public opinion, modern as
well as ancient. And the view here incidentally pre-
sented of some points in the character and disposition
of the Athenian Many, will afford to readers, who only
know Athens and Greece through the medium of writers
like Mitford, some faint idea of how much they have to
unlearn.
With regard to style, in the ordinary sense, what is
most noticeable in Mr. Grote is, that his style always
rises with his subject. The more valuable the thought,
or interesting the incident, the apter and more forcible
is the expression ; as is generally the case with writers
who are thinking of their subject rather than of their
literary reputation. We can conscientiously say of him,
——what, rightly understood, is the highest praise, which,
on the score of mere composition, a writer in the more
intellectual departments of literature can desire or de-
serve, -- that every thing which he has to express, he is
always able to express adequately and worthily.
238
A FEW WORDS ON NON—INTERVENTION.*

THERE is a country in Europe, equal to the greatest in
extent of dominion, far exceeding any other in wealth,
and in the power that wealth bestows, the declared
principle of whose foreign policy is to let other nations
alone. N 0 country apprehends or affects to apprehend
from it any aggressive designs. Power, from of old, is
wont to encroach upon the weak, and to quarrel for
ascendency with those who are as strong as itself. Not
so this nation. It will hold its own; it will not submit
to encroachment: but, if other nations do not meddle
with it, it will not meddle with them. Any attempt it
makes to exert influence over them, even by persuasion,
is rather in the service of others than of itself, —-to
mediate in the quarrels which break out between foreign
States, to arrest obstinate civil wars, to reconcile bellige-
rents, to intercede for mild treatment of the vanquished,
or, finally, to procure the abandonment of some national
crime and scandal to humanity, such as the Slave-trade.
Not only does this nation desire no benefit to itself at
the expense of others : it desires none in which all others
do not as freely participate. It makes no treaties stipu-
lating for separate commercial advantages. If the
aggressions of barbarians force it to a successful war,
and its victorious arms put it in a position to command
* Fraser’s Magazine, December, 1859.
A FEW WORDS ON NON-\INTERVENTION. 239
liberty of trade, whatever it demands for itself it de-
mands for all mankind. The cost of the war is its own :
the fruits it Shares in fraternal equality with the whole
human race. Its own ports and commerce are free as
the air and the sky: all its neighbors have full liberty
to resort to it, paying either no duties, or, if any, gen-
erally a mere equivalent for what is paid by its own
citizens; nor does it concern itself, though they, on
their part, keep all to themselves, and persist in the
most jealous and narrow-minded exclusion of its mer-
chants and goods.
A nation adopting this policy is a novelty in the
world; so much so, it would appear, that many are
unable to believe it when they see it. By one of the
practical paradoxes which often meet us in human affairs,
it is this nation which finds itself, in respect of its for-
eign policy, held up to obloquy as the type of egoism
and selfishness; as a nation which thinks of nothing
but of outwitting and outgeneralling its neighbors.
An enemy, or a self-fancied rival who had been dis-
tanced in the race, might be conceived to give vent
to such an accusation in a moment of ill-temper. But
that it should be accepted by lookers-on, and should
pass into a popular doctrine, is enough to surprise even
those who have best sounded the depths of human
prejudice. Such, however, is the estimate of the for-
eign policy of“ England most widely current on the
Continent. Let us not flatter ourselves that it is merely
the dishonest pretence of enemies, or of those who have
their own purposes to serve by exciting odium against
us, — a class including all the Protectionist writers, and
the mouthpieces of all the despots and of the Papacy.
\
240 A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION.
The more blameless and laudable our policy might be,
the more certainly we might count on its being mis-
represented and railed at by these worthies. Unfortu-
nately, the belief is not confined to those whom they can
influence, but is held with all the tenacity of a preju-
dice by innumerable persons free from interested bias.
So strong a hold has it on their minds, that, when an
Englishman attempts to remove it, all their habitual
politeness does not enable them to disguise their utter
unbelief in his disclaimer. They are firmly persuaded
that no word is said, nor act done, by English states-
men, in reference to foreign affairs, which has not for
its motive-principle some peculiarly English interest.
Any profession of the contrary appears to them too ludi-
crously transparent an attempt to impose upon them.
Those most friendly to us think they make a great conces-
sion in admitting that the fault may possibly be less with
the English people than with the English Government
and aristocracy. We do not even receive credit from
them for following our own interest with a straightforward
recognition of honesty as the best policy. They believe
that we have always other objects than those we avow;
and the most far-fetched and unplausible suggestion of
a selfish purpose appears to them better entitled to cre-
dence than any thing so utterly incredible as our disin-
terestedness. Thus, to give one instance among many,
when we taxed ourselves twenty millions (a prodigious
sum in their estimation) to get rid of negro slavery,
and for the same object perilled, as everybody thought,—
destroyed, as many thought,—the very existence of our
West-Indian colonies, it was, and still is, believed, that
our fine professions were but to delude the world; and
A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION. 241
that by this self-saerificing behavior we were endeavor-
ing to gain some hidden object, which could neither be
conceived nor described, in the way of pulling down
other nations. The fox who had lost his tail had an
intelligible interest in persuading his neighbors to rid
themselves of theirs; but we, it is thought by our
neighbors, cut off our own magnificent brush, the
largest and finest of all, in hopes of reaping some inex—
plicable advantage from inducing others to do the same.
It is foolish attempting to despise all this, — per-
suading ourselves that it is not our fault, and that those
who disbelieve us would not believe though one should
rise from the dead. Nations, like individuals, ought to
suspect some fault in themselves when they find they
are generally Worse thought of than they think they
deserve; and they may well know that they are some-
how in fault, when almost everybody but themselves
thinks them crafty and hypocritical. It is not solely
because England has been more successful than other
nations in gaining what they are all aiming at, that they
think she must be following after it with a more cease-
less and a more undivided chase. This, indeed, is a
powerful predisposing cause, inclining and preparing
them for the belief. It is a natural supposition, that
those who win the prize have striven for it; that supe—
rior success must be the fruit of more unremitting
endeavor; and where there is an obvious abstinence
from the ordinary arts employed for distancing competi-
tors, and they are distanced nevertheless, people are
fond of believing that the means employed must have
been arts still more subtle and profound. This pre-
conception makes them look out in all quarters for indi—
VOL. III. 16
242 A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION.
cations to prop up the selfish explanation of our conduct.
If our ordinary course of action does not favor this
interpretation, they watch for exceptions to our ordinary
course, and regard these as the real index to the pur-
poses within. They, moreover, accept literally all the
habitual expressions by which we represent ourselves as
worse than we are; expressions often heard from Eng-
lish statesmen, next to never from those of any other
country, -—partly because Englishmen, beyond all the
rest of the human race, are so shy of professing virtues,
that they will even profess vices instead; and partly
because almost all English statesmen, while careless to
a degree which no foreigner can credit respecting the
impression they produce on foreigners, commit the ob-
tuse blunder of supposing that low objects are the only
ones to which the minds of their non-aristocratic fellow-
countrymen are amenable, and that it is always expe-
dient, if not necessary, to place those objects in the
foremost rank.
All, therefore, who either speak or act in the name
of England, are bound by the strongest obligations,
both of prudence and of duty, to avoid giving either of
these handles for misconstruction; to put a severe re-
straint upon the mania of professing to act from meaner
motives than those by which we are really actuated, and
to beware of perversely or capriciously singling out
some particular instance in which to act on a worse
principle than that by which we are ordinarily guided.
Both these salutary cautions our practical statesmen are,
at the present time, flagrantly disregarding.
We are now in one of those critical moments, which
do not occur once in a generation, when the whole turn
A FEW W'ORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION.
of European events, and the course Of European history
for a long time to come, may depend on the conduct
and on the estimation of England. At such a moment,
it is difficult to say whether by their sins of speech or
of action our statesmen are most effectually playing into
the hands of our enemies, and giving most color of
justice to injurious misconception of our character and
policy as a people.
To take the sins of speech first: What is the sort of
language held in every oration, which, during the pres-
~ent European crisis, any English minister, or almost any
considerable public man, addresses to Parliament or to
his constituents? The eternal repetition of this shabby
refrain, —-" We did not interfere, because no English
interest was involved ;” " We ought not to interfere
where no English interest is concerned.” England is
thus exhibited as a country whose most distinguished
men are not ashamed to profess, as politicians, a rule
of action which no one, not utterly base, could endure
to be accused of as the maxim by which he guides his
private life, — not to move a finger for others unless he
sees his private advantage in it. There is much to be
said for the doctrine, that a nation should be willing to
assist its neighbors in throwing off oppression and gain-
ing free institutions. Much also may be said by those
who maintain that one nation is incompetent to judge
and act for another, and that each should be left to help
itself, and seek advantage or submit to disadvantage as
it can and will. But, of all attitudes which a nation
can take upon the subject of intervention, the meanest
and worst is to profess that it interferes only when it
can serve its own objects by it. Every other nation is
244 A FEW WORDS 0N NON-INTERVENTION.
entitled to say, " It seems, then, that non-interference
is not a matter of principle with you. When you ab-
stain from interference, it is not because you think
it wrong. You have no objection to inferfere, only it
must not be for the sake of those you interfere with: they
must not suppose that you have any regard for their
good. The good of others is not one of the things you
care for ; but you are willing to meddle, if by meddling
you can gain any thing for yourselves.” Such is the
obvious interpretation Of the language used.
There is scarcely any necessity to say, writing to
Englishmen, that this is not what our rulers and poli-
ticians really mean. Their language is not a correct
exponent of their thoughts. They mean a part only
of what they seem to say. They do mean to disclaim
interference for the sake of doing good to foreign
nations. They are quite sincere and in earnest in re-
pudiating this. But the other half of what their words
express, a willingness to meddle, if by doing so they
can promote any interest of England, they do not mean.
The thought they have in their minds is, not the interest
of England, but her security. What they would
say is, that they are ready to act when England’s
safety is threatened, or any of her interests hostilely or
unfairly endangered. This is no more than what all
nations, sufficiently powerful for their own protection,
do, and no one questions their right to do. It is the
common right of self-defence. But, if we mean this,
why, in Heaven’s name, do we take every possible
opportunity of saying, instead of this, something ex-
ceedingly different? Not self-defence, but aggrandize-
ment, is the sense which foreign listeners put upon our
A FEW 'WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION. 245
words. Not simply to protect what we have, and that
merely against unfair arts, not against fair rivality,
but to add to it more and more without limit, is the
purpose for which foreigners think we claim the liberty
of intermeddlin g with them and their affairs. If our
actions make it impossible for the most prejudiced
observer to believe that we aim at or would accept any
sort of mercantile monopolies, this has no effect on
their minds but to make them think that we have chosen
a more cunning way to the same end. It is a generally
accredited opinion among Continental politicians, espe-
cially those who think themselves particularly knowing,
that the very existence of England depends upon the
incessant acquisition of new markets for our manufac-
tures ; that the chase after these is an affair of life and
death to us; and that we are at all times ready to
trample on every obligation of public or international
morality, when the alternative would be, pausing for a
moment in that race. It would be superfluous to point
out what profound ignorance and misconception of all
the laws of national wealth, and all the facts of Eng-
land’s commercial condition, this opinion presupposes:
but such ignorance and misconception are unhappily
very general on the Continent; they are but Slowly, if
perceptibly, giving way before the advance of reason;
and for generations, perhaps, to come, we shall be
judged under their influence. IS it requiring too much
from our practical politicians to wish that they would
sometimes hear these things in mind? Does it answer
any good purpose to express ourselves as if we did not
scruple to profess that which we not merely scruple to
do, but the bare idea of doing which never crosses our
8
246 A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION.
minds? Why should we abnegate the character we
might with truth lay claim to, of being incomparably
the most conscientious of all nations in our national
acts? Of all countries which are sufficiently powerful to
be capable of being dangerous to their neighbors, we
are perhaps the only one whom mere scruples of con-
science would suffice to deter from it. We are the only
people among whom, by no class whatever of society, is
the interest or glory of the nation considered to be any
sufficient excuse for an unjust act; the only one which
regards with jealousy and suspicion, and a proneness to
hostile criticism, precisely those acts of its government
which in other countries are sure to be hailed with
applause, -—those by which territory has been acquired,
or political influence extended. Being in reality better
than other nations, in at least the negative part of inter-
national morality, let us cease, by the language we use,
to give ourselves out as worse.
But, if we ought to be careful of our language, a thou-
sand times more obligatory is it upon us to be careful
of our deeds, and not suffer ourselves to be betrayed
by any of our leading men into a line of conduct, on
some isolated point, utterly opposed to our habitual
principles of action, —conduct such, that, if it were a
fair specimen of us, it would verify the calumnies of
our worst enemies, and justify them in representing
not only that we have no regard for the good of other
nations, but that we actually think their good and our
own incompatible, and will go all lengths to prevent
others from realizing even an advantage in which we
ourselves are to share. This pernicious, and, one
can scarcely help calling it, almost insane blunder,
D
A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION. 247
we seem to be committing on the subject of the Suez
Canal.
It is the universal belief in France, that English
influence at Constantinople, strenuously exerted to de-
feat this project, is the real and only invincible obstacle
to its being carried into effect. And unhappily the
public declarations of our present Prime Minister not
only bear out this persuasion, but warrant the assertion,
that we oppose the work, because, in the opinion of our
government, it would be injurious to the interest of
England. If such be the course we are pursuing, and
such the motive of it, and if nations have duties, even
negatives ones, towards the weal of the human race, it
is hard to say whether the folly or the immorality of
our conduct is the most painfully conspicuous.
Here is a project, the practicability of which is indeed
a matter in dispute, but of which no one has attempted
to deny, that, supposing it realized, it would give a
facility to commerce, and consequently a stimulus to
production, an encouragement to intercourse, and there—
fore to civilization, which would entitle it to a high rank
among the great industrial improvements of modern
times. The contriving of new means of abridging
labor and economizing outlay in the operations of in-
dustry is the object to which the larger half of all the
inventive ingenuity of mankind is at present given up ;
and this scheme, if realized, will save, on one of the
great highways of the world’s traffic, the circumnaviga-
tion of a continent. An easy access of commerce is
the main source of that material civilization, which, in
the more backward regions of the earth, is the necessary
condition and indispensable machinery of the moral;
248 A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION.
and this scheme reduces practically, by one half, the dis-
tance, commercially speaking, between the self-improv-
ing nations of the world and the most important and
valuable of the unimproving. The Atlantic Telegraph
is esteemed an enterprise of world-wide importance,
because it abridges the transit of mercantile intelligence
merely. What the Suez Canal would shorten is the
transport of the goods themselves, and this to such an
extent as probably to augment it manifold.
Let us suppose, then, —for, in the present day, the
hypothesis is too un-English to be spoken of as any
thing more than a supposition, —let us suppose that
the English nation saw in this great benefit to the civil-
ized and uncivilized world a danger or damage to some
peculiar interest of England. Suppose, for example,
that it feared, by shortening the road, to facilitate the
access of foreign navies to its Oriental possessions.
The supposition imputes no ordinary degree of cow-
ardice and imbecility to the national mind; otherwise it
could not but reflect, that the same thing which would
facilitate the arrival of an enemy would facilitate also
that of succor; that we have had French fleets in the
Eastern seas before now, and have fought naval battles
with them there nearly a century ago; that, if we ever
become unable to defend India against them, we shall
assuredly have them there, without the aid of any canal ;
and that our power of resisting an enemy does not
depend upon putting a little more or less of Obstacle in
the way of his coming, but upon the amount of force
which we are able to oppose to him when come. Let us
assume, however, that the success of the project would
do more harm to England in some separate capacity,
A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION. 249
than the good which, as the chief commercial nation,
she would reap from the great increase of commercial
intercourse. Let us grant this; and I now ask, What
then? Is there any morality, Christian or secular,
which bears out a nation in keeping all the rest of man-
kind out of some great advantage, because the conse-
quences of their obtaining it may be to itself, in some
imaginable contingency, a cause of inconvenience? Is
a nation at liberty to adopt as a practical maxim, that
what is good for the human race is bad for itself, and
to withstand it accordingly? What is this but to
declare that its interest and that of mankind are incom-
patible; that, thus far at least, it is the enemy of the
human race? And what ground has it of complaint, if,
in return, the human race determine to be its enemies?
S0 wicked a principle, avowed and acted on by a nation,
would entitle the rest of the world to unite in a league
against it, and never to make peace until they had, if
not reduced it to insignificance, at least sufficiently
broken its power to disable it from ever again placing
its own self-interest before the general prosperity of
mankind.
There is no such base feeling in the British people.
They are accustomed to see their advantage in forward-
ing, not in keeping back, the growth in wealth and
civilization of the world. The opposition to the Suez
Canal has never been a national opposition. With their
usual indifference to foreign affairs, the public in general
have not thought about it, but have left it, as (unless
when particularly excited) they leave all the manage-
ment of their foreign policy, to those who, from causes
and reasons connected only with internal politics, hap-
250 A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION.
pen for the time to be in office. Whatever has been
done in the name of England in the Suez affair has
been the act of individuals; mainly, it is probable, of
one individual; scarcely any of his countrymen either
prompting or sharing his purpose, and most of those,
who have paid any attention to the subject (unfortu-
nately a very small number), being, to all appearance,
opposed to him.
But (it is said) the scheme cannot be executed. If
so, why concern ourselves about it? If the project can
come to nothing, why profess gratuitous immorality and
incur gratuitous odium to prevent it from being tried?
Whether it will succeed or fail is a consideration totally
irrelevant; except thus far, that, if it is sure to fail,
there is in our resistance to it the same immorality, and
an additional amount of folly; since, on that supposi-
tion, we are parading to the world a belief that our
interest is inconsistent with its good; while, if the failure
of the project would really be any benefit to us, we are
certain of obtaining that benefit by merely holding our
peace.
As a matter of private opinion, the present writer,
so far as he has looked into the evidence, inclines to
agree with those who think that the scheme cannot be
executed, at least by the means and with the funds pro-
posed. But this is a consideration for the shareholders.
The British Government does not deem it any part of
its business to prevent individuals, even British citizens,
from wasting their own money in unsuccessful specula—
tions, though holding out no prospect of great public
usefulness in the event of success; and if, though at
the cost of their own property, they acted as pioneers
A FEW WORDS 0N NON-INTERVENTION. 251
to others, and the scheme, though a losing one to those
who first undertook it, should, in the same or in other
hands, realize the full expected amount of ultimate
benefit to the world at large, it would not be the first
nor the hundredth time that an unprofitable enterprise
has had this for its final result.
There seems to be no little need that the whole doc-
trine of non-interference with foreign nations should be
reconsidered, if it can be said to have as yet been con-
sidered as a really moral question at all. We have
heard something lately about being willing to go to war
for an idea. To go to war for an idea, if the war is
aggressive, not defensive, is as criminal as to go to war
for territory or revenue; for it is as little justifiable to
force our ideas on other people as to compel them
to submit to our will in any other respect. But there
assuredly are cases in which it is allowable to go to
war, without having been ourselves attacked, or threat-
ened with attack; and it is very important that nations
should make up their minds in time as to what these
cases are. There are few questions which more require
to be taken in hand by ethical and political philosophers,
with a view to establish some rule or criterion whereby
the justifiableness of intervening in the affairs of other
countries, and what is sometimes fully as questionable)
the justifiableness of refraining from intervention, may
be brought to a definite and rational test. WVhoever
attempts this will be led to recognize more than one
fundamental distinction, not yet by any means familiar
to the public mind, and, in general, quite lost sight of by
those who write in strains of indignant morality on the
252 A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION.
subject. There is a great difference (for example)
between the case in which the nations concerned are Of
the same, or something like the same, degree of civili-
zation, and that in which one of the parties to the situa-
tion is of a high, and the other of a very low, grade
of social improvement. To suppose that the same
international customs, and the same rules of interna-
tional morality, can obtain between one civilized nation
and another, and between civilized nations and barba-
rians, is a grave error, and one which no statesman can
fall into, however it may be with those, who, from a
safe and unresponsible position, criticise statesmen.
Among many reasons why the same rules cannot be
applicable to situations so different, the two following
are among the most important. In the first place, the
rules of ordinary international morality imply recipro-
city. But barbarians will not reciprocate. They can-
not be depended on for observing any rules. Their
minds are not capable of so great an effort, nor their
will sufficiently under the influence of distant motives.
In the next place, nations which are still barbarous
have not got beyond the period during which it is likely
to be for their benefit that they Should be conquered and
held in subjection by foreigners. Independence and
nationality, so essential to the due growth and develop-
ment of a people further advanced in improvement, are
generally impediments to theirs. The sacred duties
which civilized nations owe to the independence and
nationality of each .other are not binding towards those
to whom nationality and independence are either a cer-
tain evil, or, at best, a questionable good. The Romans
were not the most clean-handed of conquerors; yet
A FEW WORDS ON NON—INTERVENTION. 253
would it have been better for Gaul and Spain, Nu-
midia and Dacia, never to have formed part of the
Roman Empire? To characterize any conduct what-
ever towards a barbarous people as a violation of the
law of nations, only shows that he who so speaks has
never considered the subject. A violation of great
principles of morality it may easily be ; but barbarians
have no rights as a nation, except a right to such treat-
ment as may, at the earliest possible period, fit them
for becoming one. The only moral laws fof the rela-
tion between a civilized and a barbarous government
are the universal rules of morality between man and
man.
The criticisms, therefore, which are so often made
upon the conduct of the French in Algeria, or of the
English in India, proceed, it would seem, mostly on a
wrong principle. The true standard by which to judge
their proceedings never having been laid down, they
escape such comment and censure as might really have
an improving effect ; while they are tried by a standard
which can have no influence on those practically engaged
in such transactions, knowing as they do that it cannot,
and, if it could, ought not to be observed, because no
human being would be the better, and many much the
worse, for its observance. A civilized government can-
not help having barbarous neighbors: when it has, it
cannot always content itself with a defensive position,—
one of mere resistance to aggression. After a longer
or shorter interval of forbearance, it either finds itself
obliged to conquer them, or to assert so much authority
over them, and so break their spirit, that they gradually
sink into a state of dependence upon itself; and, when
254 A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION.
that time arrives, they are indeed no longer formidable
to it, but it has had so much to do with setting up and
pulling down their governments, and they have grown
so accustomed to lean on it, that it has become morally
responsible for all evil it allows them to do. This is
the history of the relations of the British Government
with the native States of India. It never was secure in
its own Indian possessions until it had reduced the mili-
tary power of those States to a nullity. But a despotic
government only exists by its military power. When
we had taken away theirs, we were forced, by the neces-
sity of the case, to offer them ours instead of it. To
enable them to dispense with large armies of their own,
we bound ourselves to place at their disposal, and they
bound themselves to receive, such an amount of military
force as made us, in fact, masters of the country. We
engaged that this force should fulfil the purposes of a
force, by defending the prince against all foreign and
internal enemies. But being thus assured of the pro-
tection of a civilized power, and freed from the fear of
internal rebellion or foreign conquest,-—the only checks
which either restrain the passions or keep any vigor in
the character of an Asiatic despot, -—the native govern-
ments either became so oppressive and extortionate as
to desolate the countr , or fell into such a state of nerve-
less imbecility, that every one subject to their will, who
had not the means of defending himself by his own
armed followers, was the prey of anybody who had a
band of ruffians in his pay. The British Government
felt this deplorable state of things to be its own work;
being the direct consequence of the position in which,
for its own security, it had placed itself towards the
A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION. 255
native governments. Had it permitted this to go on
indefinitely, it would have deserved to be accounted
among the worst political malefactors. In some cases
(unhappily not in all), it had endeavored to take pre-
caution against these mischiefs by a special article in
the treaty, binding the prince to reform his administra-
tion, and in future to govern in conformity to the advice
of the British Government. Among the treaties in
which a provision of this sort had been inserted was
that with Oude. For fifty years and more did the
British Government allow this engagement to be treated
with entire disregard, — not without frequent remon-
strances, and occasionally threats, but without ever car-
rying into effect what it threatened. During this period
of half a century, England was morally accountable
for a mixture of tyranny and anarchy, the picture of
which, by men who knew it well, is appalling to all
who read it. The act by which the Government of
British India at last set aside treaties which had been so
pertinaciously violated, and assumed the power of ful-
filling the obligation it had SO long before incurred, of
giving to the people of Oude a tolerable government,
far from being the political crime it is so often igno—
rantly called, was a criminally tardy discharge of an
imperative duty. And the fact, that nothing which had
been done in all this century by the East-India Com-
pany’s Government made it so unpopular in England,
is one of the most striking instances of what was noticed
in a former part of this article, —-the predisposition of
English public opinion to look unfavorably upon every
act by. which territory or revenues are acquired from
foreign States, and to take part with any government,
256 A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION.
however unworthy, which can make out the merest
semblance of a case of injustice against our own
country.
But among civilized peoples, members of an equal
community of nations, like Christian Europe, the ques-
tion assumes another aspect, and must be decided on
totally different principles. It would be an affront to
the reader to discuss the immorality of wars of con-
quest, or of conquest even as the consequence of lawful
war; the' annexation of any Civilized people to the
dominion of another, unless by their own spontaneous
election. Up to this point, there is no difference of
opinion among honest people; nor on the wickedness
of commencing an aggressive war for any interest of
our own, except when necessary to avert from ourselves
an obviously impending wrong. The disputed question
is that of interfering in the regulation of another coun-
try’s internal concerns,--the question whether a nation
is justified in taking part, on either side, in the civil
wars or party contests of another ; and, chiefly, whether
it may justifiably aid the people of another country in
struggling for liberty; or may impose on a country any
particular government or institutions, either as being
best for the country itself, or as necessary for the secu-
rity of its neighbors.
Of these cases, that of a people in arms for liberty is
the only one of any nicety, or which, theoretically at
least, is likely to present conflicting moral considera-
tions. The other cases which have been mentioned
hardly admit of discussion. Assistance to the govern-
ment of a country in keeping down the people, unhap-
pily by far the most frequent case of foreign intervention,
A FEW WORDS ’ON NON-INTERVENTION. 257
no one writing in a free country needs take the trouble
of stigmatizing. A government which needs foreign
support to enforce obedience from its own citizens is
one which ought not to exist; and the assistance given
to it by foreigners is hardly ever any thing but the sym-
pathy of one despotism with another. A case requiring
consideration is that of a protracted civil war, in which
the contending parties are so equally balanced, that there
is no probability of a speedy issue; or, if there is, the
victorious side cannot hope to keep down the vanquished
but by severities repugnant to humanity, and injurious
to the permanent welfare of the country. In this excep-
tional case it seems now to be an admitted doctrine, 'that
the neighboring nations, or one powerful neighbor with
the acquiescence of the rest, are warranted in demand-
ing that the contest Shall cease, and a reconciliation take
place on equitable terms of compromise. Intervention
of this description has been repeatedly practised during
the present generation, with such general approval, that
its legitimacy may be considered to have passed into a
maxim of what is called international law. The inter-
ference of the European Powers between Greece and
Turkey, and between Turkey and Egypt, were cases in
point. That between Holland and Belgium was still
more so. The intervention of England in Portugal a
few years ago, which is probably less remembered than
the others, because it took effect without the employment
of actual force, belongs to the same category. At the
time, this interposition had the appearance of a bad and
dishonest backing of the government against the people,
being so timed as to hit the exact moment when the pop-
ular party had obtained a marked advantage, and seemed
VOL. 111. 17
258 A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION.
on the eve of overthrowing the government, or redu-
cing it to terms. But, if ever a political act which
looked ill in the commencement could be justified by
the event, this was : for, as the fact turned out, instead
of giving ascendency to a party, it proved a really heal-
ing measure; and the chiefs of the so-called rebellion
were, within a few years, the honored and successful
ministers of the throne against which they had so lately
fought.
YVith respect to the question, whether one country is
justified in helping the people of another in a struggle
against their government for free institutions, the answer
will be different according as the yoke which the people
are attempting to throw off is that of a purely native
government, or of foreigners; considering as one of
foreigners every government which maintains itself by
foreign support. When the contest is only with native
rulers, and with such native strength as those rulers can
enlist in their defence, the answer I Should give to the
question of the legitimacy of intervention is, as a gen-
eral rule, No. The reason is, that there can seldom be
any thing approaching to assurance, that intervention,
even if successful, would be for the good of the people
themselves. The only test possessing any real value,
of a people’s having become fit for popular institutions,
is, that they, or a sufficient portion of them to prevail in
the contest, are willing to brave labor and danger for
their liberation. I know all that may be said. I know
it may be urged, that the virtues of freemen cannot be
learnt in the school of slavery; and that, if a people are
not fit for freedom, to have any chance of becoming so
they must first be free. And this would be conclusive,
A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION. 259
if the intervention recommended would really give them
freedom. But the evil is, that, if they have not suffi-
cient love of liberty to be able to wrest it from merely
domestic oppressors, the liberty which is bestowed on
them by other' hands than their own will have nothing
real, nothing permanent. No people ever was and
remained free, but because it was determined to be so ;
because neither its rulers nor any other party in the nation
could compel it to be otherwise. If a people—espe-
cially one whose freedom has not yet become prescrip-
tive— does not value it sufficiently to fight for it, and
maintain it against any force which can be mustered
within the country, even by those who have the com-
mand of the public revenue, it is only a question in
how few years or months that people will be enslaved.
Either the government which it has given to itself, or
some military leader or knot of conspirators who con-
trive to subvert the government, will speedily put an
end to all popular institutions; unless, indeed, it suits
their convenience better to leave them standing, and be
content with reducing them to mere forms: for, unless
the spirit of liberty is strong in a people, those who
have the executive in their hands easily work any insti-
tutions to the purposes of despotism. There is no sure
guaranty against this deplorable issue, even in a coun-
try which has achieved its own freedom; as may be
seen in the present day by striking examples both in the
Old and New Worlds: but, when freedom has been
achieved for them, they have little prospect indeed of
escaping this fate. \Vhen a people has had themis—
fortune to be ruled by a ,government under which the
feelings and the virtues needful for maintaining freedom
260 A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION.
could not develop themselves, it is during an arduous
struggle to become free by their own efforts that these
feelings and virtues have the best chance Of springing
up. Men become attached to that which they have
long fought for, and made sacrifices for; they learn to
appreciate that on which their thoughts have been much
engaged ; and a contest in which many have been called
on to devote themselves for their country is a school
in which they learn to value their country’s interest
above their own.
It can seldom, therefore, —-I will not go so far as to
say never, -—be either judicious or right, in a country
which has a free government, to assist, otherwise than
by-the moral support of its opinion, the endeavors of
another to extort the same blessing from its native
rulers. We must except, of course, any case in which
such assistance is a measure of legitimate self-defence.
If (a contingency by no means unlikely to occur) this
country, on account of its freedom, which is a standing
reproach to despotism everywhere, and an encourage-
ment to throw it Off, should find itself menaced with
attack by a coalition of Continental despots, it ought to
consider the popular party in every nation of the Con-
tinent as its natural ally: the Liberals should be to it
what the Protestants of Europe were to the Govern-
ment of Queen Elizabeth. So, again, when a nation,
in her own defence, has gone to war with a despot, and
has had the rare good fortune, not only to succeed in her
resistance, but to hold the conditions of peace in her own
hands, she is entitled to say that she will make no treaty,
unless with some other ruler than the one whose exist-
ence as such may be a perpetual menace to her safety
A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION. 261
and freedom. These exceptions do but set in a clearer
light the reasons of the rule; because they do not de-
pend on any failure of those reasons, but on considera-
tions paramount to them, and coming under a different
principle.
But the case of a people struggling against a for-
eign yoke, or against a native tyranny upheld by foreign
arms, illustrates the reasons for non-intervention in an
opposite way ; for, in this case, the reasons themselves do
not exist. A people the most attached to freedom, the
most capable of defending and of making a good use of
free institutions, may be unable to contend successfully
for them against the military strength of another nation
much more powerful. To assist a people thus kept
down is not to disturb the balance of forces on which
the permanent maintenance of freedom in a country
depends, but to redress that balance when it is already
unfairly and violently disturbed. The doctrine of non-
intervention, to be a legitimate principle of morality,
must be accepted by all governments. The despots
must consent to be bound by it as well as the free States.
Unless they do, the profession of it by free countries
comes but to this miserable issue,-—that the wrong
Side may help the wrong, but the right must not help
the right. Intervention to enforce non-intervention is
always rightful, always moral, if not always prudent.
Though it be a mistake to give freedom to a people who
do not value the boon, it cannot but be right to insist,
that, if they do value it, they shall not be hindered from
the pursuit of it by foreign coercion. It might not
have been right for England (even apart from the ques-
tion of prudence) to have taken part with Hungary in
262 A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION.
its noble struggle against Austria, although the Aus-
trian Government in Hungary was in some sense a
foreign yoke. But when, the Hungarians having Shown
themselves likely to prevail in this struggle, the Russian
despot interposed, and, joining his force to that of
Austria, delivered back the Hungarians, bound hand
and foot, to their exasperated oppressors, it would have
been an honorable and virtuous act on the part of Eng-
land to have declared that this should not be ; and that,
if Russia gave assistance to the wrong Side, England
would aid the right. It might not have been consistent
with the regard which every nation is bound to pay to
its own safety for England to have taken up this posi-
tion single-handed. But England'and France together
could have done it : and, if they had, the Russian armed
intervention would never have taken place, or would
have been disastrous to Russia alone; while all that
those powers gained by not doing it was that they had
to fight Russia five years afterwards, under more diffi-
cult circumstances, and without Hungary for an ally.
The first nation, which, being powerful enough to make
its voice effectual, has the spirit and courage to say that
not a gun shall be fired in Europe by the soldiers of
one power against the revolted subjeCts of another,
will be the idol of the friends of freedom throughout
Europe. That declaration alone will insure the almost
immediate emancipation of every people which desires
liberty sufficiently to be capable of maintaining it; ‘and
the nation which gives the word will soon find itself at
the head of an alliance of free peoples, so strong as to
defy the efforts of any number of confederated despots
to bring it down. The prize is too glorious not to
A FEW WORDS ON NON-INTERVENTION. 263
be snatched sooner or later by some free country; and
the time may not be distant, when England, if She
does not take this heroic part because of its heroism,
will be compelled to take it from consideration for her
own safety.
264 ~
THE SLAVE POWERF"
THIS volume has a twofold claim to attention, —- on the
author’s account, and on its own. Mr. Cairnes, one of
the ablest of the distinguished men who have given lustre
to the much-calumniated Irish colleges, as well as to
the chair of Political Economy, which Ireland owes to
the enlightened public spirit of Archbishop Whately, is
known to the thinking part of the public as the contribu—
tor to English periodicals of the clearest and most con-
clusive discussions which have yet appeared on some
of the most disputed and difficult economical questions of
the time. He has now, in a work of larger dimensions,
given the result of the study, which, both as a first-rate
political economist, and in the higher character of a
moral and political philosopher, he has devoted to the
American contest. A work more needed, or one better
adapted to the need, could scarcely have been produced
at the present time. It contains more than enough to
give a new turn to English feeling on the subject,
if those who guide and sway public opinion were ever
* The Slave Power; its Character, Career, and Probable Designs: being
an Attempt to explain the real Issues involved in the American Contest.
By J. E. Cairnes, l\I.A., Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economyin
Queen’s College, Galway; and late Whately Professor of Political Economy
in the University of Dublin. London: 1862.
Westminster Review, October, 1862.
THE SLAVE POWER. 265
likely to reconsider a question‘ on which they have so
deeply committed themselves. To all who are still open
to conviction, it is an invaluable exposition both of the
principles and the facts of the case. The last is as
much required as the first; for the strange partiality of
the nation which most abhors negro slavery to those
who are urging an internecine war solely for its propa-
gation could not have existed for a moment, had there
not been, not merely a complete misunderstanding of
principles, but an utter ignorance of facts.
We believe that we shall, on the present occasion, do
a better service to truth and right by helping to extend
the knowledge of the contents of Mr. Cairnes’s treatise
than by any comments of our own. Mr. Cairnes opens
up the question in so lucid and natural an order, and so
exhausts it in all its more important aspects, that a
mere condensation of his book would be the most power-
ful argumentative discourse on the subject which cOuld
well be given in the narrow compass of an article. Not
that, as is the case with lax and diffuse writers, his
argument gains by condensation: on the contrary, it
loses greatly. In Mr. Cairnes’s book there is nothing
verbose, nothing superfluous; the effect is nowhere weak-
ened by expansion, nor the impression of the whole
frittered away by undue expatiating on parts : the work
is artistic as well as scientific, observing due proportion ;
dwelling long enough, and not too long, on each por-
tion of the subject, and 'passing to a new point exactly
when the mind is prepared for it, by having completely
appropriated those preceding. An attempt to convey
the substance of such a composition in an abridged
form may give some idea of the skeleton, but none of
266 THE SLAVE POWER.
the nerve and muscle: the greatest merit which it could
have would be that of stimulating the reader to have
recourse to Mr. Cairnes’s own pages.
After sweeping away the idle notion, which never
could have been entertained by any one conversant with
even the surface of American history, that the quarrel
is about tariffs, or any thing whatever except slavery,
Mr. Cairnes proceeds to the main thesis of his book;
viz., that the Slave Power, whose character and aims
are the cause of the American contest, is " the most
formidable antagonist to civilized progress which has
appeared for many centuries, representing a system of
society at once retrograde and aggressive, — a system,
which, containing within it no germs from which im-
provement can spring, gravitates inevitably towards
barbarism, while it is impelled by exigencies inherent in
its position and circumstances to a constant extension
of its territorial domain.” This is what a man of distin-
guished ability, who‘ has deeply considered the subject,
thinks of the new power, which England, by the moral
influence of its opinion and sympathies, is helping to
raise up. " The vastness,” he continues, " of the inter-
ests at stake in the American contest, regarded under
this aspect, appears to me to be very inadequately con-
ceived in this country; and the purpose of the present
work is to bring forward this view of the case more
prominently than has yet been done.”
Accordingly, in the first place, Mr. Cairnes expounds
the economic necessities under which the Slave Power
is placed by its fundamental institution. Slavery, as
an industrial system, is not capable of being everywhere
profitable. It requires peculiar conditions. Originally
THE SLAVE POWER. 267
a common feature of all the Anglo-Saxon settlements in
America, it took root and became permanent only in the
southern portion of them. What is the explanation of
this fact? Several causes have been assigned. One is,
diversity of character in the original founders of those
communities ; New England having been principally
colonized by the middle and poorer classes, Virginia and
Carolina by the higher. The fact was SO : but it goes a
very little way towards the explanation of the phenom-
enon, since " it is certain the N ew-Englanders were
not withheld from employing slaves by moral scruples ;”
and, if Slave labor had been found suitable for the re-
quirements of the country, they would, without doubt,
have adopted it in fact, as they actually did in principle.
Another common explanation of the different fortune
of Slavery in the Northern and in the Southern States
is, that the Southern climate is not adapted to white
laborers, and that negroes will not work without slavery.
The latter half of this statement is opposed to fact;
Negroes are willing to work wherever they have the
natural inducements to it, inducements equally indispen-
sable to the white race. The climate theory is inappli-
cable to the Border Slave States, -— Kentucky, Virginia,
and others,——whose climate " is remarkably genial, and
perfectly suited to the industry of Europeans.” Even
in the Gulf States, the alleged fact is only true, as it is
in all other parts of the world, of particular locali-
ties. The Southern States, it is observed by M. de
Tocqueville, " are not hotter than the south of Italy and
Spain.” In Texas itself, there is a flourishing colony
of free Germans, who carry on all the occupations of
the country, growth of cotton included, by white labor;
-268 THE SLAVE POWER.
and " nearly all the heavy out-door work in the city of
New Orleans is performed by whites.”
WVhat the success or failure of slavery as an indus-
trial system depends on is the adaptation of the pro;
ductive industry of the country to the qualities and
defects of slave labor. There are kinds of cultivation,
which, even in tropical regions, cannot advantageously
be carried on by slaves : there are others, in which, as a
mere matter of profit, slave labor has the advantage
over the only kind of free labor, which, as a matter
of fact, comes into competition with it, --the labor of
peasant proprietors.
The economic advantage of slave labor is, that it
admits of complete organization: " it may be combined
on an extensive scale, and directed by a controlling
mind to a single end.” Its defects are, that it is given
reluctantly; it is unskilful ; it is wanting in versatility.
Being given reluctantlv. it can onlv be depended on as
long as the slave is watched; but the cost of watching
is too great if the workmen are dispersed over a widely
extended area: their concentration, or, in other words, +
the employment of many workmen at the same time
and place, is a condition sine gnd‘ non of Slavery as an
industrial system; while, to enable it to compete suc-
cessfully with the intense industry and thrift of work-
men who enjoy the entire fruits of their own labor, this
concentration and combination of labor must be not
merely possible, but also economically preferable. The
second disadvantage of slave labor is that it is unskil-
ful; " not only because the slave, having no interest in
his work, has no inducement to exert his higher facul-
ties, but because, from the ignorance to which he is
THE SLAVE POWER. 269
of necessity condemned, he is incapable of doing so.”
This disqualification restricts the profitableness of Slavery
to the case of purely unskilled labor. " The Slave is
unsuited for all branches of industry which require the
slightest care, forethought, or dexterity. He cannot
be made to co-operate with machinery ; he can only be
trusted with the commonest implements; he is incapable
of all but the rudest labor.” The third defect of slave
labor is but a form of the second, —-its want of versa-
tility. " The difficulty of teaching the Slave any thing
is so great, that the only chance of turning his labor to
profit, is, when he has once learned a lesson, to keep
him to that lesson for life. Where slaves, therefore,
are employed, there can be no variety of production.
If tobacco be cultivated, tobacco becomes the sole sta-
ple, and tobacco is produced, whatever be the state of
the market, and whatever be the condition of the soil.”
All this, not as matter of theory merely, but of actual
daily experience in the Southern States, is superabun-
dantly proved, as Mr. Cairnes shows, by Southern
, testimony.
It follows, first, that slave labor is unsuited for manu-
factures, and can only, in competition with free labor,
be profitably carried on in a community exclusively
agricultural. Secondly, that, even among agricultural
employments, it is unsuited to those in which the labor-
ers are, or without great economical disadvantage can
be, dispersed over a wide surface; among which are
nearly all kinds of cereal cultivation, including the two
great staples of the Free States, —- maize and wheat.
"A single laborer can cultivate twenty acres of wheat
or Indian corn, while he cannot manage more than two
270 THE SLAVE POWER.
Q
of tobacco, or three of cotton.” Tobacco and cotton
admit, therefore, the possibility of working large num-
bers within a limited space; and, as they also benefit in
a far greater degree than wheat or maize by combina-
tion and classification of labor, the characteristic advan-
tage of slave labor is at the highest, while its greatest
drawback, the high cost of superintendence, is reduced
to the minimum. It is to these kinds of cultivation,
together with sugar and rice, that, in America, slave
labor is practically confined. Wherever, even in the
Southern States, " the external conditions are especially
favorable to cereal crops, as in parts of Virginia,
Kentucky, and Missouri, and along the slopes of the
Alleghanies, there slavery has always failed to maintain
itself.”
But a kind of cultivation suitable to it is not the only
condition which the slave system requires in order to be
economically profitable. It demands, in addition, an
unlimited extent of highly fertile land. This arises
from the other two infirrnities of slave labor, ——its un—
skilfulness, and its want of versatility. This point being .
of the very highest importance, and the foundation of
the author’s main argument, we give the statement of it
in his own words :—
“ When the soils are not of good quality, cultivation needs
to be elaborate; a larger capital is expended; and, with the
increase of capital, the processes become more varied, and the
agricultural implements of a finer and more delicate construc-
tion. With such implements Slaves cannot be trusted, and
for such processes they are unfit. It is only, therefore, where
the natural fertility of the soil is so great as to compensate for
the inferiority of the cultivation, where nature does so much
THE SLAVE POWER. 271
as to leave little for art, and to supersede the necessity of the
more difficult contrivances of industry, that slave labor can
be turned to profitable account.
“ Further: slavery, as a permanent system, has need not
merely of a fertile soil, but of a practically unlimited extent
of it. This arises from the defect of slave labor in point of
versatility. As has been already remarked, the difficulty
of teaching the slave any thing is so great,—the result of the
compulsory ignorance in which he is kept, combined with
want of intelligent interest in his work,-—that the only
chance of rendering his labor profitable, is, when he has once
learned a lesson, to keep him to that lesson for life. Accord-
ingly, Where agricultural operations are carried on by slaves,
the business of each gang is always restricted to the raising
of a single product. Whatever crop be best suited to the
character of the soil and the nature of Slave industry, whether
cotton, tobacco, sugar, or rice, that crop is cultivated, and that
crop only. Rotation of crops is thus precluded by the con-
ditions of the case. The soil is tasked again and again to
yield the same product, and the inevitable result follows.
After a short series of years, its fertility is completely ex-
hausted; the planter abandons the ground which he has ren—
dered worthless, and passes on to seek in new soils for that
fertility under which alone the agencies at his disposal can be
profitably employed.” —— pp. 53—56.
Accordingly, the ruin, and in many cases the aban-
donment to nature, of what were once the most pro—
ductive portions of the older Slave States, 'are facts
palpable to the eye, .admitted and loudly proclaimed by
slaveholders. And hence that pressing demand for the
perpetual extension of the area of Slaver , that never-
ceasing tendency westward, and unceasing struggle for
the opening of fresh regions to slave-owners and their
272 THE SLAVE POWER.
human property, which has grown with the growth of
the cotton cultivation, and strengthened with its strength;
which produced the seizure of Texas, the war with
Mexico, the buccaneering expeditions to Central Amer-
ica, and the sanguinary contest for Kansas; which has
been the one determining principle of Southern politics
for the last quarter of a century; and because at last,
though tardily, resisted by the North, has decided the
Cotton States to break up the Union.
Such being the economic conditions of a Slave com-
munity like those of the Southern States, the author
proceeds to Show how this economic system gives rise
to a social and political organization tending in the
highest degree to aggravate the evils which emanate
originally from the economic system itself.
“ The Single merit of slave labor, as an industrial instru-
ment, consists, as we have seen, in its capacity for organization,
its susceptibility of being adjusted with precision to the kind
of work to be done, and of being directed on a comprehensive
plan towards some distinctly conceived end. N ow, to give
scope to this quality, the scale on which industry is carried on
must be extensive; and, to carry on industry on an extensive
scale, large capitals are required : ” moreover, a capitalist em-
ploying slave labor requires funds sufficient not merely to
maintain his Slaves, but to purchase their fee-simple from the
first. “ Owing to these causes, large capitals are, relatively to
small, more profitable, and are, at the same time, absolutely
more required, in countries of Slave than in countries of free
labor. It happens, however, that capital is in slave countries
a particularly scarce commodity, owing partly to the exclusion
from such countries of many modes of creating it—manufac-
tures and commerce, for example—Which are open to free
communities, and partly to what is also a consequence of the
THE SLAVE POWER. 273
institution,—the unthrifty habits of the upper classes. From
this state of things result two phenomena, which may be
regarded as typiCal of industry carried on by Slaves,--the
magnitude of the plantations, and the indebtedness of the
planters. Wherever negro slavery has prevailed in modern
times, these two phenomena will be found to exist. ‘Our
wealthier planters,’ says Mr. Clay, ‘are 'buying out their
poorer neighbors, extending their plantations, and adding to
their slave force. The wealthy few, who are able to live on
smaller profits, and to give their blasted fields some rest, are thus
pushing off the many who are merely independent! At the
same time, these wealthier planters are, it is well known, very
generally in debt; the forthcoming crops being for the most
part mortgaged to Northern capitalists, who make the needful
advances, and who thus become the instruments by which a
considerable proportion of the Slave labor of the South is main-
tained. The tendency of things, therefore, in slave countries,
is to a very unequal distribution of wealth. The large capi-
talists, having a steady advantage over their smaller competi-
tors, engross, with the progress of time, a larger and larger
proportion of the aggregate wealth of the country, and gradu-
ally acquire the control of its collective industry. Meantime,
amongst the ascendant class, a condition of general indebted-
ness prevails.”-—pp. 66—7 1.
Side by side with these great land and slave pro-
prietors grows up a white proletariat of the worst
kind, known in Southern phraseology as "mean whites,”
or " white trash.” The vast districts (becoming, under
the deteriorating effects of slave industry, constantly
larger) which are surrendered to nature, and relapse
into wilderness, --
“ Become the resort of a numerous horde of people, who,
too poor to keep slaves, and too proud to work, prefer a
VOL. III. 18
274 THE SLAVE POWER.
vagrant and precarious life spent in the desert, to engaging in
occupations which would associate them with the Slaves whom
they despise. In the Southern States, no less than five mil-
lions of human beings are now said to exist in this manner,
in a condition little removed from savage life, eking out a
wretched subsistence by hunting, .by fishing, by hiring them-
selves out for occasional jobs, by plunder. Combining the
restlessness and contempt for regular industry peculiar to the
savage with the vices of the proletai're of civilized communi-
ties, these people make up a class at once degraded and dan-
gerous; and, constantly re-enforced as they are by all that is
idle, worthless, and lawless among the population of the neigh-
boring States, form an inexhaustible preserve of ruffianism,
ready at hand for all the worst purposes of Southern ambi-
tion. The planters complain of these people for their idle-
ness, for corrupting their slaves, for their thievish propensities:
but they cannot dispense with them ; for in truth they perform
an indispensable function in the economy of slave societies, of
which they are at once the victims and the principal support-
ers. It is from their ranks that those filibustering expeditions
are recruited, which have been found so effective an instru-
ment in extending the domain of the Slave Power: they
furnish the ‘ Border Ruffians,’ who, in the colonization strug-
gle with the Northern States, contend with Freesoilers on the
Territories; and it is to their antipathy to the negroes that
the planters securely trust for repressing every attempt at
servile insurrection.” — pp. 7 5-7 6.
Such, then, is the constitution of society in the Slave
States: " it resolves itself into three classes,—-the slaves,
on whom devolves all the regular industry; the slave-
holders, who reap all its fruits ; and an idle and lawless
rabble, who live dispersed over vast plains in a condition
little removed from absolute barbarism.” Of a society
THE SLAVE POWER. 275
thus composed, the political structure is determined by
an inexorable law.
“ When the whole wealth of a country is monopolized by a
thirtieth part of its population, While the remainder are, by
physical or moral causes, consigned to compulsory poverty
and ignorance; when the persons composing the privileged
thirtieth part are all engaged in pursuits of the same kind,
subject to the influence of the same moral ideas, and identified
with the maintenance of the same species of property,—- politi-
cal power will of necessity reside with those in whom centre
the elements of such power, -— wealth, knowledge, and intelli-
gence,—-the small minority for whose exclusive benefit the
system exists. The polity of such a society must thus, in
essence, be an oligarchy, whatever he the particular mould
in which it is cast. Nor is this all. A society so organized
tends to develop with a peculiar intensity the distinctive Vices
of an oligarchy. In a country of free labor, whatever he the
form of government to which it is subject, the pursuits of
industry are various. Various interests, therefore, take root,
and parties grow up, which, regarding national questions from
various points of view, become centres of opposition, whether
against the undue pretensions of any one of their number, or
against those of a single ruler. It is not so in the Slave States.
That variety of interests which springs from the individual
impulses of a free population does not here exist. The ele-
ments of a political opposition are wanting. There is but one
party, but one set of men who are capable of acting together
in political concert. The rest is an undisciplined rabble.
From this state of things the only possible result is that which
we find,—a despotism, in the last degree unscrupulous and
impatient of control, wielded by the wealthy few. . . .
“To sum up in a few words the general results of the
foregoing discussion: the Slave Power—that power which
has long held the helm of government in the Union—is,
276 THE SLAVE POWER.
under the forms of a democracy, an uncontrolled despotism,
wielded by a compact oligarchy. Supported by the labor of
four millions of slaves, it rules a population of five millions
of whites, -—a population ignorant, averse to systematic indus-
try, and prone to irregular adventure. A system of society
more formidable for evil, more menacing to the best interests
of the human race, it is difficult to conceive.” —- pp. 85 to 87,
and 92.
Are there, in the social and political system which
has now been characterized, any elements of improve-
ment,-- any qualities which leave room for a reasonable
hope of the ultimate, however gradual, correction of its
inherent evils? Mr. Cairnes has conclusively shown
that the very reverse is the case. Instead of raising
themselves to the level of free societies, these commu-
nities are urged by the most imperious motives to drag
down, if possible, free societies to the level of them-
selves.
It may be thought, perhaps, that American slavery
will, from merely natural causes, share the fate of
slavery elsewhere. The institution of slavery was once
universal, but mankind have nevertheless improved:
the most progressive communities in the ancient and
modern world—the Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, media":-
val Europeans— have been afflicted with this scourge,
but, by the natural progress of improvement, have got
rid of it. And why, it may be said, should not this also
happen in the Southern States? and, if so, would not
an attempt to anticipate this natural progress, and make
emancipation move forward more rapidly than the prep—
aration for it, be full of mischief even to the oppressed
race itself?
THE SLAVE POWER. 27 7
Mr. Cairnes feels all the importance of this question ;
and no part of his book is more instructive or more
masterly than the chapter in which he grapples with it.
He shows that " between slavery as it existed in classi-
cal and medimval times, and the system which now
erects itself defiantly in North America,” there are such
deep-seated distinctions as render the analogy of the one
entirely inapplicable to the other.
The first distinction is the vital fact of the difference
in color between modern slaves and their masters. In
the ancient world, slaves, once freed, became an integral
part of free society: their descendants not only were
not a class apart, but were the main source from which
the members of the free community were recruited; and
no obstacle, legal or moral, existed to their attainment
of the highest social positions. In America, on the
contrary, the freed slave transmits the external brand
of his past degradation to all his descendants. However
worthy of freedom, they hear an awkward mark which
prevents them from becoming imperceptibly blended
with the mass of the flee; and, while that odious asso-
ciation lasts, it forms a great additional hinderance to the
enfranchisement, by their masters, of those whom, even
when enfranchised, the masters cannot endure to look
upon as their fellow-citizens.
But another difference between ancient and modern
slavery, which still more intimately affects the question
under discussion, arises from the immense development
of international commerce in modern times.
“ So long as each nation was in the main dependent on the
industry of its own members for the supply of its wants, a
278 THE SLAVE POWER.
strong motive would be present for the cultivation of the intel-
ligence, and the improvement of the condition, of the indus-
trial classes. The commodities which minister to comfort and
luxury cannot be produced without skilled labor; and skilled
labor implies a certain degree of mental cultivation, and a
certain progress in social respect. To attain success in the
more difficult industrial arts, the workman must respect his
vocation, must take an interest in his task; habits of care,
deliberation, forethought, must be acquired; in Short, there
must be such a general awakening of the faculties, intellectual
and moral, as, by leading men to a knowledge of their rights
and of the means of enforcing them, inevitably disqualifies
them for the servile condition. Now, this was the position in
which the slave-master found himself in the ancient world.
He was, in the main, dependent on the skill of his Slaves for
Obtaining whatever he required. He was, therefore, naturally
led to cultivate the faculties of his Slaves, and by consequence
to promote generally the improvement of their condition. His
progress in the enjoyment of the material advantages of civili-
zation depended directly upon their progress in knowledge
and social consideration. Accordingly, the education of slaves
was never prohibited in the ancient Roman world; and, in
point of fact, no small number of them enjoyed the advantage
of a high cultivation. ‘The youths of promising genius,’ says
Gibbon, ‘ were instructed in the arts and sciences; and almost
every profession, liberal and mechanical, might be found in
the household of an opulent senator.’ Modern slaveholders,
on the contrary, are independent of the Skill, and therefore
of the intelligence and social improvement, of their slave popu~
lation. They have only need to find a commodity which is
capable of being produced by crude labor, and at the same
time in large demand in the markets of the world; and, by
applying their slaves to the production of this, they may,
through an exchange with other countries, make it the means
of procuring for themselves Whatever they require. Cotton
THE SLAVE POWER. 279
and sugar, for example, are commodities which fulfil these
conditions: they may be raised by crude labor, and they are in
large demand throughout the world. Accordingly, Alabama
and Louisiana have only to employ their slaves in raising
these products, and they are enabled through their means to
command the industrial resources of all commercial nations.
Without cultivating one of the arts or refinements of civiliza-
tion, they can possess themselves of all its material comforts.
\Vithout employing an artisan, a manufacturer, a skilled
laborer of any sort, they can secure the products of the highest
manufacturing and mechanical skill.” —pp. 100-103.
There being thus no inducements for cultivating the
intelligence of slaves, the mighty motives which always
exist against suffering it to be cultivated have had full
play; and, in all the principal Slave States, teaching a
slave to read or write is rigorously prohibited, under
most severe penalties both to the teacher and the
taught.
There is yet another important distinction between
slavery in ancient and in modern times; namely, " the
place which the slave-trade fills in the organization of'
modern slavery. Trading in slaves was doubtless prac-
tised by the ancients, and with sufficient barbarity.
But we look in vain in the records of antiquity for a
traffic, which in extent, in systematic character, and,
above all, in the function discharged by it as the com-
mon support of countries breeding and consuming human
labor, can with justice be regarded as the analogue
of the modern slave-trade, —-of that organized system
which has been carried on between Guinea and the coast
of America; and of that between Virginia, the Guinea
of the New World, and the slave-consuming States of
280 THE SLAVE POWER.
the South and West.” The barbarous inhumanity of
the slave-trade has long been understood ; but what has
not been so often noticed is the mode in which it ope-
rates in giving increased coherence and stability to the
system of which it is a part,-—first, " by bringing the re-
sources of salubrious countries to supplement the waste
of human life in torrid regions; and, secondly, by pro-
viding a new source of profit for slaveholders, which
enables them to keep up the institution, when, in the
absence of this resource, it would become unprofitable,
and disappear.” Thus, in Virginia, when slavery, by
exhausting the soil, had eaten away its own profits, and
the recolonization of the State by free settlers had actu-
ally begun, came suddenly the prohibition of the African
slave-trade, and nearly at the same time the vast en-
largement of the field for slave labor by the purchase
of Louisiana; and these two events made slavery in
Virginia again profitable, as a means of breeding slaves
for exportation and sale to the South.
It is through the existence of this abundant breeding-
ground for slaves, which enables their number to be
kept up and increased, in the face of the most frightful
mortality in the places to which they are sent, that
slavery is enabled, as it exhausts old lands, to move on
to new'ones, preventing that condensation of population,
which, by depriving the " mean whites ” of the means
of subsisting without regular work, might render them
efficient workmen, instead of, as they now are, " more
inefficient, more unreliable, more unmanageable ” than
even the slaves, and so might gradually effect the sub-
stitution of free for slave labor. The consequence is,
that population under these institutions increases only
THE SLAVE POWER. 281
by dispersion. Fifteen persons to the square mile are
its maximum density in the really slave countries: a
state of things under which " popular education becomes
impracticable; roads, canals, railways, must be losing
speculations” (in South Carolina, “ a train has been
known to travel a hundred miles with a single passen—
ger”); all civilizing agencies, all powers capable of
making improvement penetrate the mass of the poor
white population, are wanting.
There remain, as a source from which the regenera-
tion of slave society is to be looked for, the slave-
owners themselves: the chance, whatever it may be,
that these may be induced, without external compulsion,
to free their slaves, or take some measure, great or
small, to prepare the slaves for freedom. An individual
here and there may be virtuous enough to do this, if the
general sentiment of those by whom he is surrounded
will allow him: but no one, we suppose, is simple
enough to expect this sacrifice from the entire ruling
class of a nation; least of all from the ruling class in
the Slave States, with whom the maintenance of slavery
has become a matter of social pride and political ambi-
tion as much as of pecuniary interest. " It is not simply
as a productive instrument that slavery is valued by its
supporters. It is far rather for its social and political
results, as the means of upholding a form of society in
which slaveholders are the sole depositaries of social
prestige and political power, as the corner-stone of an
edifice of which they are the masters, that the system is
prized. Abolish slavery, and you introduce a new order
of things, in which the ascendency of the men who now
rule the South would be at end. An immigration of
282 THE SLAVE POWER.
new men would set in rapidly from various quarters.
The planters and their adherents would soon be placed
in a hopeless minority in their old dominions. New
interests would take root, and grow; new social ideas
would germinate; new political combinations would be
formed; and the power and hopes of the party which
has long swayed the politics of the Union, and which
now seeks to break loose from that Union in order to
secure a free career for the accomplishment of bolder
designs, would be gone for ever.” Accordingly, the
South has advanced, from the modest apologies for slave-
ry of a generation ago, to loudly vaunting it as a moral,
civilizing, and every way wholesome institution; the fit
condition not only for negroes, but for the laboring
classes of all countries; nay, as an ordinance of God,
and a sacred deposit providentially intrusted to the keep-
ing of the Southern Americans, for preservation and
extension.
The energies of the Southern rulers have long been
devoted to protecting themselves against the economical
inconveniences of slavery in a manner directly the re-
verse of either its extinction or its mitigation. To
obtain for it an ever-wider field is the sole aim of their
policy, and, as they are firmly persuaded, the condition
of their social existence. " There is not a slaveholder,”
says Judge \Varner of Georgia (and, in saying this, he
only expressed the general sentiment), " in this house or
out of it, but who knows perfectly well, that, whenever
slavery is confined within certain specified limits, its
future existence is doomed : it is only a question of time
as to its final destruction. You may take any single
slaveholding county in the Southern States, in which
THE SLAVE POWER. 283
the great staples of cotton and sugar are cultivated to
any extent, and confine the present slave population
within the limits of that county. Such is the rapid
natural increase of the slaves, and the rapid exhaustion
of the soil in the cultivation of those crops (which add
so much to the commercial wealth of the country), that,
in a few years, it would be impossible to support them
within the limits of such county. Both master and
slave would be starved out; and what would be the
practical effect in any one county, the same result would
'happen to all the slaveholding States. Slavery cannot
be confined within certain limits without producing the
destruction of both master and slave: it requires fresh
lands, plenty of wood and water, not only for the com-
fort and happiness of the slave, but for the benefit of
the owner.” And this is the doctrine of the advocates
of slavery! What, to any mind but that of a slave-
holder, would seem at once the reductio ad absurdam
and the bitterest moral satire on slavery, is by them
brought forward— such is the state of their minds --
as an unanswerable argument for bringing fresh terri-
tory under it as fast as it exhausts the old, until, we
suppose, all the remaining soil of our planet is used up
and depopulated.
Even were they not prompted to this aggressive am-
bition by pecuniary interest, they would have a suffi-
cient inducement to it in the passions which are the
natural growth of slave society. " That which the neces-
sity for fresh soils is to the political economy of such
communities, a lust of power is to their morality. The
slaveholder lives from infancy in an atmosphere of des-
potism. He sees around him none but abject creatures,
284 THE SLAVE POWER.
who, under fearful penalties to be inflicted by himself,
are bound to do his slightest, his most unreasonable bid-
ding.” The commerce between master and slave, in
the words of J efferson, himself born and bred a slave-
owner, " is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous
passions, —— the most unremitting despotism on the one
hand, and degrading submission on the other. Our
children see this, and learn to imitate it. The parent
storms; the child looks on, catches the lineaments of
wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller
slaves, gives a loose to the worst passions; and, thus
nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot
but be stamped with its odious peculiarities.” The
arrogance, self-will, and impatience of restraint, which
are the natural fruits of the situation, and with which
the Southern-American character in all its manifestations
is deeply stamped, suffice of themselves to make the
slaveholding class throw all their pride and self-impor-
tance into the maintenance, extension, and exaltation
of their "peculiar institution ; ” the more, because the
institution and its upholders are generally reprobated by
mankind, and' because they have to defy the opinion of
free nations, and may have to resist the exertion of their
physical power.
Hence it is that the politicians of the Slave States
have devoted themselves, with the ardor of fanaticism,
to acquiring, by fair means or foul, ascendency in the
politics of the Union, in order that they might employ
that ascendency in gaining territory for the formation
of new Slave States; and again to create 'more and
more Slave States, in order to maintain their ascendency
in the Union. Mr. Cairnes has traced with a vigorous
THE SLAVE POWER. 285
hand the history of these efforts : the struggle between
freedom and slavery for the possession of Missouri; the
compromise by which that new State was given up to
slavery, on condition that no future Slave State should
be created north of the parallel 36° 30’ of north lati-
tude; the filibustering occupation of Texas, in order to
detach it from Mexico, —its annexation to the Union
by means of slavery ascendency, and the war with
Mexico for the acquisition of. more slave territory; the
Missouri Compromise, as soon as all its fruits had been
reaped, discovered to be unconstitutional, and repu-
diated, the principle next set up being " squatter sover-
eignty ” (the doctrine that Congress could not legislate
for the Territories, and that the first inhabitants had the
right to decide whether they would allow slavery or not) ;
the Northern Territories consequently opened to slavery,
and the race which followed between Northern and
Southern occupants for the possession of Kansas; a
slavery constitution for Kansas voted at the rifle’s point
by bands of " Border Ruffians ” from the South, who did
not even intend to settle in the territory; when this
nefarious proceeding was frustrated by the crowds of
free settlers who flocked in from the North, and refused
to be bound by the fictitious constitution, the principle
of squatter sovereignty also repudiated, since it had
failed to effect Southern objects, and the doctrine set up
that slavery exists z'pso jars in all the Territories, and
that not even the settlers themselves could make it
illegal; and finally a decision obtained from the high-
est tribunal of the United States (which Southern influ-
ence had succeeded in filling with Southern lawyers),
by which not only this monstrous principle was affirmed,
286 THE SLAVE POWER.
but the right of a slavemaster was recognized to carry
his slaves with him to any part of the Free States, and
hold them there, any local law to the contrary notwith-
standing. This was the one step too much in the other-
wise well-planned progress of the Southern conspiracy.
At this point, the Northern allies, by whose help alone
they could command a majority in the councils of the
Federation, fell off from them. The defeat of the South-
ern candidate for the Presidency followed as a conse-
quence; and this first check to the aggressive and
advancing movement of slavery was the signal for
secession and civil war. Well may Mr. Cairnes say
that this series of events " is one of the most striking
and alarming episodes in modern history, and furnishes
a remarkable example of what a small body of men
may effect against the most Vital interests of human
society, when, thoroughly understanding their position
and its requirements, they devote themselves, deliber—
ately, resolutely, and unscrupulously, to the accomplish-
ment of their ends.”
Should these conspirators succeed in making good
their independence, and possessing themselves .of a part
of the Territories, being those which are in immediate
contact with Mexico, nothing is to be expected but the
spread of the institution by conquest (unless prevented
by some European power) over that vast country, and
ultimately over all Spanish America, and, if circum-
stances permit, the conquest and annexation of the West
Indies; while so vast an extension of the field for the
employment of slaves would raise up a demand for
more, which would in all probability lead to that re-
opening of the African slave-trade, the legitimacy and
THE SLAVE POWER. 287
necessity of which have long been publicly asserted by
many organs of the South. Such are the issues to
humanity which are at stake in the present contest
between free and slaveholding America; and such is
the cause to which a majority Of English writers, and
Of Englishmen who have the ear Of the public, have
given the support of their sympathies.
What is the meaning Of this? Why does the English
nation, which has made itself memorable to all time
as the destroyer Of negro slavery, which has shrunk
from no sacrifices to free its own character from that
odious stain, and to close all the countries of the world
against the slave merchant, —why is it that the nation
which is at the head of Abolitionism not only feels no
sympathy with those who are fighting against the slave-
holding conspiracy, but actually desires its success?
Why is the general voice of our press, the general sen-
timent of our people, bitterly reproachful to the North,
while for the South, the aggressors in the war, we have
either mild apologies or direct and downright encour-
agement, and this not only from the Tory and anti-
democratic camp, but from Liberals, or soi-clz'sant
such?
This strange perversion Of feeling prevails nowhere
else. The public of France, and of the Continent gen-
erally, at all events the Liberal part Of it, saw at once
on which side were justice and moral principle, and
gave its sympathies consistently and steadily for the
North. Why is England an exception? Several causes
may be assigned, none of them honorable to this coun-
try, though some, more than others, may seem to make
the aberration excusable.
288 THE SLAVE POWER.
In the first place, it must, we fear, be admitted that
the antislavery feeling in England, though quite real,
is no longer, in point of intensity, what it was. We
do not ascribe this to any degeneracy in the public
mind. It is because the work, so far as it specially
concerns England, is done. Strong feeling on any
practical subject is only kept up by constant exercise.
A new generation has grown up since the great victory
of slavery abolition, composed of persons whose ardor
in the cause has never been wrought upon and strung
up by contest. The public of the present day think
as their fathers did concerning slavery; but their feel-
ings have not been in the same degree roused against
its enormities. Their minds have been employed, and
their feelings excited, on other topics, on which there
still remained, as it might seem, more to be done.
Slavery has receded into the background of their mental
prospect: it stands, to most of them, as a mere name,—
the name of one social evil among many others ; not as,
what in truth it is, the summing-up and concentration of
them all ; the stronghold in which the principle of tyran-
nical power, elsewhere only militant, reigns triumphant.
It must be remembered, too, that, though the English
public are averse to slavery, several of the political and
literary organs which have most influence Over the pub-
lic are decidedly not so. For many years, the " Times ”
has taken every opportunity of throwing cold water, as
far as decency permitted, on the cause of the negro:
had its attempts succeeded, the African squadron would
have been withdrawn, and the effort so long and honor-
ably persisted in by England, to close the negro coast
against the man-stealer, would have been ignominiously
THE SLAVE POWER. 289
abandoned. Another of the misleaders of opinion on
this subject, more intellectual in its aims, and address-
ing itself to a more intellectual audience, has been from
its first origin, however Liberal on the surface, imbued
with a deeply seated Tory feeling, which makes it pre-
fer even slavery to democratic equality; and it never
loses an opportunity of saying a word for slavery, and
palliating its evils.
The most operative cause, however, of the wrong
direction taken on the American question by English
feeling, is the general belief that Americans are hostile
to England, and long to insult and humble her if they
had but an opportunity; and the accumulated resent-
ment left by a number of small diplomatic collisions, in
which America has carried herself with a high hand,
has bullied and blustered, or her press has bullied and
blustered for her, and in which, through the reluctance
of England to push matters to extremities which do
not vitally concern the national honor, bullying and
blustering have been allowed to prevail. The facts are
too true; but it has not been sufficiently considered,
that the most foul-mouthed enemies of England in the
American press and in Congress were Southern men,
and men in the Southern interest; and that the offen-
sive tone and encroaching policy ,of the Federal Gov-
ernment were the tone and policy of a succession of
governments created by the South, and entirely under
Southern influence. If some bitterness towards Eng-
land has shown itself rather widely among the Northern
people since the commencement of the war, and has
been ministered to in their usual style by the hacks of
the newspaper-press, it must be said, in excuse, that
VOL. 111. 19
290 THE SLAVE POWER.
they were smarting under disappointed hopes ; that they
had found only rebuke where they felt that they deserved,
and had counted upon finding, sympathy, and when
sympathy would have been of the utmost importance to
their cause. " If England had but sympathized with
us now,” said recently to us one of the first of American
writers, " it would have united the two nations almost
to the end of time.”
But none of these ,causes would have accounted for
the sad aberration Of English feeling at this momentous
crisis, had they not been combined with an almost total
ignorance respecting the antecedents of the struggle.
England pays a heavy price for its neglect of general
cotemporary history, and inattention to what takes
place in foreign countries. The English people did not
know the past career or the present policy and purposes
of the Slave Power. They did not, nor do they yet,
know that the object, the avowed Object, of secession
was the indefinite extension of slavery; that the sole
grievance alleged by the South consisted in being
thwarted in this; that the resistance of the North was
resistance to the spread of slavery, —the aim of the
North its confinement within its present bounds, which,
in the opinion of the slave-owners themselves, insures
its gradual extinction, and which is the only means
whereby the extinctiOn can be gradual. The ignorance
of the public was shared by the Foreign Minister, whose
Official attitude in reference to the contest has been
every thing which it ought to be, but who did unspeaka-
ble mischief by the extra official opinion, so often quoted,
that the Southern States are in arms for independence,
the Northern for dominion.
THE SLAVE POWER. 291
When this was the View taken of the contest in the
quarter supposed to be best informed, what could be
expected from the public? Could they fail to bestow
their sympathies on the side, which, they were told from
authority, was fighting for the common right of man-
kind to a government of their choice, while the other
had armed itself for the wicked purpose of exercising
power over others against their will? The moral rela-
tions Of the two parties are misplaced, are almost
reversed, in Earl Russell’s dictum. Could we consent
to overlook the fact, that the South are fighting for, and
the North against, the most odious form of unjust
dominion which ever existed ; could we forget the slaves,
and View the question as one between two white popu-
lations,—-even then, who, we ask, are fighting for domin-
ion, if not those, who, having always before succeeded in
domineering, break. off from the Union at the first mo-
ment when they find that they can domineer no longer?
Did ever any other section of a nation break through the
solemn contract which united them with the rest, for no
reason but that they were defeated in an election? It is
true indeed, and they are welcome to the admission,
that a very serious interest of the slave-owning oligarchy
depended on retaining the power to domineer. They
had at stake, not dominion only, but the profits of domin-
ion; and those profits were, that the propagation of
'slavery might be without limit, instead of being circum-
scribed within the vast unoccupied space already included
in the limits of the Slave States, being about half of
their entire extent.
But, if ‘the South are fighting for slavery, the North,
we are told, are, at all events, not fighting against it:
292 THE SLAVE POWER.
their sole object in the struggle is the preservation of
the Union.
And, if it were so, is there any thing so very unjusti-
fiable in resisting, even by arms, the dismemberment of
their country? Does public morality require that the
United States Should abdicate the character Of a nation,
and be ready at the first summons to allow any dis-
contented section to dissever itself from the rest by a
single vote of a local majority, fictitious or real, taken
without any established form or public guaranty for its
genuineness and deliberateness? This would be to
authorize any State, or part of a State, in a mere fit of
ill—temper, or under the temporary influence of intri-
guing politicians, to detach itself from the Union, and
perhaps unite itself to some hostile power; and the
end would probably be to break down the Union, from
one of the great nations of the world, into as many
petty republics as there are States, with lines of custom-
houses all round their frontiers, and standing armies
always kept up in strength to protect them against their
nearest neighbors.
It is so new a thing to consider questions of national
morality from the point of View of nations, instead of
exclusively from that of rulers, that the conditions have
not yet been defined under which it is the duty of an
established government to succumb to a manifestation
of hostile feeling by a portion, greater or smaller, of its
citizens. Until some rule or maxim shall have grown
up to govern this subject, no government is expected or
bound to yield to a rebellion until after a fair trial of
strength in the field. Were it not for the certainty
of opposition, and the heavy penalties of failure, revolt
D
THE SLAVE POWER. 293
would be as frequent a fact as it is now an unfrequent;
rebellions would be attempted, not as they now are, in
cases of almost unanimous discontent, but as often as
any object was sought, or offence taken, by the smallest
section of the community.
Would the Government or people of the United
Kingdom accept for themselves this rule of duty?
Would they look on quietly, and see the kingdom dis-
membered? They might renounce transmarine possses-
sions, which they hold only as dependencies, which they
care little for, and with which they are neither connected
by interest nor by neighborhood; but would England
acquiesce, without fighting, in the separation of Ireland
or Scotland? and would she be required to do so by
any recognized obligation of public morality?
Putting at the very lowest the inducements which can
be supposed to have instigated the people of the N orth-
ern States to rush into the field with nearly all their
available population, and pledge the collective wealth of
the country to an unparalleled extent, in order to main-
tain its integrity: it might still be thought that a people,
who were supposed to care for nothing in comparison
with the “ almighty dollar,” ought to have some credit
given them for showing, by such decisive proofs, that
they are capable of sacrificing that and every thing else
to a patriotic impulse. It might have been supposed,
too, that, even had their motives been Wholly selfish, all
good men would have wished them success when they
were fighting for the right; and, considering what it
was that they were fighting against, might have been
glad that even selfish motives had induced one great
nation to shed its blood and expend its substance in
294 THE SLAVE POWER.
doing battle against a monster evil, which the other
nations, from the height of their disinterested morality,
would have allowed to grow up unchecked, until the
consequences came home to themselves.
But such a view of the motives of the Northern
Americans would be a flagrant injustice to them.
True, the feeling which made the heroic impulse pervade
the whole country, and descend to the least enlightened
classes, was the desire to uphold the Union. But not
the Union simply. Had they consented to give up the
Northern interpretation of the pact, had they yielded
to the Supreme Court’s Southern exposition of it, they
would have won back the South to the Federation
by an unanimous voice. It was because they valued
something else even more highly than the Union, that
the Union was ever in a position in which it had to
be fought for. The North fights for the Union, but
the Union under conditions which deprive the Slave
Power of its pernicious ascendency. People talk as if
to support the existing Constitution were synonymous
with altogether abandoning emancipation, and " giving
guaranties to slavery.” Nothing of the sort. The
Constitution guarantees slavery against nothing but the
interference of Congress to legislate for the legally con-
stituted Slave States. Such legislation, in the opinion
equally of North and South, is neither the only, nor
the best, nor the most effectual mode of getting rid of
slavery. The North may indeed be driven to it; and,
in the opinion of near observers, is moving rapidly
towards that issue. Mr. Russell, in his letters to the
" Times,” was constantly reiterating that the war would
before long become an abolition war; and Mr. Dicey,
THE SLAVE POWER. 295
the latest traveller in America who has published his
impressions, and whose book should be in every one’s
hand, says that this predicted consummation is now
rapidly drawing near, through the conviction, becoming
general in the North, that slavery and the Union are
incompatible. But the Federal Government was bound
.to keep within the Federal Constitution ; and what that
could be done against slavery, consistently with the Con-
stitution, has it left undone? The District of Columbia
was constitutionally under the authority of Congress:
Congress have abolished slavery in that district, granting
compensation. They have offered liberal pecuniary as-
sistance to any Slave State which will take measures for
either immediately or gradually emancipating its Slaves.
They have admitted Western Virginia into the Union
as a State, under a provision that all children born after
a certain day of 1863 shall be born free. They have
concluded a treaty with England for the better suppres-
sion. of the slave-trade; conceding, what all former
American Governments have so obstinately resisted, the
right of search. And, what is more important than all,
they have, by a legislative act, prohibited slavery in the
Territories. N 0 human being can henceforth be held in
bondage in any possession of the United States which
, has not yet been erected into a State. A barrier is thus
set to all further extension of the legal area of slavery
within the dominion of the United States. These things
have the United States done, in opposition to the opin-
ion Of the Border States which are still true to their
allegiance, at the risk of irretrievably offending those
States, and deciding them to go over to the enemy.
What could the party now dominant in the United
296 THE SLAVE POWER.
States have done more, to prove the sincerity of its
aversion to slavery, and its purpose to get rid of it by
all lawful means?
And these means would, in all probability, suflice for
the object. To prevent the extension of slavery, is, in
the general opinion of slaveholders, to insure its extinc-
tion. It is, at any rate, the only means by which that.
object can be effected through the interest of the slave-
holders themselves. If peaceful and gradual is prefer-
able to sudden and violent emancipation (which we
grant may in the present case be doubtful), this is the
mode in which alone it can be effected. Further coloni-
zation by slaves and slavemasters being rendered im-
possible, the process Of exhausting the lands fitted for
Slave cultivation would either continue, or would be
arrested. If 'it continue, the prosperity of the country
will progressively decline, until the value of slave prop-
erty is reduced so low, and the need of more efficient
labor so keenly felt, that there will be no motive remain-
ing to hold the negroes in bondage. If, on the other
hand, the exhaustive process should be arrested, it must
be by means implying an entire renovation, economical
and social, of Southern society. There would be needed
new modes of cultivation, processes more refined and
intellectual, and, as an indispensable condition, laborers _
more intelligent, who must be had either by the intro-
ductiomof free labor, or by the mental improvement of
the slaves. The masters must resign themselves to
become efficient men of business, personal and vigilant
overseers Of their own laborers, and would find, that, in
their new circumstances, successful industry was impossi-
ble without calling in other motives than the fear of the
THE SLAVE POWER. 297
lash. The immediate mitigation Of slavery, and the
education of the slaves, would thus be certain conse-
quences, and its gradual destruction, by the consent of
all concerned, a probable one, of the mere restriction of
its area; whether brought about by the subjugation of
the Southern States, and their return to the Union
under the Constitution according to its Northern inter—
pretation, or by what Mr. Cairnes regards as both
more practical and more desirable, — the recognition of
their independence, with the Mississippi for their west-
ern boundary.
Either of these results would be a splendid, and
probably a decisive and final, victory over Slavery. But
the only point on which we hesitate to agree with Mr.
Cairnes is in preferring the latter to the former and
more complete issue of the contest. Mr. Cairnes is
alarmed by what he thinks the impossibility of governing
this group of States after re-union, unless in a manner
incompatible with free institutions,— as conquered coun-
tries, and by military law. We are unable to see the
impossibility. If reduced by force, the Slave States
must submit at discretion. They could no longer claim
to be dealt with according to the Constitution which
they had rebelled against. The door which has been
left open till now for their voluntary return would be
closed, it is to be presumed, after they had been brought
back by force. In that case, the whole slave population
might, and probably would, be at once emancipated,
with compensation to those masters only who had re-
mained loyal to the Federal Government, or who may
have voluntarily returned to their allegiance before a
time fixed. This having been done, there would be no
298 THE SLAVE POWER.
real danger in restoring the Southern States to their old
position in the Union. It would be a diminished posi-
tion, because the masters would no longer be allowed
representatives in Congress in right of three-fifths of
their slaves. The slaves once freed, and enabled to hold
property, and the country thrown open to free coloniza-
tion, in a few years there would be a free population in
sympathy with the rest of the Union. The most actively
disloyal part Of the population, already diminished by
the war, would probably in great part emigrate if the
North were successful. Even if the negroes were not
admitted to the suffrage, or if their former masters were
able to control their votes, there is no probability, hum-
bled and prostrated as the Slave Power would be, that
in the next few years it would rally sufficiently to
render any use which it could make of constitutional
freedom again dangerous to the Union. When it is
remembered that the thinly peopled Missouri, Arkan-
sas, Texas, and some parts even of the South—eastern
States, have even now so few slaves that they may be
made entirely free at a very trifling expense in the way
of redemption, and when the probable great influx of
Northern settlers into those provinces is considered, the
chance of any dangerous power in the councils of the
United States to be exercised by the six or seven Cotton
States, if allowed to retain their constitutional freedom,
must appear so small, that there could be little tempta-
tion to deny them that common right.
It may, however, prove impossible to reduce the
seceded States to unconditional submission, without a
greater lapse of time, and greater sacrifices, than the
North may be Willing to endure. If so, the terms of
THE SLAVE POWER. 299
compromise suggested by Mr. Cairnes, which would
secure all west of the Mississippi for free labor, would
be a great immediate gain to the cause of freedom, and
would probably in no long period Secure its complete
triumph. We agree with Mr. Cairnes, that this is the
only kind of compromise which should be entertained
for a moment. That peace should be made by giving
up the cause of quarrel, the exclusion of slavery from
the Territories, would be one of the greatest calamities
which could happen to civilization and to mankind.
Close the Territories, prevent the spread of the disease
to countries not now afflicted with it, and much will
already have been done to hasten its doom. But that
doom would still be distant, if the vast uncolonized
region of Arkansas and Texas, which alone is thought
sufficient to form five States, were left to be filled up
by a population of slaves and their masters; and no
treaty of separation can be regarded with any satisfac-
tion but one which should convert the whole country
west of the Mississippi into free soil.
300 '
UTILITARIANISM.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL REMARKS.
THERE are few circumstances, among those which make
up the present condition of human knowledge, more
unlike what might have been expected, or more signifi-
cant of the backward state in which speculation on the
most important subjects still lingers, than the little
progress which has been made in the decision of the
controversy respecting the criterion of right and wrong.
From the dawn of philosophy, the question concerning
the sammam bonam, or, what is the same thing, con-
cerning the foundation of morality, has been accounted
the main problem in speculative thought, has occupied
the most gifted intellects, and divided them into sects
and schools, carrying on a vigorous warfare against one
another. And, after more than two thousand years, the
same discussions continue, philosophers are still ranged
under the same contending banners, and neither think-
ers nor mankind at large seem nearer to being unanimous
on the subject than when the youth Socrates listened to
the old Protagoras, and asserted (if Plato’s dialogue be
grounded on a real conversation) the theory Of utilita-
rianism against the popular morality of the SO—called
sophist.
UTILITARIANISM. “‘7'


It is true, that similar confusion and uncertainty, b" '
in? some cases Similar discordance, exist reSpecting the
first principles of all the sciences, not excepting that
Which is deemed the most certain of them, -- math-
ematics ; without much impairing, generally indeed
without impairing at all, the trustworthiness of the con-
clusions of those sciences. An apparent anomaly, the
explanation of which is, that the detailed doctrines of a
science are not usually deduced from, nor depend for
their evidence upon, what are called its first principles.
Were it not so, there would be no science more precari-
ous, or whose conclusions were more insufficiently made
out, than algebra; which derives none of its certainty
from what are commonly taught to learners as its
elements ; since these, as laid down by some of its most
eminent teachers, are as full of fictions as English law,
and of mysteries as theology. The truths which are
ultimately accepted as the first principles of a science
are really the last results of metaphysical analysis, prac-
tised on the elementary notions with which the science is
conversant; and their relation to the science is not that
of foundations to an edifice, but of roots to a tree, which
may perform their office equally well though they be
never dug down to and exposed to light. But, though
in science the particular truths precede the general 'the-
ory, the contrary might be expected to be the case with
a practical art, such as morals or legislation. All action
is for the sake of some end ; and rules of action, it seems
natural to suppose, must take their whole character and
color from the end to which they are subservient.
When we engage in a pursuit, a clear and precise con-
ception of what we are pursuing would seem to be the
302 UTILITARIANISM.
first thing we need, instead of the last we are to look
forward to. A test of right and wrong must be the
means, one would think, of ascertaining what is right
or wrong, and not a consequence of having already
ascertained it.
The difficulty is not avoided by having recourse to the
popular theory of a natural faculty, a sense or instinct,
informing us of right and wrong. For, besides that
the existence of such a moral instinct is itself one of the
matters in dispute, those believers in it who have any
pretensions to philosophy have been obliged to abandon
the idea that it discerns what is right or wrong in the
particular case in hand, as our other senses discern
the sight or sound actually present. Cur moral faculty,
according to all those of its interpreters who are enti-
tled to the name of thinkers, supplies us only with the
general principles of moral judgments: it is a branch
of our reason, not of our sensitive faculty ; and must be
looked to for the abstract doctrines of morality, not for
perception of it in the concrete. The intuitive, no less
than what may be termed the inductive, school of ethics,
insists on the necessity of general laws. They both
agree that the morality of an individual action is not a
question of direct perception, but of the application of
a law to an individual case. They recognize also, to a
great extent, the same moral laws, but differ as to
their evidence, and the source from which they derive
their authority. According to the one opinion, the
principles of morals are evident (i prior-2' ,' requiring
nothing to command assent, except that the meaning of
the terms be understood. According to the other doc-
trine, right and wrong, as well as truth and falsehood,
GENERAL REMARKS. 303
are questions of observation and experience. But both
hold equally, that morality must be deduced from princi-
ples ; and the intuitive school affirm, as strongly as the
inductive, that there is a science of morals. Yet they
seldom attempt to make out a list of the d-prz'om' prin-
ciples which are to serve as the premises of the science ;
still more rarely do they make any effort to reduce those
various principles to one first principle, or common
ground of obligation. _ They either assume the ordinary
precepts of morals as of cZ-prz'orz' authority, or they lay
down as the common groundwork of those maxims some
generality much less obviously authoritative than the
maxims themselves, and which has never succeeded in
gaining popular acceptance. Yet, to support their pre-
tensions, there ought either to be some one fundamental
principle or law at the root of all morality ; or, if there
be several, there should be a determinate order of pre-
cedence among them ; and the one principle, or the rule
for deciding between the various principles when they
conflict, ought to be self-evident.
To inquire how far the bad effects of this deficiency
have been mitigated in practice, or to what extent the
moral beliefs of mankind have been vitiated or made
uncertain by the absence of any distinct recognition of
an ultimate standard, would imply a complete survey
and criticism of past and present ethical doctrine. It
would, however, be easy to show that whatever steadi-
ness or consistency these moral beliefs have attained
has been mainly due to the tacit influence of a standard
not recognized. Although the non-existence of an
acknowledged first principle has made ethics not so
much a guide as a consecration of men’s actual senti-
304 UTILITARIANISM.
ments, still, as men’s sentiments, both of favor and of
aversion, are greatly influenced by what they suppose to
be the effects of things upon their happiness, the prin-
ciple of utility, or, as Bentham latterly called it, the
greatest-happiness principle, has had a large Share in
forming the moral doctrines even of those who most
scornfully reject its authority. Nor is there any school
of thought which refuses to admit that the influence Of
actions on happiness is a most material and even pre-
dominant consideration in many of the details of morals,
however unwilling to acknowledge it as the fundamental
principle of morality and the source of moral Obliga-
tion. I might go much further, and say, that, to all
those ti-pm'orz' moralists who deem it necessary to argue
at all, utilitarian arguments are indispensable. It is
not my present purpose to criticise these thinkers; but
I cannot help referring, for illustration, to a systematic
treatise by one of the most illustrious of them, -the
" Metaphysics of Ethics,” by Kant. This remarkable
man, whose system of thought will long remain one of
the landmarks in the history of philosophical specula-
tion, does, in the treatise in question, lay down an
universal first principle as the origin and ground of
moral obligation. It is this: " So act, that the rule on
which thou actest would admit of being adopted as a law
by all rational beings.” But, when he begins to deduce
from this precept any of the actual duties of morality,
he fails, almost grotesquely, to Show that there would
be any contradiction, any logical (not to say physical)
impossibility, in the adoption by all rational beings of
the most outrageously immoral rules of conduct. All
he Shows is, that the consequences of their universal
GENERAL REMARKS. 305
adoption would be such as no one would choose to
incur.
On the present occasion, I shall, without further
discussion of the other theories, attempt to contribute
something towards the understanding and appreciation
of the Utilitarian or Happiness theory, and towards
such proof as it is susceptible of. It is evident that
this cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular mean-
ing of the term. Questions of ultimate ends are not
amenable to direct proof. Whatever can be proved to
' be good, must be so by being shown to be a means
to something admitted to be good without proof. The
medical art is proved to be good by its conducing to
health; but how is it possible to prove that health is
good? The art of music is good, for the reason, among
others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it
possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is
asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, includ-
ing all things which are in themselves good, and that
whatever else is good is not so as an end, but as a mean,
the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a
subject of what is commonly understood by proof.
We are not, however, to infer that its acceptance or
rejection must depend on blind impulse or arbitrary
choice. There is a larger meaning of the word ‘° proof,”
in which this question is as amenable to it as any other
of the disputed questions of philosophy. The subject
is within the cognizance of the rational faculty; and
neither does that faculty deal with it solely in the way
of intuition. Considerations may be presented capable
of determining the intellect either to give or withhold its
assent to the doctrine ; and this is equivalent to proof.
VOL. III. 20
306 UTILITARIANISM.
We shall examine presently “of what nature are these
considerations ; in what manner they apply to the case;
and what rational grounds, therefore, can be given for
accepting or rejecting the utilitarian formula. But it
is a preliminary condition of rational acceptance or
rejection, that the formula should be correctly under-
stood. I believe that the very imperfect notion ordina-
rily formed of its meaning is the chief Obstacle which
impedes its reception; and that, could it be cleared
even from only the grosser misconceptions, the question
would be greatly simplified, and a large proportion of
its difficulties removed. Before, therefore, I attempt
to enter into the philosophical grounds which can be
given for assenting to the utilitarian standard, I shall
offer some illustrations of the doctrine itself, with the
view of showing more clearly what it is, distinguishing
it from what it is not, and disposing of such of the
practical Objections to it as either originate in, or are
closely connected with, mistaken interpretations of its
meaning. Having thus prepared the ground, I shall
afterwards endeavor to throw such light as I can upon
the question, considered as one of philosophical theory.
—.—-
CHAPTER 11.
WHAT UTILITARIANISM IS.
A PASSING remark is all that needs be given to the
ignorant blunder of supposing that those who stand up
for utility, as the test of right and wrong, use the term
in that restricted and merely colloquial sense in which
utility is opposed to pleasure. An apology is due to
ITS MEANING. 307
I
the philosophical opponents of utilitarianism for even
the momentary appearance of confounding them with
any one capable of so absurd a misconception ; which is
the more extraordinary. inasmuch as the contrary accu-
sation, of referring every thing to pleasure, and that, too,
in its grossest form, is another of the common charges
against utilitarianism: and, as has been pointedly
remarked by an able writer, the same sort of persons,
and often the very same persons, denounce the theory
" as impracticably dry when the word ‘ utility ’ precedes
the word 'pleasure,’ and as too practicably voluptuous
when the word ‘pleasure’ precedes the word ‘ utility.’ ”
Those who know any thing about the matter are aware,
that every writer, from Epiculus to Bentham, who
maintained the theory of utility, meant by it, not some-
thing to be eontradistinguished from pleasure, but
pleasure itself, together with exemption from pain;
and, instead of opposing the useful to the agreeable or
the ornamental, have always declared that the useful
means these, among other things. Yet the common
herd, including the herd of writers, not only in news-
papers and periodicals, but in books of weight and pre-
tension, are perpetually falling into this shallow mis-
take. Having caught up the word " utilitarian,” while
knowing nothing whatever about it but its sound, they
habitually express by it the rejection or the neglect of
pleasure in some of its forms; of beauty, of ornament,
or of amusement. Nor is the term thus ignorantly
misapplied solely in disparagement, but occasionally
in compliment; as though it implied superiority to
frivolity and the mere pleasures of the moment. And
this perverted use is the only one in which the word is
308 UTILITARIANISM.
. -
popularly known, and the one from which the new
generation are acquiring their sole notion of its mean-
ing. Those who introduced the word, but who had for
many years discontinued it as a distinctive appellation,
may well feel themselves called upon to resume it, if
by doing so they can hope to contribute any thing
towards rescuing it from this utter degradation.*
The creed which accepts, as the foundation of morals,
Utility, or the Greatest-happiness Principle, holds that
actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote
happiness, wrong as they tend to prodhce the reverse
of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and
the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the pri-
vation of pleasure. To give a clear View of the moral
standard set up by the theory, much more requires to
be said; in particular, what things it includes in the
ideas of pain and pleasure, and to what extent this is
left an open question. P But these supplementary expla-
nations do not affect the theory of life on which this
theory of morality is grounded, —- namely, that pleas-
ure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desira-
ble as ends; and that all desirable things (which are
as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme)
are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in them-
* The author of this essay has reason for believing himself to be the
first person who brought the word “utilitarian” into use. He did not invent
it, but adopted it from a passing expression in Mr. Galt’s Annals of the
Parish. After using it as a designation for several years, he and others
‘abandoned it from a growing dislike to any thing resembling a badge or
watchword of sectarian distinction. But as a name for one single opinion,
not a set of opinions,-—to denote the recognition of utility as a standard,
not any particular way of applying it,—the term supplies a want in the
language, and offers, in many cases, a convenient mode of avoiding tiresome
circumlocution.
ITS MEANING. 309
selves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the
prevention of pain.
N ow, such a theory of life excites in many minds,
and among them in some of the most estimable in feel-
ing and purpose, inveterate dislike. To suppose that
life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure,
-—no better and nobler Object of desire and pursuit, —
they designate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a
doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of
Epicurus were, at a very early period, contemptuously
likened: and modern holders of the doctrine are occa-
sionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons
by its German, French, and English assailants.
When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always
w_
answered, that it is not they, but their accusers, who
represent human nature in a degrading light, since the
accusation supposes human beings to be capable of
no pleasures except those of which swine are capable.
If this supposition were true, the charge could not be
gainsaid, but would then be no longer an imputation;
for, if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same
to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which
is good enough for the one would be good enough for
the other. The comparison of the Epicurean life to
that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because a
beast’s pleasures do not satisfy a human being’s con-
ceptions of happiness. Human beings have faculties
more elevated than the animal appetites; and, when
once made conscious of them, do not regard any thing
as happiness which does not include their gratification.
I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been
by any means faultless in drawing out their scheme of
310 UTILITARIANISM.
at...» - “n
consequences from the utilitarian principle. To do
this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic as well as
Christian elements require to be included. But there
is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not
assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings
and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much
higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensa-
tion. It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian
writers in general have placed the superiority of mental
over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency,
safety, uncostliness, &c., of the former, —-that is, in
their circumstantial advantages rather than in their
And, on all these points, utilitarians
have fully proved their case ; but they might have taken
the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground,
with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with
the principle of utility to recognize the fact, that some
kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valua-
ble than others. It would be absurd, that while, in
estimating all other things, quality is considered as well
as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be sup-
posed to depend on quantity alone.
If I am asked what I mean by difference of quality
in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable
intrinsic nature.
than another, merely as a pleasure, except ‘its being
greater in amount, there is but one possible answer.
~ Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost
all who have experience of both give a decided prefer-
‘ ence, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to
prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one
of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted
with both, placed so far above the other that they pre-
.-
/- v
ITS MEANING. 311
fer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a
greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it
for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature
is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the pre-
ferred enjoyment a ’superiority in quality, so far out-
weighing quantity, as to render it, in comparison, of
small account.
N ow, it is an unquestionable fact, that those who are
equally acquainted with and equally capable of appre-
ciating and enjoying both do give a most marked
preference to the manner of existence which employs
their higher faculties. Few human creatures would
consent to be changed into any of the lower animals,
for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleas-
ures: no intelligent human being would consent to be
a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no
person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and
base, even though they should be persuaded that the
fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his
lot than they are with theirs. They would not resign
what they possess more than he for the most complete
satisfaction of all the desires which they have in com-
mon with him. If they ever fancy they would, it is
only in cases of unhappiness so extreme, that, to escape
from it, they would exchange their lot for almost any
other, however undesirable in their own eyes. A being
of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is
capable probably of more acute suffering, and certainly
accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior
type; but, in spite of these liabilities, he can never
really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower
grade of existence. \Ve may give what explanation
312 UTILITARIANISM.
we please of this unwillingness ; wd may attribute it to
pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some
of the most and to some of the least estimable feelings
of which mankind are capable; we may refer it to the
love of liberty and personal independence,-—an appeal
to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective
means for the inculcation of it; to the love of power,
or to the love of excitement, both of which do really
enter into and contribute to it: but its most appropriate
appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings
possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no
means in exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and
which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in
Whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it
could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of
desire to them. WVhoever supposes that this preference
takes place at a sacrifice of happiness; that the supe-
rior being, in any thing like equal circumstances, is not
happier than the inferior, — confounds the two very dif-
ferent ideas of happiness and content. It is indisputable,
that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low has
the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and
a highly endowed being will always feel that any happi—
ness which he can look for, as the world is constituted,
is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfec-
tions, if they are at all bearable; and they will not
make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of
the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all
the good which those imperfections qualify. __I_t__is__het-_-M
wgbgghuman being dissatisfied, than a, pig satisfied ;
better to be Socrates dissatisfied, than a fool satisfied.
And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it
\
ITS MEANING. 313
n
is because they only know their own side of the ques-
tion. The other party to the comparison knows both
sides. -
It may be objected, that many who are capable of the
higher pleasures, occasionally, under the influence of
temptation, postpone them to the lower. But this is
quite compatible with a full appreciation of the intrinsic
superiority of the higher. Men often, from infirmity
of character, make their election for the nearer good,
though they know it to be the less valuable, and this no
less when the choice is between two bodily pleasures than
when it is between bodily and mental. They pursue
sensual indulgences to the injury of health, though per-
fectly aware that health is the greater good. It may be
further objected, that many who begin with youthful
enthusiasm for every thing noble, as they advance in
years sink into indolence and selfishness. But I do
not believe that those who undergo this very common
change voluntarily choose the lower description of pleas-
ures in preference to the higher. I believe, that, before
they devote themselves exclusively to the one, they have
already become incapable of the other. Capacity for the
nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant,
easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere
want of sustenance; and, in the majority of young per-
sons, it speedily dies away if the occupations to which
their position in life has devoted them, and the society
into which it has thrown them, are not favorable to
keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose their
high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes,
because they have not time or opportunity for indulging
them ; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures,
314 UTILITARIANISM.
not because they deliberatelyprefer them, but because
they are either the only ones to which they have access,
or the only ones which they are any longer capable of
enjoying. It may be questioned, whether any one, who
has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleas-
ures, ever knowingly and calmly preferred the lower;
though many in all ages have broken down in an inef—
fectual attempt to combine both.
From this verdict of the only competent judges, I
apprehend there can be no appeal. On a question,
which is the best worth having of two pleasures, or
which of two modes of existence is the most grateful
to the feelings, apart from its moral attributes and from
its consequences, the judgment of those who are quali-
fied by knowledge of both, or, if they differ, that of the
majority among them, must be admitted as final. And
there needs be the less hesitation to accept this jut g-
ment respecting the quality of pleasures, since there is
no other tribunal to be referred to even on the question
of quantity. What means are there of determining
which is the aeutest of two pains, or the intensest of
two pleasurable sensations, except the general suffrage
of those who are familiar with both? Neither pains
nor pleasures are homogeneous, and pain is always
heterogeneous with pleasure. What is there to decide
whether a particular pleasure is worth purchasing at
the cost of a particular pain, except the feelings and
judgment of the experienced? When, therefore, those
feelings and judgment declare the pleasures derived from
the higher faculties to be preferable in kind, apart
from the question of intensity, to those of which the
animal nature, disjoined from the higher faculties, is
ITS MEANING. 315
susceptible, they are entitled on this subject to the same
regard. '
I have dwelt on this point, as being a necessary part
of a perfectly just conception of Utility or Happiness,
considered as the directive rule of human conduct.
But it is by no means an indispensable condition to the
acceptance of the utilitarian standard ; for that standard
is not the agent’s own greatest happiness, but the
greatest amount of happiness altogether: and, if it may
possibly be doubted whether a noble character is always
the happier for its nobleness, there 'can be no doubt
that it makes other people happier, and that the world
in general is immensely a gainer by it. Utilitarianism,
therefore, could only attain its end by the general culti-
vation of nobleness of character, even if each individual
were only benefited by the nobleness of others, and his
own, so far as happiness is concerned, were a sheer deduc-
tion from the benefit. But the bare enunciation of such
an absurdity as this last renders refutation superfluous.
According to the Greatest-happiness Principle, as
above explained, the ultimate end, with reference to and
for the sake of which all other things are desirable
(,whether we are considering our own good or that of
other people), is an existence exempt as far as possible
from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both
in point of quantity and quality; the test of quality,
and the rule for measuring it against quantity, being
the preference felt by those, who in their opportunities
of experience, to which must be added their habits of
self-consciousness and self-observation, are best fur-
nished with the means of comparison. This, being,
3 1 6 UTILITARIANISM.
according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human
action, is necessarily also the standard of morality:
which may accordingly be defined, the rules and pre-
cepts for human conduct, by the observance of which
an existence such as has been described might be, to
the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind;
and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things
admits, to the whole sentient creation.
Against this doctrine, however, arises another class
of objectors, who say that happiness, in any form, can-
not be the rational purpose Of human life and action;
because, in the first place, it is unattainable: and they
contemptously ask, What right hast thou to be happy?
a question which Carlyle clinches by the addition,
WVhat right, a short time ago, hadst thou even to be?
Next, they say that men can do without happiness;
that all noble human beings have felt this, and could
not have become noble but by learning the lesson of
Entsagen, or renunciation; which lesson, thoroughly
learnt and submitted to, they affirm to be the begin-
ning and necessary condition of all Virtue.
The first of these objections would go to the root of
the matter, were it well founded ; for, if no happiness is
to be had at all by human beings, the attainment of it
cannot be the end of morality, or of any rational con-
duct. Though, even in that case, something might
still be said for the utilitarian theory; since utility
includes not solely the pursuit of happiness, but the
prevention or mitigation of unhappiness: and, if the
former aim be chimerical, there will be all the greater
scope and more imperative need for the latter, so long
at least as mankind think fit to live, and do not take
ITS MEANING. 317
refuge in the simultaneous act of suicide recommended
under certain conditions by ovalis. When, however,
it is thus positively asserted to be impossible that human
life should be happy, the assertion, if not something
like a verbal quibble, is at least an exaggeration. If
by happiness be meant a continuity of highly pleasura—
ble excitement, it is evident enough that this is impos-
sible. A state of exalted pleasure lasts only moments,
or in some cases, and with some intermissions, hours
or days; and is the occasional brilliant flash of enjoy-
ment, not its permanent and steady flame. Of this the
philosophers who have taught that happiness is the end
of life were as fully aware as those who taunt them.
The happiness which they meant was not a life of rap-
ture, but moments of such, in an existence made up
of few and transitory pains, many and various pleas—
ures, with a decided predominance of the active over
the passive, and having, as the foundation of the whole,
not to expect more from life than it is capable of be-
stowing. A life thus composed, to those who have
been fortunate enough to obtain it, has always appeared
worthy of the name of " happiness.” And such an
existence is even now the lot of many, during some con-
siderable portion of their lives. The present wretched
education and wretched social arrangements are the only
real hinderance to its being attainable by almost all.
The objectors, perhaps, may doubt whether human
beings, if taught to consider happiness as the end of
life, would be satisfied with such a moderate share of it.
But great numbers of mankind have been satisfied with
much less. The main constituents of a satisfied life
appear to be two, either of which by itself is Often
318 UTILITARIANISM.
found sufficient for the purpose,--tranqgillity and exgite-
ment. With much tranquillity, many find that they
can be content with very little pleasure; with much
excitement, many can reconcile themselves to a consid-
erable quantity of pain. There is assuredly no inherent
impossibility in enabling even the mass of mankind to
unite both ; since the two are so far from being incom-
patible, that they are in natural alliance ; the prolonga-
tion of either being a preparation for, and exciting a
wish for, the other. It is only those in whom indolence
amounts to a vice, that do not desire excitement after an
interval of repose; it is only those in whom the need
of excitement is a disease, that feel the tranquillity which
follows excitement _dull and insipid, instead of pleasura-
ble in direct proportion to the excitement which pre-
ceded it. When people who are tolerably fortunate
in their outward lot do not find in life sufficient enjoy-
ment to make it valuable to them, the cause generally
is, caring for nobody but themselves. To those who
have neither public nor private affections, the excite-
ments of life are much curtailed, and, in any case,
dwindle in value as the time approaches when all selfish
interests must be terminated by death ; while those who
leave after them Objects Of personal affection, and espe-
cially those who have also cultivated a fellow-feeling
with the collective interests of mankind, retain as lively
an interest in life on the eve of death as in the vigor of
youth and health. Next to selfishness, the principal
cause which makes life unsatisfactdi'y is want of mental
cultivation. A cultivated mind—I do not mean that
of a philosopher, but any mind to which the fountains
of knowledge have been opened, and which has been
ITS MEANING. 319
taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its faculties
-—finds sources of inexhaustible interest in all that sur-
rounds it; in the objects of nature, the achievements of
art, the imaginations of poetry, the incidents of history,
the ways of mankind past and present, and their pros-
pects in the future. It is possible, indeed, to become
indifferent to all this, and that, too, without having ex-
hausted a thousandth part of it; but only when one has
had from the beginning no moral or human interest in
these things, and has sought in them only the gratifica-
tion of curiosity.
N ow, there is absolutely no reason in the nature of
things why an amount of mental culture sufficient to
give an intelligent interest in these objects of contem-
plation should not be the inheritance of every one born
in a civilized country. As little is there an inherent
necessity that any human being should be a selfish ego-
tist, devoid of every feeling or care but those which cen-
tre in his own miserable individuality. Something far
superior to this is sufficiently common even now to give
ample earnest of what the human species may be made.
Genuine private affections, and a sincere interest in the
public good, are possible, though in unequal degrees, to
every rightly brought up human being. In a world in
which there is so much to interest, so much to enjoy,
and so much also to correct and improve, every one
who has this moderate amount of moral and intellectual
requisites is capable of an existence which may be called
enviable; and unless such a person, through bad laws,
or subjection to the will of others, is denied the liberty
to use the sources of happiness within his reach, he will
not fail to find this enviable existence, if he escape the
,.
t ’ . _//,\
320 UTILITARIANISM.
positive evils of life, the great sources of physical and
mental suffering, —Such as indigence, disease, and the
unkindness, worthlessness, or premature loss, of objects
of affection. The main stress of the problem lies,
therefore, in the contest with these calamities, from
which it is a rare good fortune entirely to escape;
which, as things now are, cannot be obviated, and often
cannot be, in any material degree, mitigated. Yet no
one, whose Opinion deserves a moment’s consideration,
can doubt that most of the great positive evils of the
world are in themselves removable, and will, human
affairs continue to improve, be in the end reduced
within narrow limits. Poverty, in any sense implying
suffering, may be completely extinguished by the wis-
dom of society, combined with the good sense and
providence of individuals. Even that most intractable
of enemies, disease, may be indefinitely reduced in
dimensions by good physical and moral education, and
proper control of noxious influences ; while the progress
of science holds out a promise for the future of still
more direct conquests over this detestable foe. And
every advance in that direction relieves us from some,
not only of the chances which cut short our own lives,
but, what concerns us still more, which deprive us of
those in whom our happiness is wrapped up. As for
vicissitiides of foffune, and other disappointments con-
nected with worldly circumstances, these are principally
the effect either of gross imprudence, of ill-regulated
desires, or of bad or imperfect social institutions. All
the grand sources, in short, of human suffering, are in
a great degree, many of them almost entirely, conquera-
ble by human care and effort : and though their removal
ITS MEANING. 321
is grievously slow; though a long succession of gene-
rations will perish in the breach before the conquest is
completed, and this world becomes all that, if will and
knowledge were not wanting, it might easily be IIILIIG, —-
yet every mind sufficiently intelligent and generous to
bear a part, however small and unconspicuous, in the
endeavor, will draw a noble enjoyment from the contest
itself, which he would not, for any bribe in the form of
selfish indulgence, consent to be without.
And this leads to the true estimation of what is said
by the objectors concerning the possibility and the obli-
gation of learning to do without happiness. Unques-
tionably, it is possible to do without happiness: it is
done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind,
even in those parts of our present world which are least
deep in barbarism; and it often has to be done volun-
tarily by the hero or the martyr, for the sake of some-
thing which he prizes more than his individual happiness.
But this something—what is it, unless the happiness
Of others, or some of the requisites Of happiness? It
is noble to be capable of resigning entirely one’s own
portion of happiness, or chances of it: but, after all,
this self-sacrifice must be for some end; it is not its
own end; and if we are told that its end is not happi-
ness, but virtue, which is better than happiness, I ask,
Would the sacrifice be made if the hero or martyr did
not believe ’that it would earn for others immunity from
similar sacrifices? WVould it be made if he thought
that his renunciation of happiness for himself would
produce no fruit for any of his fellow-creatures but to
make their lot like his, and place them also in the con-
dition of persons who have renounced happiness? All
VOL. III. 21
322 UTILITARIANISM.
honor to those who can abnegate for themselves the
personal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation
they contribute worthily to increase the amount of hap-
piness in the world; but he who does it, or professes to
do it, for any other purpose, is no more deserving of
admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar. He
may be an inspiriting proof of what men can do, but
assuredly not an example of what they should.
Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the
world’s arrangements that any one can best serve
the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his
own, yet, so long as the world is in that imperfect state,
I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a
sacrifice is the highest Virtue which can be found in man.
I will add, that in this condition of the world, paradox-
ical as the assertion may be, the conscious ability to do
without happiness gives the best prospect of realizing
such happiness as is attainable. For nothing except
that consciousness can raise a person above the chances
of life, by making him feel, that, let fate and fortune do
their worst, they have not power to subdue him ; which,
once felt, frees him from excess of anxiety concerning
the evils of life, and enables him, like many a Stoic in
the worst times of the Roman Empire, to cultivate
in tranquillity the sources of satisfaction accessible to
him, without concerning himself about the uncertainty of
their duration, any more than about their inevitable end.
hIeanwhile, let utilitarians never cease to claim the
morality Of self-devotion as a possession which belongs
by as good a right to them as either to the Stoic or to the
Transcendentalist. The utilitarian morality does rec-
ognize in human \beings the power of sacrificing their
ITS MEANING. ' 323
own greatest good for the good of others. It only
refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A
sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the
sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted. The
only self-renunciation which it applauds is devotion to
the happiness, or to some of the means of happiness, of
others, either of mankind collectively, or of individuals
within the limits imposed by the collective interests of
mankind.
I must again repeat, what the assailants of utilita-
rianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge, that
the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of
what is right in conduct is not the agent’s own happi-
ness, but that of all concerned; as, between his own
happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him
to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevo-
lent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth,
we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To
do as you would be done by, and to love your neighbor
as yourself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilita-
rian morality. As the means of making the nearest
approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that
laws and social arrangements should place the happi-
ness or (as, speaking practically, it may be called) the
interest of every individual as nearly as possible in har-
moidy with the interest of the whole ; and, secondly, that
edupation and opinion, which have so vast a power over
human charactefjShould so use that power as to estab-
lish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble
association between his own happiness and the good of
the whole, — especially between his own happiness, and
the practice of such modes of conduct, negative and pos-
324 UTILITARIANISM.
itive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes, --
SO that not only he may be unable to conceive the possi-
bility of happiness to himself, consistently with conduct
Opposed to the general good, but also that a direct im-
pulse to promote the general good may be in every
individual one of the habitual motives of action, and the
sentiments connected therewith may fill a large and
prominent place in every human being’s sentient exist-
ence. If the impugners of the utilitarian morality
represented it to their own minds in this its true char-
acter, I know not what recommendation possessed by
any other morality they could possibly affirm to be
wanting to it; what more beautiful or more exalted
developments of human nature any other ethical system
can be supposed to foster; or what springs of action,
not accessible to the utilitarian, such systems rely on for
giving effect to their mandates.
The objectors to utilitarianism cannot always be
charged with representing it in a discreditable light.
On the contrary, those among them who entertain any
thing like a just idea of its disintgreged character
sometimes find fault with its standaif'dpas being too high
for humanity. They say it is exacting too much to re-
quire that people shall always act from the inducement
of promoting the general interests of society. But this
is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of morals,
and confound the rule of action with the motive of it.
It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties,
or by what test we may know them; but no system of
ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be
a feeling of duty: on the contrary, ninety-nine hun-
dredths of all our actions are done from other motives,
ITS MEANING. 325
and rightly so done, if the rule of duty does not con-
demn them. It is the more unjust to utilitarianism
that this particular misapprehension should be made a
ground of objection to it, inasmuch as utilitarian moral-
ists have gone beyond almost all others in affirming that
the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the
action, though much with the worth of the agent. He
who saves a fellow—creature from drowning does what is
morally right, whether his motive be duty, or the hope
of being paid for his trouble : he who betrays the friend
that trusts him is guilty of a crime, even if his object
be to serve another friend to whom he is under greater
obligations. But to speak only of actions done from
the motive of duty, and in direct obedience to principle :
it is a misapprehension of the utilitarian mode of thought
to conceive it as implying that people should fix their
minds upon so wide a generality as the world or society
at large. The great majority of good actions are in-
tended, not for the benefit of the world, but for that of
individuals, of which the good of the world is made up ;
and the thoughts of the most virtuous man need not on
these occasions travel beyond the particular persons con-
cerned, except so far as is necessary to assure himself,
that, in benefiting them, he is not violating the rights
— that is, the legitimate and authorized expectations —-
of any one else.‘ The multiplicatiorl of happiness is,
according to the utilitarian—Ethics, the object of Virtue:
the occasions on which any person (except one in a thou-
sand) has it in his power to do this on an extended scale
-—in other words, to be a public benefactor — are but
exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on
to consider public utility: in every other case, private
326 UTILITARIANISM.
utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons,
is all he has to attend to. Those alone, the influence
of whose actions extends to society in general, need con—
cern themselves habitually about so large an object. In
the case of abstinences indeed, —of things which people
forbearto do from moral considerations, though the con-
sequences in the particular case might be beneficial, — it
would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be
consciously aware that the action is of a class, which, if
practised generally, would be generally injurious, and
that this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from
it. The amount of regard for the public interest implied
in this recognition is no greater than is demanded by
every system of morals; for they all enjoin to abstain
from whatever is manifestly pernicious to society.
The same considerations dispose of another reproach
against the doctrine Of utility, founded on a still grosser
misconception of the purpose of a standard of morality,
and of the very meaning of the words " right” and
“ wrong.” It is often affirmed, that utilitarianism ren-
ders men cold and unsympathizing; that it chills their
moral feelings towards individuals ; that it makes them
regard only the dry and hard consideration of the conse-
quences of actions, not taking into their moral estimate
the qualities from which those actions emanate. If the
assertion means that they do not allow their judgment
respecting the rightness or wrongness of an action to be
influenced by their opinion of the qualities of the person
who does it, this is a complaint, not against utilitarian-
ism, but against having any standard of morality at all :
for certainly no known ethical standard decides an action
to be good or bad because it is done by a good or a bad
ITS MEANING. . 327
man ; still less because done by an amiable, a brave, or
a benevolent man, or the contrary. These considera-
tions are relevant, not to the estimation of actions, but
of persons ; and there is nothing in the utilitarian theory
inconsistent with the fact, that thbre are other things
which interest us in persons besides the rightness and
wrongness of their actions. The Stoics indeed, with
the paradoxical misuse of language which was part of
their system, and by which they strove to raise them-
selves above all concern about any thing but virtue,
were fond of saying, that he who has that, has every
thing; that he, and only he, is rich, is beautiful, is a
king. But no claim of this description is made for the
virtuous man by the utilitarian doctrine. Utilitarians
are quite aware that there are other desirable possessions
and qualities besides virtue, and are perfectly willing to
allow to all of them their full worth. They are also
aware that a right action does not necessarily indicate a
virtuous character; and that actions which are blamable
often proceed from qualities entitled to praise. ‘When
this is apparent in any particular case, it modifies their
estimation, not certainly of the act, but of the agent.
I grant that they are, notwithstanding, of opinion, that,
in the long-run, the best proof of a good character is good
actions; and resolutely refuse to consider any mental
disposition as good, of which the predominant tendency
is to produce bad conduct. This makes them unpopular
with many people : but it is an unpopularity which they
must share with every one who regards the distinction
between right and wrong in a serious light; and the
reproach is not one which a conscientious utilitarian
need be anxious to repel.
, 3 28 UTILITARIANISM.
If no more be meant by the objection than that many
utilitarians look on the morality of actions, as measured
by the utilitarian standard, with too exclusive a regard,
and do not lay sufficient stress upon the other beauties
of character which go towards making a human being
lovable or admirable, this may be admitted. Utili-
tarians who have cultivated their moral feelings, but
not their sympathies nor their artistic perceptions, do
fall into this mistake; and SO do all other moralists
under the same conditions. What can be said in excuse
for other moralists is equally available for them ; namely,
that, if there is to be any error, it is better that it should
be on that side. As a matter of fact, we may affirm
that among utilitarians, as among adherents of other
systems, there is every imaginable degree of rigidity
and Of laxity in the application of their standard : some
are even puritanically rigorous, while others are as
indulgent as can possibly be desired by sinner or by
sentimentalist. But, on the whole, a doctrine which
brings prominently forward the interest that mankind
have in the repression and prevention of conduct which
violates the moral law, is likely to be inferior to no
other in turning the sanctions of opinion against such
violations. It is true, the question, “That does violate
the moral law? is one on which those who recognize
different standards of morality are likely now and then
to differ. But difference of opinion on moral questions
was not first introduced into the world by utilitarianism ;
while that doctrine does supply, if not always an easy,
at all events a tangible and intelligible, mode of deciding
such differences.
ITS MEANING. 329
It may not be superfluous to notice a few more of
the common misapprehensions of utilitarian ethics, even
those which are so obvious and gross that it might
appear impossible for any person of candor and intelli-
gence to fall into them ; since persons even of consider-
able mental endowments Often give themselves so little
trouble to understand the bearings of any opinion
against which they entertain a prejudice, and men are in
general so little conscious of this voluntary ignorance as
a defect, that the vulgarest misunderstandings of ethical
doctrines are continually met with in the deliberate
writings of persons of the greatest pretensions both to
high principle and to philosophy. We not uncommonly
hear the doctrine of utility inveighed against as a godless
doctrine. If it be necessary to say any thing at all
against so mere an assumption, we may say that the
question depends upon what idea we have formed _of
the moral character of the Deity. If it be a true belief,
that God desires, above all things, the happiness of his
creatures, and that this was his purpose in their crea-
tion, utility is not only not a godless doctrine, but more
profoundly religious than any other. If it be meant
that utilitarianism does not recognize the revealed will
of God as the supreme law of morals, I answer, that
an utilitarian, who believes in the perfect goodness and
wisdom of God, necessarily believes that whatever God
has thought fit to reveal on the subject of morals must
fulfil the requirements of utility in a supreme degree.
But others besides utilitarians have been of opinion,
that the Christian revelation was intended, and is fitted,
to inform the hearts and minds of mankind with a spirit
which should enable them to find for themselves What is
330 UTILITARIANISM.
3.,
right, and incline them to do it when found, rather than
to tell them, except in a very general way, what it is ;
and that we need a doctrine of ethics, carefully followed
out, to interpret to us the will of God. Whether this
opinion is correct or not, it is superfluous here to dis—
cuss ; since whatever aid religion, either natural or
revealed, can afford to ethical investigation, is as open
to the utilitarian moralist as to any other. He can use
it as the testimony of God to the usefulness or hurtful-
ness of any given course of action, by as good a right
as others can use it for the indication of a transcendental
law, having no connection with usefulness or with hap-
piness.
Again: Utility is often summarily stigmatized as an
immoral doctrine by giving it the name of Expediency,
and, taking advantage Of the popular use of that term,
to contrast it with Principle. But the Expedient, in the
sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally
means that which is expedient for the particular interest
of the agent himself; as when a minister sacrifices the
interests of his country to keep himself in place. \Vhen
it means any thing better than this, it means that which
is expedient for some immediate Object, some temporary
purpose, but which violates a rule whose observance is
expedient in a much higher degree. The Expedient, in
this sense, instead of being the same thing with the.
useful, is a branch of the hurtful. Thus it would often
be expedient, for the purpose of getting over some
momentary embarrassment, or attaining some Object
immediately useful to ourselves or others, to tell a lie.
But inasmuch as the cultivation in ourselves of a sen-
sitive feeling on the subject of veracity is one of the
ITS MEANING. 301
fl
most useful, and the enfeeblement of that feeling one
of the most hurtful, things to which our conduct can be
instrumental ; and inasmuch as any, even unintentional,
deviation from truth does that much towards weaken-
ing the trustworthiness of human assertion, which is not
only the principal support of all present social well-
being, but the insufficiency of which does more than any
one thing that can be named to keep back civilization,
virtue, every thing on which human happiness on the
largest scale depends,— we feel that the violation, for a
present advantage, of a rule of such transcendent expe-
diency, is not expedient ; and that he, who, for the sake
of a convenience to himself or to some other individual,
does what depends on him to deprive mankind of the
good, and inflict upon them the evil, involved in the
greater or less reliance which they can place in each
other’s word, acts the part of one of their worst enemies.
Yet that even this rule, sacred as it is, admits of possi-
ble exceptions, is acknowledged by all moralists; the
chief of which is, when the withholding of some fact (as
of information from a malefactor, or Of bad news from a
person dangerously ill) would save an individual (espe-
cially an individual other than one’s self) from great
and unmerited evil, and when the withholding can only
be effected by denial. But in order that the exception
may not extend itself beyond the need, and may have the '
least possible effect in weakening reliance on veracity,
it ought to be recognized, and, if possible, its limits
defined; and, if the principle of utility is good for any
thing, it must be good for weighing these conflicting
utilities against one another, and marking out the region
within which one or the other preponderates.
332 UTILITARIANISM.
Again : defenders of utility often find themselves called
upon to reply to such objections as this, —-—that there is
not time, previous to action, for calculating and weigh-
ing the effects of any line of conduct on the general
happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say
that it is impossible to guide our conduct by Chris-
tianity, because there is not time, on every occasion on
which any thing has to be done, to read through the
Old and New Testaments. The answer to the Objection
is, that there has been ample time; namely, the whole
past duration of the human species. During all that_
time, mankind have been learning by experience the ten-
dencies of actions, on which experience all the prudence
as well as all the morality of life are dependent. People
talk as if the commencement of this course of experience
had hitherto been put off, and as if, at the moment
when some man feels tempted to meddle with the prop-
erty or life of another, he had to begin considering for
the first time whether murder and theft are injurious to
human happiness. Even then, I do not think that he
would find the question very puzzling; but, at all
events, the matter is now done to his hand. It is truly
a whimsical supposition, that, if mankind were agreed
in considering utility to be the test of morality, they
would remain without any agreement as to what is
useful, and would take no measures for having their
notions on the subject taught to the young, and enforced
by law and opinion. There is no difficulty in proving
any ethical standard whatever to work ill, if we suppose
universal idiocy to be conjoined with it: but, on any
hypothesis short of that, mankind must by this time
have acquired positive beliefs as to the effects of some
ITS MEANING. 333
actions on their happiness; and the beliefs which have
thus come down are the rules of morality for the multi-
tude, and for the philosopher, until he has succeeded in
finding better. That philosophers might easily do this,
even now, on many subjects ; that the received code of
ethics is by no means of divine right ; and that mankind
have still much to learn as to the effects of actions on
the general happiness, —I admit, or, rather, earnestly
maintain. The corollaries from the principle of utility,
like the precepts of every practical art, admit of indefi-
nite improvement; and, in a progressive state of the
human mind, their. improvement is perpetually going
on. But to consider the rules of morality as improva-
ble is one thing; to pass over the intermediate generali-
zations entirely, and endeavor to test each individual
action directly by the first principle, is another. It is a
strange notion, that the acknowledgment of a first prin—
ciple is inconsistent with the admission of secondary
ones. To inform a traveller respecting the place of his
ultimate destination is not to forbid the use of land-
marks and direction-posts on the way. The proposition
that happiness is the end and aim of morality does not
mean that no road ought to be laid down to that goal, or
that persons going thither should not be advised to take
one direction rather than another. Men really ought to
leave off talking a kind of nonsense on this subject
which they would neither talk nor listen to on other
matters of practical concernment. Nobody argues that
the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy,
because sailors cannot wait to calculate the "Nautical
Almanac.” Being rational creatures, they go to sea
with it ready calculated; and all rational creatures go
334 UTILITARIANISM.
out upon the sea of life with their minds made up on
the common questions of right and wrong, as well as
on many of the far more difficult questions of wise and
foolish. And this, as long as foresight is a human
quality, it is to be presumed they will continue to do.
Whatever we adopt as the fundamental principle of
morality, we require subordinate principles to apply it
by: the impossibility of doing without them, being
common to all systems, can afford no argument against
any one in particular; but gravely to argue as if no
such secondary principles could be had, and as if man-
kind had remained till now, and always must remain,
without drawing any general conclusions from the ex-
perience of human life, is as high a pitch, I think, as
absurdity has ever reached in philosophical controversy.
The remainder of the stock arguments against utili-
tarianism mostly consist in laying to its charge the
common infirmities of human nature, and the general
difficulties which embarrass conscientious persons in
shaping their course through life. WVe are told that an
utilitarian will be apt to make his own particular case
an exception to moral rules; and, when under tempta-
tion, will see an utility in the breach of a rule greater
than he will see in its observance. But is utility the
only creed which is able to furnish us with excuses for
evil-doing, and means Of cheating our own conscience?
They are afforded in abundance by all doctrines which
recognize as a fact in morals the existence of conflicting
considerations; which all doctrines do that have been
believed by sane persons. It is not the fault of any
creed, but of the complicated nature of human affairs,
that rules of conduct cannot be so framgd as to require
ITS MEANING. 335
no exceptions, and that hardly any kind of action can
safely be laid down as either always obligatory or
always condemnable. There is no ethical creed which
does not temper the rigidity of its laws by giving a
certain latitude, under the moral responsibility of the
agent, for accommodation to peculiarities of circum-
stances; and under every creed, at the opening thus
made, self—deception and dishonest casuistry get in.
There exists no moral system under which there do not
arise unequivocal cases of conflicting obligation. These
are the real difficulties; the knotty points both in the
theory of ethics, and in the conscientious guidance of
personal conduct. They are overcome practically with
greater or with less success according to the intellect
and virtue of the individual; but it can hardly be pre-
tended that any one will be the less qualified for dealing
with them, from possessing an ultimate standard to
which conflicting rights and duties can be referred. If
utility is the ultimate source of moral obligations, utility
may be invoked to decide between them when their de-
mands are incompatible. Though the application of the
standard may be difficult, it is better than none at all:
while in other systems, the moral laws all claiming
independent authority, there is no common umpire en-
titled to interfere between them; their claims to pre—
cedence one over another rest on little better than
sophistry ; and unless determined, as they generally are,
by the unacknowledged influence of considerations of
utility, afford a free scope for the action of personal
desires and partialities. We must remember that only
in these cases of conflict between secondary principles
is it requisite that first principles should be appealed to.
336 UTILITARIANISM.
There is no case of moral obligation in which some
secondary principle is not involved ; and, if only one,
there can seldom be any real doubt which one it is, in
the mind of any person by whom the principle itself is
recognized.
CHAPTER III.
OF THE ULTIMATE SANCTION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY.
THE question is often asked, and properly so, in regard
to any supposed moral standard, WVhat is its sanc-
tion? what are the motives to obey it? or, more speci-
fically, what is the source of its obligation ? whence does
it derive its binding force? It is a necessary part of
moral philosophy to provide the answer to this question ;
which, though frequently assuming the shape of an
Objection to the utilitarian morality, as if it had some
special applicability to that above others, really arises
in regard to all standards. It arises, in fact, whenever
a person is called on to adopt a standard, or refer mo-
rality to any basis on which he has not been accustomed
to rest it. For the customary morality, that which
education and opinion have consecrated, is the only one
which presents itself to the mind with the feeling of
being in itself obligatory : and, when a person is asked
to believe that this morality derives its obligation from
some general principle round which custom has not
thrown the same halo, the assertion is to him a paradox ;
the supposed corollaries seem to have a more binding
force than [the original theorem ; the superstructure
seems to stand better without than with what is rep-
ITS SANOTIONS. 337
resented as its foundation. He says to himself, “I feel
that I am bound not to rob or murder, betray or
deceive; but why am I bound to promote the general
happiness? If my own happiness lies in something
else, why may I not give that the preference?”
If the view adopted by the utilitarian philosophy of
the nature of the moral sense be correct, this difficulty
will always present itself, until the influences which
form moral character have taken the same hold of the
principle which they have taken of some of the conse-
quences; until, by the improvement of education, the
feeling of unity with our fellow-creatures shall be (what
it cannot be denied that Christ intended it to be) as
deeply rooted in our character, and, to our own con-
sciousness, as completely a part of our nature, as the
horror of crime is in an ordinarily well brought up
young person. In the mean time, however, the diffi-
culty has no peculiar application to the doctrine of util-
ity, but is inherent in every attempt to analyze morality,
and reduce it to principles ; which, unless the principle
is already in men’s minds invested with as much sacred-
ness as any of its applications, always seems to divest
them of a part of their sanctity.
The principle of utility either has, or there is no
reason why it might not have, all the sanctions which
belong to any other system of morals. Those sanctions
are either external or internal. Of the external sane-
tions it is not necessary to speak at any length. They
are, the hope of favor and the fear of displeasure from
our fellow-creatures, or from the Ruler of the universe,
along with whatever we may have of sympathy or
affection for them; or of love and awe of him, inclining
VOL. III. 22
338 UTILITARIANISM.
us to do his will independently of selfish consequences.
There is evidently no reason why all these motives
for observance should not attach themselves to the
utilitarian morality as completely and as powerfully as
to any other. Indeed, those of them which refer to our
fellow-creatures are sure to do so, in proportion to the
amount of general intelligence: for, whether there be
any other ground of moral obligation than the general
happiness or not, men do desire happiness; and, how-
ever imperfect may be their own practice, they desire
and commend all conduct in others towards themselves
by which they think their happiness is promoted. With
regard to the religious motive, if men believe, as most
profess to do, in the goodness of God, those who think
that conduciveness to the general happiness is the essence,
or even only the criterion, of gdod, must necessarily
believe that it is alsO-“fhat which God approves. The
whole force, therefore, of external reward and punish-
ment, whether physical or moral, and whether proceed-
ing from God or from our fellow-men, together with
all that the capacities of human nature admit of dis-
interested devotion to either, become available to enforce
the utilitarian morality, in proportion as that morality
is recognized; and the more powerfully, the more the
appliances of education and general cultivation are bent
to the purpose.
So far as to external sanctions. The internal sanction
of duty, whatever our standard of duty may be, is one
and the same, —-a feeling in our own mind; a pain,
more or less intense, attendant on violation Of duty,
which, in properly cultivated moral natures, rises in the
mOre serious cases into shrinking from it as an impossi-
ITS SANcTIONs. 339
bility. This feeling, when disinterested, and connect-
ing itself with the pure idea of duty, and not with some
particular form of it, or with any of the merely acces-
sory circumstances, is the essence of Conscience : though
in that complex phenomenon, as it actually exists, the
simple fact is, in general, all incrusted over with collate-
ral associations, derived from sympathy, from love, and
still more from fear; from all the forms of religious
feeling; from the recollections of childhood, and of
all our past life; from self-esteem, desire of the esteem
Of others, and occasionally even self-abasement. This
extreme complication is, I apprehend, the origin of the
sort of mystical character, which, by a tendency of the
human mind of which there are many other examples,
is apt to be attributed to the idea of moral obligation,
and which leads people to believe that the idea cannot
possibly attach itself to any other objects than those
which, by a supposed mysterious law, are found in our
present experience to excite it. Its binding force, how-7
ever, consists in the existence of a mass of feeling,
which must be broken through in order to do what,"
violates our standard of right; and which, if we do'
nevertheless violate that standard, will probably have to.
be encountered afterwards in the form of remorse.
Whatever theory we have of the nature or origin of
conscience, this is what essentially constitutes it.
The ultimate sanction, therefore, of all morality (ex-
ternal motives apart) being a subjective feeling in our
own minds, I see nothing embarrassing, to those whose
standard is utility, in the question, \Vhat is the sanction
of that particular standard? IVe may answer, The
same as of all other moral standards, -—the conscientious
340 UTILITARIANISM.
feelings of mankind. Undoubtedly this sanction has no
binding efficacy on those who do not possess the feelings
it appeals to; but neither will these persons be more
obedient to any other moral principle than to the utili-
tarian one. On them, morality of any kind has no
hold but through the external sanctions. Meanwhile
the feelings exist, — a fact in human nature, the reality
of which, and the great power with which they are
capable of acting on those in whom they have been duly
cultivated, are proved by experience. No reason has
ever been shown why they may not be cultivated to as
great intensity in connection with the utilitarian as with
any other rule of morals.
There is, I am aware, a disposition to believe that a
person who sees in moral Obligation a transcendental
fact, an objective reality belonging to the province of
" things in themselves,” is likely to be more obedient
to it than one who believes it to be entirely subjective,
having its seat in human consciousness only. But, what-
ever a person’s opinion may be on this point of ontology,
the force he is really urged by is his own subjective
feeling, and is exactly measured by its strength. No
one’s belief that Duty is an Objective reality is stronger
than the belief that God is so; yet the belief in God,
apart from the expectation of actual reward and punish-
ment, only Operates on conduct through, and in propor-
tion to, the subjective religious feeling The sanction,
so far as it is disinterested, is always in the mind itself:
and the notion, therefore, of the transcendental moralists
must be, that this sanction will not exist in the mind,
unless it is believed to have its root out of the mind;
and that if a person is able to say to himself, " This
ITS SANOTIONS. 341
which is restraining me, and which is called my con-
science, is only a feeling in my own mind,” he may
possibly draw the conclusion, that, when the feeling
ceases, the obligation ceases; and that, if he find the
feeling inconvenient, he may disregard it, and endeavor
to get rid of it. But is this danger confined to the
utilitarian morality? Does the belief that moral obliga-
tion has its seat outside the mind make the feeling of it
too strong to be got rid of? The fact is so far other-
wise, that all moralists admit and lament the ease with
which, in the generality of minds, conscience can be
silenced or stifled. The question, Need I obey my
conscience? is quite as often put to themselves by per-
sons who never heard of the principle of utility as by
its adherents. Those whose conscientious feelings are
so weak as to allow of their asking this question, if they
answer it affirmatively, will not do so because they be-
lieve in the transcendental theory, but because of the
external sanctions.
It is not necessary, for the present purpose, to decide
whether the feeling of duty is innate or implanted.
Assuming it to be innate, it is an open question to what
objects it naturally attaches itself; for the philosophic
supporters of that theory are now agreed that the intui-
tive perception is of principles of morality, and not Of the
details. If there be any thing innate in the matter, I
see no reason why the feeling which is innate should not
be that of regard to the pleasures and pains of others.
If there is any principle of morals which is intuitively
obligatory, I should say it must be that. If so, the
intuitive ethics would coincide with the utilitarian, and
there would be no further quarrel between them. Even
342 UTILITARIANISM.
as it is, the intuitive moralists, though they believe that
there are other intuitive moral obligations, do already
believe this to be one; for they unanimously hold that a
large portion of morality turns upon the consideration
due to the interests of our fellow-creatures. Therefore,
if the belief in the transcendental origin of moral Obliga-
tion gives any additional efficacy to the internal sanction,
it appears to me that the utilitarian principle has already
the benefit of it.
On the other hand, if, as is my own belief, the moral
feelings are not innate, but acquired, they are not for
that reason the less natural. It is natural to man to
speak, to reason, to build cities, to cultivate the ground,
though these are acquired faculties. The moral feelings
are not indeed a part of our nature, In the sense of
being in any perceptible degree present in all Of us ; but
this, unhappily, is a fact admitted by those who believe
the most strenuously in their transcendental origin.
Like the other acquired capacities above referred to, the
moral faculty, if not a part of our nature, is a natural
outgrowth from it ; capable like them, in a certain
small degree, of springing up spontaneously, and sus-
ceptible of being brought by cultivation to a high degree
of development. Unhappily, it is also susceptible, by
a sufficient use of the external sanctions and of the force
of early impressions, of being cultivated in almost any
direction; so that there is hardly any thing so absurd
or so mischievous that it may not, by means of these
influences, be made to act on the human mind with all
the authority of conscience. To doubt. that the same
potency might be given by the same means to the
principle of utility, even if it had no foundation in
ITS SANGTIONS. 343
human nature, would be flying in the face of all ex-
perience.
But moral associations which are wholly of artificial
creation, when intellectual culture goes on, yield by
degrees to the dissolving force of analysis: and if the
feeling of duty, when associated with utility, would
appear equally arbitrary; if there were no leading
department of our nature, no powerful class of senti-
ments, with which that association would harmonize,
which would make us feel it congenial, and incline us
not only to foster it in others (for which we have abun-
dant interested motives), but also to cherish it in
ourselves; if there were not, in short, a natural basis
of sentiment for utilitarian morality,—it might well
happen that this association also, even after it had been
implanted by education, might be analyzed away.
But there is this basis of powerful natural sentiment;
and this it is, which, when once the general happiness is
recognized as the ethical standard, will constitute the
strength of the utilitarian morality. This firm founda-
tion is that of the social feelings of mankind; the desire
to be in unity with our fellow-creatures, which is already
a powerful principle in human nature, and happily one
of those which tend to become stronger, even without
express inculcation from the influences of advancing civ-
ilization. The social state is at once so natural, so
necessary, and so habitual to man, that except in some
unusual circumstances, or by an effort of voluntary
abstraction, he never conceives himself otherwise than
as a member of a body; and this association is riveted
more and more as mankind are further removed from
the state of savage independence. Any condition, there-
344 UTILITARIANISM.
fore, which is essential to a state of society, becomes
more and more an inseparable part of every person’s
conception of the state of things which he is born into,
and which is the destiny of a human being. Now,
society between human beings, except in the relation of
master and slave, is manifestly impossible on any other
footing than that the interests of all are to be consulted.
Society between equals can only exist on the under-
standing that the interests of all are to be regarded
equally. And since, in all states of civilization, every
person except an absolute monarch has equals, every one
is obliged to live on these terms with somebody; and,
in every age, some advance is made towards a state
in which it will be impossible to live permanently on
other terms with anybody. In this way, people grow up
unable to conceive as possible to them a state of total
disregard of other people’s interests. They are under a
necessity of conceiving themselves as at least abstaining
from all the grosser injuries, and (if only for their own
protection) living in a state of constant protest against
them. They are also familiar with the fact of co-oper-
ating with others, and proposing to themselves a col-
lective, not an individual, interest as the aim (at least
for the time being) of their actions. So long as they
are cO-operating, their ends are identified with those of
others: there is at least a temporary feeling that the
interests of others are their own interests. Not only does
all strengthening of social ties, and all healthy growth of
society, give to each individual a stronger personal inter-
est in practically consulting the welfare of others: it
also leads him to identify his feelings more and more
with their good, or at least with an ever greater degree
ITS SANOTIONS. 345
of practical consideration for it. He comes, as though
instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who
of coarse pays regard to others. The good of others
becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be
attended to, like any of the physical conditions of our
existence. N ow, whatever amount of this feeling a
person has, he is urged by the strongest motives, both
of interest and of sympathy, to demonstrate it, and, to
the utmost of his power, encourage it in others; and,
even if he has none of it himself, he is as greatly
interested as any one else that others should have it.
Consequently, the smallest germs of the feeling are laid
hold of and nourished by the contagion of sympathy
and the influences of education, and a complete web of
corroborative association is woven round it by the power-
ful agency of the external sanctions. This mode of
conceiving ourselves and human life, as civilization goes
on, is felt to be more and more natural. Every step in
political improvement renders it more so, by removing
the sources of opposition of interest, and levelling those
inequalities of legal privilege between individuals or
classes, oWing to which there are large portions of man-
kind whose happiness it is still practicable to disregard.
In an improving state of the human mind, the influences
are constantly on the increase which tend to generate in
each individual a feeling of unity with all the rest,
which, if perfect, would make him never think of or
desire any beneficial condition for himself, in the bene-
fits Of which they are not included. If we now suppose
this feeling of unity to be taught as a religion, and the
Whole force of education, of institutions, and of opinion,
directed, as it once was in the case of religion, to make
I
346 UTILITARIANISM.
every person grow up from infancy surrounded on all
sides both by the profession and the practice of it, I
think that no one who can realize this conception will
feel any misgiving about the sufficiency of the ultimate
sanction for the Happiness morality. To any ethical
student who finds the realization difficult, I recommend,
as a means of facilitating it, the second of M. Comte’s
two principal works, the " Traité de Politique Positive.”
I entertain the strongest objections to the system of poli-
tics and morals set forth in that treatise : but I think it
has superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to
the service of humanity, even without the aid of belief
in a Providence, both the psychological power and the
social efficacy of a religion; making it take hold of
human life, and color all thought, feeling, and action, in
a manner of which the greatest ascendency ever exercised
by any religion may be but a type and foretaste, and
of which the danger is, not that it should be insuflicient,
but that it should be so excessive as to interfere unduly
with human freedom and individuality.
Neither is it necessary to the feeling which constitutes
the binding force of the utilitarian morality on those
who recognize it, to wait for these social influences
which would make its obligation felt by mankind at
large. In the comparatively early state of human ad-
vancement in which we now live, a person cannot indeed
feel that entireness of sympathy with all others which
would make any real discordance in the general direction
of their conduct in life impossible ; but already a person
in whom the social feeling is at all developed cannot
bring himself to think of the rest of his fellow-creatures
as struggling rivals with him for the means of happi-
ITS SANCTIONS. 347
ness, whom he must desire to see defeated in their
object in order that he may succeed in his. The deeply
rooted conception which every individual even now has
of himself as a social being tends to make him feel it
one of his natural wants, that there should be harmony
between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-
creatures. If differences of opinion and of mental
culture make it impossible for him to share many of
their actual feelings, —- perhaps make him denounce and
defy those feelings, -- he still needs to be conscious that
his real aim and theirs do not conflict; that he is not
opposing himself to what they really wish for, —-namely,
their own good,—but is, on the contrary, promoting it.
This feeling in most individuals is much inferior in
strength to their selfish feelings, and is often wanting
altogether. But, to those who have it, it possesses all
the characters of a natural feeling. It does not present
itself to their minds as a superstition of education, or a
law despotically imposed by the power of society, but
as an attribute which it would not be well for them to
be without. This conviction is the ultimate sanction of
the greatest-happiness morality. This it is which makes
any mind of well-developed feelings work with, and not
against, the outward motives to care for others, afforded
by what I have called the external sanctions ; and when
those sanctions are wanting, or act in an opposite direc-
tion, constitutes in itself a powerful internal binding
force, in proportion to the sensitiveness and thoughtful-
ness of the character: since few but those whose mind
is a moral blank could bear to lay out their course of
life on the plan of paying no regard to others, except so
far as their own private interest compels.
348 UTILITARIANISM.
CHAPTER IV.
OF WHAT SORT OF PROOF THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY IS
SUSC'EPTIBLE.
IT has already been remarked, that questions of ulti-
mate ends do not admit of proof, in the ordinary ac-
ceptation of the term. To be incapable of proof by
reasoning is common to all first principles; to the first
premises of our knowledge, as well as to those of our
conduct. But the former, being matters of fact, may
be the subject of a direct appeal to the faculties which
judge of fact; namely, our senses, and our internal
consciousness. Can an appeal be made to the same
faculties on questions of practical ends? Or by what
other faculty is cognizance taken of them?
Questions about ends are, in other words, questions
what things are desirable. The utilitarian doctrine is,
that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable,
as an end; all other things being only desirable as
means to that end. What ought to be required of
this doctrine -— what conditions is it requisite that the
doctrine should fulfil— to make good its claim to be
believed?
The only proof capable of being given that an ob-
ject is visible, is that people actually see it; the only
proof that a sound is audible, is that people hear it:
and so of the other sources of our experience. In like
manner, I apprehend, the sole evidence it is possible
to produce that any thing is desirable, is that people do
actually desire it. If the end which the utilitarian
doctrine proposes to itself were not, in theory and in
How PROVED. 349
practice, acknowledged to be an end, nothing could
ever convince any person that it was so. No reason
can be given why the general happiness is desirable,
except that each person, so far as he believes it to be
attainable, desires his own happiness. This, however,
being a fact, we have not only all the proof which the
case admits of, but all which it is possible to require,
that happiness is a good; that each person’s happiness
is a good to that person; and the general happiness,
therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.
Happiness has made out its title as one of the ends of
conduct, and consequently one of the criteria of mo-
rality.
But it has not, by this alone, proved itself to be the
sole criterion. To do that, it would seem, by the same
rule, necessary to show, not only that people desire
happiness, but that they never desire any thing else.
N ow, it is palpable that they do desire things, which,
in common language, are decidedly distinguished from
happiness. They desire, for example, virtue and the
absence of vice, no less really than pleasure and
the absence of pain. The desire of virtue is not as
universal, but it is as authentic a fact, as the desire of
happiness; and hence the opponents of the utilitarian
standard deem that they have a right to infer that there
are other ends of human action besides happiness, and
that happiness is not the standard of approbation and dis-
approbation.
But does the utilitarian doctrine deny that people
desire virtue, or maintain that virtue is not a thing to
be desired? The very reverse. It maintains not only
that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be desired
350 UTILITARIANISM.
xdisinterestedly, for itself. Whatever may be the opin—
ion of utilitarian moralists as to the original condi-
tions by which virtue is made virtue; however they
may believe (as they do) that actions and dispositions
are only Virtuous because they promote another end
than virtue, -— yet this being granted, and it having
been decided, from considerations of this description,
what is virtuous, they not only place virtue at the very
head of the things which are good as means to the
ultimate end, but they also recognize, as‘a? psychological
fact, the possibility of its being, to the individual, a
good in itself, without looking to any end beyond it;
and hold that the mind is not in a right state, not in
a state conformable to utility, not in the state most
conducive to the general happiness, unless it does love
virtue in this manner, —— as a thing desirable in itself,
even although, in the individual instance, it should
not produce those other desirable consequences which
it tends to produce, and on account of which it is held
to be virtue. This opinion is not, in the smallest
degree, a departure from the Happiness principle.
The ingredients of happiness are very various, and
each of them is desirable in itself, and not merely
when considered as swelling an aggregate. The prin-
ciple of utility does not mean that any given pleasure
——as music, for instance —- or any given exemption from
pain —- as, for example, health —- are to be looked upon
as means to a collective something termed happiness,
and to be desired on that account. They are desired
and desirable in and for themselves: besides being
means, they are a part of the end. Virtue, according
to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and origi-
“A
How PROVED. 351
nally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so ,
and, in! those who love it disinterestedly, it has become
so, and is desired and cherished, not as a means to hap-
piness, but as a part of their happiness.
To illustrate this farther: we may remember that
virtue is not the only thing, originally a means, and
which, if it were not a means to any thing else, would
be and remain indifferent, but which, by association
with what it is a means to, comes to be desired for
itself, and that, too, with the utmost intensity. What,
for example, shall we say of the love of money? There
is nothing originally more desirable about money than
about any heap of glittering pebbles. Its worth is
solely that of the things which it will buy; the desires
for other things than itself, which it is a means of grat-
ifying. Yet the love of money is not only one of the
strongest moving forces of human life, but money is,
in many cases, desired in and for itself: the desire to
possess it is often stronger than the desire to use it, and
goes on increasing when all the desires which point to
ends beyond it, to be compassed by it, are falling off.
It may, then, be said truly, that money is desired, not
for the sake of an end, but as part of the end. From
being a means to happiness, it has come to be itself a
principal ingredient of the individual’s conception of
happiness. The same may be said of the majority of
the great objects of human life, — power, for example,
or fame; except that to each of these there is a certain
amount of immediate pleasure annexed, which has at
least the semblance of being naturally inherent in them :
a thing which cannot be said of money. Still, how-
ever, the strongest natural attraction, both of power
352 UTILITARIANISM.
and of fame, is the immense aid they give to the attain-
ment of our other wishes ; and it is the strong "associa-
tion thus generated between them and all our objects
of desire which gives to the direct desire of them the
intensity it often assumes, so as in some characters to
surpass in strength all other desires. In these cases,
the means have become a part of the end, and a more
important part of it than any of the things which they
are means to. What was once desired as an instru-
ment for the attainment of happiness has come to be
desired for its own sake. In being desired for its own
sake, it is, however, desired as part of happiness.
The person is made, or thinks he would be' made, happy
by its mere possession, and is made unhappy by failure
to obtain it.. The desire of it is not a different thing
from the desire of happiness, any more than the love of
music or the desire of health. They are included in
happiness. They are some of the elements of which
the desire of happiness is made up. Happiness is not
an abstract idea, but a concrete whole; and these are
some of its parts. And the utilitarian standard sanc-
tions and approves their being so. Life would be a
poor thing, very ill provided with sources of happiness,
if there were not this provision of nature, by which
things originally indifferent, but conducive to, or other-
wise associated with, the satisfaction of our primitive
desires, become in themselves sources of pleasure more
valuable than the primitive pleasures, both in perma-
nency, in the space of human existence that they are
capable of covering, and even in intensity.
Virtue, according to the utilitarian conception, is a
good of this description. There was no original desire
HOW PROVED. 353
of it, or motive to it, save its conduciveness to pleasure,
and especially _to protection from pain. But, through
the association thus formed, it may be felt a good in
itself, and desired as such with as great intensity as
any other good; and with this difference between it
and the love of money, of power, or of fame, -- that all
of these ‘may, and often, do, render the individual nox-
ious to the other members of the society to which he
belongs, whereas there is nothing which makes him so
much a blessing to them as the cultivation of the disin-
terested love of virtue. And consequently the utili-
tarian standard, while it tolerates and approves those
other acquired desires, up to the point beyond which
they would be more injurious to the general happiness
than promotive of it, enjoins and requires the cultiva-
tion of the love of virtue up to the greatest strength
possible, as being above all things important to the
general happiness.
It results from the preceding considerations, that
there is in reality nothing desired except happiness.
WVhatever is desired otherwise than as a means to
Some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness, is
desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not desired
for itself until it has become so. Those who desire
virtue for its own sake, desire it either because the
consciousness of it is a pleasure, or because the con-
sciousness of being without it is a pain, or for both
reasons united: as in truth the pleasure and pain
seldom exist separately, but almost always together;
the same person feeling pleasure in the degree of vir-
tue attained, and pain in not having attained more.
If one of these gave him no pleasure, and the other no
VOL. III. 23
354 UTILITARIANISM.
pain, he would not love or desire virtue, or would desire
it only for the other benefits which it might produce to
himself or to persons whom he cared for.
We have now, then, an answer to the question, of
what sort of proof the principle of utility is suscepti-
ble. If the opinion which I have now stated is psycho-
logically true; if human nature is so constituted as to
desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or
a means of happiness, —we can have no other proof,
and we require no other, that these are the only things
desirable. If so, happiness is the sole end of human
action, and the promotion of it the test by which to
judge of all human conduct; from whence it necessa-
rily follows that it must be the criterion of morality,
since a part is included in the whole.
And, now, to decide whether this is really so; whether
mankind gdo desire nothing for itself but that which is
a pleasure to them, or of which the absence is a pain, —
we have evidently arrived at a question of fact and
experience, dependent, like all similar questions, upon
evidence. It can only be determined by practised
self-consciousness and self-observation, assisted by ob-
servation of others. I believe that these sources of
evidence, impartially consulted, will declare that desir-
ing a thing and finding it pleasant, aversion to it and
thinking of it as painful, are phenomena entirely insep-
arable, or rather two parts of the same phenomenon, —
in strictness of language, two different modes of naming
the same psychological fact; that to think of an object
as desirable (unless for the sake of its consequences),
and to think of it as pleasant, are one and the same
thing; and that to desire any thing, except in propor-
How PROVED. 355
tion as the idea of it is pleasant, is a physical and
metaphysical impossibility.
So obvious does this appear to me, that I expect it
will hardly be disputed: and the Objection made will
be, not that desire can possibly be directed to any thing
ultimately except pleasure, and exemption from pain,
but that the will is a different thing from desire; that
a person of confirmed virtue, or any other person whose
purposes are fixed, carries out his purposes without any
thought of the pleasure he has in contemplating them,
or expects to derive from their fulfilment; and persists
in acting on them, even though these pleasures are
much diminished by changes in his character, or decay
of his passive sensibilities, or are outweighed by the
pains which the pursuit of the purposes may bring
upon him. All this I fully admit, and have stated it
elsewhere as positively and emphatically as any one.
/ Will, the actiye phenomenon, is a different thing from
a desire, the statewofwpvas'siive sensibility, and, though ori-
ginally an offshoot from it, may in time take root, and
detach itself from the parent stock; so much so, that
in the case of an habitual purpose, instead of willing
the thing because we desire it, we often desire it only
because we will it. This, however, is but an instance
of that familiar fact, the power of habit, and is nowise
confined to the case of virtuous actions. Many indif-
ferent things, which men originally did from a motive
of some sort, they continue to do from habit. Some-
times this is done unconsciously, the consciousness
coming only after the action ; at other times with con-
scious volition, but volition which has become habitual,
and is put in operation by the force of habit, in oppo-
356 UTILITARIANISM.
sition, perhaps, to the deliberate preference, as often
happens with those who have contracted habits of
vicious or hurtful indulgence. Third and last comes
the case in which the habitual act of will in the indi-
vidual instance is not in contradiction to the general
intention prevailing at other times, but in fulfilment of
it; as in the case of the person of confirmed virtue,
and of all who pursue deliberately and consistently any
determinate end. The distinction between will and
desire, thus understood, is an authentic and highly im-
portant psychological fact; but the fact consists solely
in this, — that will, like all other parts of our consti-
tution, is amenable to habit, and that we may will
from habit what we no longer desire for itself, or desire
only because we will it. It is not the less true, that
will, in the beginning, is egtirely produced by desire;
including in that term the repelling influence of pain,
as well as the attractive one of pleasure. Let us take
into consideration no longer the person who has a
confirmed will to do right, but him in whom that virtu-
ous will is still feeble, conquerable by temptation, and
not to be fully relied on: by what means can it be
strengthened? How can the will to be Virtuous, where
it does not exist in sufficient force, be implanted or
awakened ? Only by making the person desire virtue ;
by making him think of it in a pleasurable light, or
of its absence in a painful one. It is by associating
the doing right with pleasure, or the doing wrong with
pain, or by eliciting and impressing and bringing home
to the person’s experience the pleasure naturally in-
volved in the one or the pain in the other, that it is
possible to call forth that will to be virtuous, which,
HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 357
when confirmed, acts without any thought of either
pleasure or pain. Will is the child of desire, and
passes out of the dominion of its parent only to come
under 15535 Bf habit. That which is the result of habit
affords 'nof presumption of being intrinsically good;
and there would be no reason for wishing that the pur-
pose of virtue should become independent of pleasure
and pain, were it not that the influence of the pleasura-
ble and painful associations which prompt to virtue is
not sufficiently to be depended on for unerring con-
stancy of action until it has acquired the support of
habit. Both in feeling and in conduct, habit is the
only thing which imparts certainty; and it is because
of the importance to others of being able to rely abso-
lutely on one’s feelings and conduct, and to one’s self
of being able to rely on one’s own, that the will to do
right ought to be cultivated into this habitual inde-
pendence. In other words, this state of the will is a
means to good, not intrinsically a good; and does not
contradict the doctrine, that nothing is a good to human
beings but in so far as it is either itself pleasurable, or
a means of attaining pleasure or averting pain.
But, if this doctrine be true, the principle of utility
is proved. WVhether it is so or not, must now be left
to the consideration of the thoughtful reader.
H—
CHAPTER V.
ON THE CONNECTION BETWEEN JUSTICE AND UTILITY.
IN all ages of speculation, one of the strongest obsta-
cles to the reception of the doctrine, that Utility or
358 UTILITARIANISM.
Happiness is the criterion of right and wrong, has been
drawn from the idea of Justice. The powerful senti—
ment and apparently clear perception which that word
recalls, with a rapidity and certainty resembling an in-
stinct, have seemed to the majority of thinkers to point
to an inherent quality in things; to show that the
Just must have an existence in nature as something
absolute, generically distinct from every variety of the
Expedient, and, in idea, opposed to it, though (as is
commonly acknowledged) never, in the long-run, dis-
joined from it in fact.
In the case of this, as of our other moral sentiments,
there is no necessary connection between the question
of its origin and that of its binding force. That a
feeling is bestowed on us by nature does not necessa-
rily legitimate all its promptings. The feeling of justice
might be a peculiar instinct, and might yet require, like
our other instincts, to be_controlled and enlightened by
a higher reason. If we have intellectual instincts lead-
ing us to judge in a particular way, as well as animal
instincts that prompt us to act in a particular way, there
is no necessity that the former should be more infallible
in their sphere than the latter in theirs : it may as well
happen that wrong judgments are occasionally sug-
gested by those, as wrong actions by these. But
though it is one thing to believe that we have natural
feelings of justice, and another to acknowledge them as
an ultimate criterion of conduct, these two opinions are
very closely connected in point of fact. Mankind
are always predisposed to believe that any subjective
feeling, not otherwise accounted for, is a revelation of
some objective reality. ()ur present object is to deter-
HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 359
mine whether the reality, to which the feeling of justice
corresponds, is one which needs any such special reve-
lation; whether the justice or injustice of an action
is a thing intrinsically peculiar, and distinct from all
its other qualities, or only a combination of certain of
those qualities, presented under a peculiar aspect. For
the purpose of this inquiry, it is practically important
to consider, whether the feeling itself, of justice and
injustice, is 8262' generals like our sensations of color and
taste, or a derivative feeling, formed by a combination
of others. And this it is the more essential to examine,
as people are in general willing enough to allow, that,
objectively, the dictates of Justice coincide with a part
of the field of General Expediency; but inasmuch as
the subjective mental feeling of Justice is different from
that which commonly attaches to simple expediency,
and, except in the extreme cases of the latter, is far
more imperative in its demands, people find it difficult
to see, in Justice, only a particular kind or branch of
general utility, and think that its superior binding force
requires a totally different origin.
To throw light upon this question, it is necessary
to attempt to ascertain what is the distinguishing
character of justice, or of injustice ; what is the quality,
or whether there is any quality, attributed in common
to all modes of conduct designated as unjust (for jus-
tice, like many other moral attributes, is best defined
by its opposite), and distinguishing them from such
modes of conduct as are disapproved, but without hav-
ing that particular epithet of disapprobation applied to
them. If, in every thing which men are accustomed
to characterize as just or unjust, some one common
360 UTILITARIANISM.
attribute, or collection of attributes, is always present,
we may judge whether this particular attribute, or com-
bination of attributes, would be capable of gathering
round it a sentiment of that peculiar character and in-
tensity by virtue of the general laws of our emotional
constitution; or whether the sentiment is inexplicable,
and requires to be regarded as a special provision of
nature. If we find the former to be the case, we shall,
in resolving this question, have resolved also the main
problem; if the latter, we shall have to seek for some
other mode of investigating it.
To find the common attributes of a variety of objects,
it is necessary to begin by surveying the objects them-
selves in the concrete. Let us therefore advert succes-
sively to the various modes of action, and arrangements
of human affairs, which are classed, by universal or
widely spread opinion, as Just or as Unjust. The
things well known to excite the sentiments associated
with those names are of a very multifarious character.
I shall pass them rapidly in review, without studying
any particular arrangement.
In the first place, it is mostly considered unjust to
deprive any one of his personal liberty, his property,
or any other thing which belongs to him by law.
Here, therefore, is one instance of the application of
the terms Just and Unjust in a perfectly definite sense;
namely, that it is just to respect, unjust to violate, the
legal rights of any one. But this judgment admits of
several exceptions, arising from the other forms in which
the notions of justice and injustice present themselves.
For example: the person who suffers the deprivation
HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 361
may (as the phrase is) have forfeited the rights which
he is so deprived of ; a case to which we shall return
presently. But also, ——
Secondly, The legal rights of which he is deprived
may be rights which ought not to have belonged to
him: in other words, the law which confers on him
these rights may be a bad law. When it is so, or
when (which is the same thing for our purpose) it is
supposed to be so, opinions will differ as to the justice
or injustice of infringing it. Some maintain that no
law, however had, ought to be disobeyed by an individ-
ual citizen; that his opposition to it, if shown at all,
should only be shown in endeavoring to get it altered
by competent authority. This opinion (which con-
demns many of the most illustrious benefactors of man-
kind, and would often protect pernicious institutions
against the only weapons, which, in the state of things
existing at the time, have any chance of succeeding
against them) is defended, by those who hold it, on
grounds of expediency; principally on that of the im-
portance, to the common interest of mankind, of main-
taining inviolate the sentiment of submission to law.
Other persons, again, hold the directly contrary opin-
ion, that any law, judged to be bad, may blamelessly
be disobeyed, even though it be not judged to be un-
just, but only inexpedient; while others would confine
the license of disobedience to the case of unjust laws.
But, again, some say that all laws which are inexpedi-
ent are unjust, since every law imposes some restriction
on the natural liberty of mankind; which restriction
is an injustice, unless legitimated by tending to their
good. Among these diversities of opinion, it seems
362 UTILITARIANISM.
to be universally admitted that there may be unjust
laws, and that law, consequently, is not the ultimate
criterion of justice, but may give to one person a bene-
fit, or impose on another an evil, which justice condemns.
When, however, a law is thought to be unjust, it
seems always to be regarded as being so in the same
way in which a breach of law is unjust, —namely, by
infringing somebody’s right; which, as it cannot in this
case be a legal right, receives a different appellation,
and is called a moral right. We may say, therefore,
that a second case of injustice consists in taking or
withholding from any person that to which he has a
moral right.
Thirdly, It is universally considered just, that each
person should obtain that (whether good or evil) which
he deserves; and unjust, that he should obtain a good,
or be made to undergo an evil, which he does not
deserve. This is, perhaps, the clearest and most em—
phatic form in which the idea of justice is conceived by
the general mind. As it involves the notion of desert,
the question arises, What constitutes desert? Speaking
in a general way, a person is understood to deserve
good if he does right; evil, if he does wrong : and, in a
more particular sense, to deserve good from those to
whom he does or has done good, and evil from those
to whom he does or has done evil. The precept of
returning good for evil has never been regarded as a
case of the fulfilment of justice, but as one in which the
claims of justice are waived, in obedience to other con-
siderations.
Fourthly, It is confessedly unjust to break faith with
any one; to violate an engagement, either express or
HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 363
implied; or disappoint expectations raised by our own
conduct, at least if we have raised those expectations
knowingly and voluntarily. Like the other obligations
of justice already spoken of, this one is not regarded as
absolute, but as capable of being overruled by a stronger
obligation of justice on the other side, or by such con-
duct on the part of the person concerned as is deemed
to absolve us from our obligation to him, and to con-
stitute a forfeiture of the benefit which he has been
led to expect.
F ifthly, It is, by universal admission, inconsistent
with justice to be partial; to show favor or preference
to one person over another in matters to which favor
and preference do not properly apply. Impartiality,
however, does not seem to be regarded as a duty in
itself, but rather as instrumental to some other duty;
for it is admitted that favor and preference are not
always censurable, and indeed the cases in which they
are condemned are rather the exception than the rule.
A person would be more likely to be blamed than
applauded for giving his family or friends no superiority
in good offices over strangers, when he could do so
without violating any other duty; and no one thinks it
unjust to seek one person in preference to another as a
friend, connection, or companion. Impartiality, where
rights are concerned, is Of course obligatory; but this
is involved in the more general obligation Of giving to
every one his right. A tribunal, for example, must be
impartial, because it is bound to award, without regard
to any other consideration, a disputed object to the
one of two parties who has the right to it. There are
other cases in which impartiality means, being solely
&
364 UTILITARIANISM.
influenced by desert; as with those who, in the capacity
of judges, preceptors, or parents, administer reward
and punishment as such. There are cases, again, in
which it means being solely influenced by considera-
tion for the public interest; as in making a selection
among candidates for a government employment. Im-
partiality, in short, as an Obligation of justice, may be
said to mean being exclusively influenced by the con-
siderations which it is supposed ought to influence the
particular case in hand, and resisting the solicitation
of any motives which prompt to conduct different from
what those considerations would dictate.
Nearly allied to the idea of impartiality is that of
equality; which often enters as a component part both
into the conception of justice and into the practice of it,
and, in the eyes of many persons, constitutes its essence.
But, in this still more than in any other case, the notion
of justice varies in different persons, and always con-
forms in its variations to their notion of utility. Each
person maintains that equality is the dictate Of justice,
except where he thinks that expediency requires in-
equality. The justice of giving equal protection to the
rights of all is maintained by those who support the
most outrageous inequality in the rights themselves.
Even in slave countries, it is theoretically admitted that
the rights Of the slave, such as they are, ought to be as
sacred as those of the master, and that a tribunal which
fails to enforce them with equal strictness is wanting in
justice; while, at the same time, institutions which
leave to the slave scarcely any rights to enforce are not
deemed unjust, because they are not deemed inexpe-
dient. Those who think that utility requires distinc-
HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 365
tions of rank do not consider it unjust that riches and
social privileges should be unequally dispensed; but
those who think this inequality inexpedient think it
unjust also. W'hoever thinks that government is neces-
sary sees no injustice in as much inequality as is consti-
tuted by giving to the magistrate powers not granted to
other people. Even among those who hold levelling
doctrines, there are as many questions of justice as
there are differences of opinion about expediency.
Some Communists consider it unjust that the produce
Of the labor of the community should be shared on any
other principle than that of exact equality ; others think
it just that those should receive most Whose wants are
greatest; While others hold that those who work harder,
or who produce more, or whose services are more valu-
able to the community, may justly claim a larger quota
in the division of the produce. And the sense of natu-
ral justice may be plausibly appealed to in behalf of
every one of these opinions.
Among so many diverse applications of the term
Justice, which yet is not regarded as ambiguous, it is
a matter of some difficulty to seize the mental link
which holds them together, and on which the moral
sentiment adhering to the term essentially depends.
Perhaps, in this embarrassment, some help may be
derived from the history of the word, as indicated by
its etymology.
In most, if not in all languages, the etymology of
the word which corresponds to Just points distinctly
to an origin connected with the ordinances of law.
Justum is a form of jussum, -that which has been
ordered. AZKQLOV comes directly from dim, a suit at law.
366 UTILITARIANISM. .R
Recht, from which came right and righteous, is synony-
mous with law. The courts of justice, the administra-
tion of justice, are the courts and the administration of
law. La justice, in French, is the established term
for judicature. I am not committing the fallacy im-
puted with some show of truth to Home Tooke, of
assuming that a word must still continue to mean what
it' originally meant. Etymology is slight evidence of
what the idea now signified is, but the very best evidence
of how it sprang up. There can, I think, be no doubt
that the iole’e we‘re, the primitive element, in the forma-
tion of the notion of justice, was conformity to law. It
constituted the entire idea among the HebreWs hp to the
birth of Christianity; as might be expected in the case
of a people whose laws attempted to embrace all sub-
jects on which precepts were required, and who believed
those laws to be a direct emanation from the Supreme
Being. But other nations, and in particular the Greeks
and Romans, who knew that their laws had been made
originally, and still continued to be made, by men, were
not afraid to admit that those men might make bad
laws ; might do, by law, the same things, and from the
same motives, which, if done by individuals without the
sanction of law, would be called unjust. And hence
the sentiment of injustice came to be attached, not to
all violations of law, but only to violations of such laws
as ought to exist, including such as ought to exist, but
do not; and to laws themselves, if supposed to be con-
trary to what ought to be law. In this manner, the idea
of law and of its injunctions was still predominant in the
notion of justice, even when the laws actually in force
ceased to be accepted as the standard of it.
HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 367
It is true that mankind consider the idea of justice
and its Obligations as applicable to many things which
neither are, nor is it desired that they should be, regu-
lated by law. Nobody desires that laws should inter-
fere with the whole detail of private life; yet every one
allows, that, in all daily conduct, a person may and does
show himself to be either just or unjust. But, even
here, the idea of the breach of what ought to be law
still lingers in a modified shape. It would always give
us pleasure, and chime in with our feelings of fitness,
that acts which we deem unjust should be punished,
though we do not always think it expedient that this
should be done by the tribunals. We forego that grati-
fication on account of incidental inconveniences. We
should be glad to see just conduct enforced, and injus-
tice repressed, even in the minutest details, if we were
not with reason afraid of trusting the magistrate with
so unlimited an amount of power over individuals.
When we think that a person is bound in justice to do
a thing, it is an ordinary form of language to say, that
he ought to be compelled to do it. We should be grat-
ified to see the Obligation enforced by anybody who
had the power. If we see that its enforcement by law
would be inexpedient, we lament the impossibility, we
consider the impunity given to injustice as an evil, and
strive to make amends for it by bringing a strong ex-
pression of our own and the public disapprobation to
bear upon the offender. Thus the idea of legal con-
straint is still the generating idea of the notion of
justice, though undergoing several transformations be-
fore that notion, as it exists in an advanced state of
society, becomes complete.
368 UTILITARIANISM.
The above is, I think, a true account, as far as it
goes, of the (Lfigigand progressive growth of the idea
lof justice. But we must observe, that it contains, as
yet, nothing to distinguish that obligation from moral
obligation in general. For the truth is, that the idea
of penal sanction, Wenge "of law, enters
not only into the conception of injustice, but into that
of any kind of wrong. \Ve do not call any thing
wrong, unless we mean to imply that a person ought to
be punished in some way or other for doing it; if not
by law, by the Opinion of his fellow-creatures ; if not by
opinion, by the reproaches of his own conscience. This
seems the real turning-point of the distinction between
morality and simple expediency. It is a part of the
notion of Duty in every one of its forms, that a person
may rightfully be compelled to fulfil it. Duty is a thing
which may be exacted from a person, as one exacts a
debt. Unless we think that it may be exacted from
him, we do not call it his duty. Reasons of prudence,
or the interest of other people, may militate against
actually exacting it ; but the person himself, it is clearly '
understood, would not be entitled to complain. There
are other things, on the contrary, which we wish that
people should do, which we like or admire them for
doing, perhaps dislike or despise them for not doing,
but yet admit that they are not bound to do : it is not
a case of moral obligation: we do not blame them;
that is, we do not think that they are proper objects of
punishment. How we come by these ideas of deserving
and not deserving punishment, will appear, perhaps,
in the sequel: but I think there is no doubt that this
distinction lies at the bottom Of the notions of right and
HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 369
wrong; that we call any conduct wrong, or employ
instead some other term of dislike or disparagement,
according as we think that the person ought, or ought
not, to be punished for it ; and we say it would be right
to do so and so, or merely that it would be desirable or
laudable, according as we would wish to see the person
whom it concerns compelled, or only persuaded and
exhorted, to act in that manner.*
This, therefore, being the characteristic difference
which marks off, not justicelmbutg mgralmiutyipwgeneralim
from the remaining provinces of Expediency and Wor-
thiness, the character is still to be sought which distin-
guishes justice from other branches of morality. Now,
it is known that ethical writers divide moral duties into
two classes, denoted by the ill-chosen expressions, duties
of perfect and of imperfect obligation: the latter being
those in which, though the act is obligatory, the particu
lar occasions of performing it are left to our choice ; as
in the case of charity or beneficence, which we are
indeed bound to practise, but not towards any definite
person, nor at any prescribed time. In the more pre-
cise language of philosophic jurists, duties of perfect
Obligation are those duties in virtue of which a correla-
tive right resides in some person or persons: duties of
imperfect obligation are those moral obligations which
do not give birth to any right. I think it will be found
that this distinction exactly coincides with that which
exists between justice and the other Obligations of
* See this point enforced and illustrated by Professor Bain, in an admi-
rable chapter (entitled “ The Ethical Emotions, or the Moral Sense ”) of the
second of the two treatises composing his elaborate and profound work on
the Mind.
VOL. III. 24
370 UTILITARIANISM.
morality. In our survey of the various popular accep-
tations of justice, the term appeared generally to involve
the idea of a personal right, -—-a claim on the part of
one or more individuals, like that which the law gives
when it confers a proprietary or other legal right.
Whether the injustice consists in depriving a person of
a possession, or in breaking faith with him, or in treat-
ing him worse than he deserves, or worse than other
people who have no greater claims, in each case the
supposition implies two things, —a wrong done, and
some assignable person who is wronged. Injustice may
also be done by treating a person better than others;
but the wrong in this case is to his competitors, who
are also assignable persons. It seems to me that this
feature in the case—a right in some person, correla-
tive to the moral obligation —constitutes the specific
difference between justice, and generosity or benefi-
cence. Justice implies something which it is not only
right to do, and wrong not to do, but which some indi-
vidual person can claim from us as his moral right. No
one has a moral right to our generosity or beneficence,
because we are not morally bound to practise those
‘ virtues towards any given individual. And it will be
found, with respect to this as to every correct definition,
that the instances which seem to conflict with it are
those which most confirm it; for if a moralist attempts,
as some have done, to make out that mankind generally,
though not any given individual, have a right to all
the good we can do them, he at once, by that thesis,
includes generosity and beneficence within the category
of justice. He is obliged to say that our utmost exer-
tions are due to our fellow-creatures, thus assimilating
HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE.
them to a debt ; or that nothing less can be a sufficient
return for what society does for us, thus classing the
case as one of gratitude; both Of which are acknowl-
edged cases of justice. Wherever there is a right, the
case is one of justice, and not of the virtue of bene-
ficence; and whoever does not place the distinction
between justice and morality in general Where we have
now placed it will be found to make no distinction
between them at all, but to merge all morality in
justice.
Having thus endeavored to determine the distinctive
elements which enter into the composition of the idea
of justice, we are ready to enter on the inquiry, whether
the feeling which accompanies the idea is attached to it
by a sppnpialy dispensation of nature, or whether it could
have grown up by any known faws out of the idea
itself; and, in particular, whether it can have originated
in considerations of general expediency.
I conceive that the sentiment itself does not arise
from any thing which would commonly or correctly be
termed an idea of expediency; but that, though the
sentiment does not, whatever is moral in it does.
We have seen that the two essential ingredients in
the sentiment of justice are the desire to punish a per-
son who has done harm, and the knowledge or belief
that there is some definite individual or individuals to
whom harm has been done.
Now, it appears to me that the desire to punish
a person who has done harm to some individual is a
spontaneous outgrowth from two sentiments, both in the
highest degree natural, and which either are or resemble

3 7 2 UTILITARIaNIsM.
instincts, —- the impulse of self-defence, and the feeling
of sympathy.
It is natural to resent, and to repel or retaliate, any
harm done or attempted against ourselves, or against
those with whom we sympathize. The origin of this
sentiment it is not necessary here to discuss. Whether
it be an instinct, or a result of intelligence, it is, we
know, common to all animal nature; for every animal
tries to hurt those who have hurt, or who it thinks are
about to hurt, itself or its young. Human beings, on
this point, only differ from other animals in two partic-
ulars : first, in being capable of sympathizing, not solely
with their Offspring, or, like some of the more noble
animals, with some superior animal who is kind to
them, but with all human, and even with all sentient
beings; secondly, in having a more developed intelli-
gence, which gives a wider range to the whole of their
sentiments, whether self-regarding or sympathetic. By
virtue of his superior intelligence, even apart from his
superior range of sympathy, a human being is capable
of apprehending a community of interest between him-
self and the human society of which he forms a part,
such that any conduct which .threatens the security of
the society generally is threatening to his own, and
calls forth his instinct (if instinct it be) of self-defence.
The same superiority of intelligence, joined to the
power of sympathizing with human beings generally,
enables him to attach himself to the collective idea of
his tribe, his country, or mankind, in such a manner that
any act hurtful to them raises his instinct of sympathy,
and urges him to resistance.
The sentiment of justice, in that one of its elements
HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 373
which consists of the desire to punish, is thus, I con-
ceive, the natural feeling of retaliation, or vengeance,
rendered by intellect and sympathy applicable to those
injuries—that is, to those hurts—Which wound us
through, or in common with, society at large. This
sentiment in itself has nothing moral in it: what is
moral is, the exclusive subordination of it to the social
sympathies, so as to wait on and obey their call. For
the natural feeling would make us resent indiscrimi-
nately whatever any one does that is disagreeable to us ;
but, when moralized by the social feeling, it only acts
in the directions conformable to the general good : just
persons resenting a hurt to society, though not otherwise
a hurt to themselves, and not resenting a hurt to them-
selves, however painful, unless it be of the kind which
society has a common interest with them in the repres-
sion of.
It is no objection against this doctrine to say, that,
when we feel our sentiment of justice outraged, we are
not thinking of society at large, or of any collective
interest, but only of the individual case. It is common
enough, certainly, though the reverse of commendable, '
to feel resentment merely because we have suffered pain ;
but a person whose resentment is really a moral feel-
ing,——that is, who considers whether an act is blamable
before he allows himself to resent it, —-such a person,
though he may not say expressly to himself that he is
standing up for the interest of society, certainly does feel
that he is asserting a rule which is for the benefit of
others as well as for his own. If he is not feeling this ;
if he is regarding the act solely as it affects him
individually,——he is not consciously just; he is not
3 7 4 UTILITARIANISM.
concerning himself about the justice of his actions.
This is admitted even by anti-utilitarian moralists.
When Kant (as before remarked) propounds as the
fundamental principle of morals, " So act that thy rule
of conduct might be adopted as a law by all rational
beings,” he virtually acknowledges that the interest of
mankind collectively, or at least of mankind indis-
criminately, must be in the mind of the agent when
conscientiously deciding on the morality of the act.
Otherwise he uses words without a meaning; for that
a rule even of utter selfishness could not possibly be
adopted by all rational beings — that there is any insu-
perable obstacle in the nature of things to its adoption——
cannot be even plausibly maintained. To give any
meaning to Kant’s principle, the sense put upon it must
be, that we ought to shape our conduct by a rule which
all rational beings might adopt with benefit to their
cpllegtioe interest.
To recapitulate: the idea of justice supposes two
things,-—a rule of conduct, and a sentiment which sanc-
tions the rule. The first must be supposed common to
all mankind, and intended for their good: the other
(the sentiment) is a desire that punishment may be suf-
fered by those who infringe the rule. There is involved,
in addition, the conception of some definite person who
suffers by the infringement; whose rights (to use the
expression appropriated to the case) are violated by it.
And the sentiment of justice appears to me to be, the
agimmiirle to repel or retaliate a hurt or damage to
one’s self, or to those with whom one sympathizes,
widened so as to include all persons, by the human ca-
pacity of enlarged sympathy, and the human conception
How CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 375
of intelligent self-interest. From the latter elements,
the feeling derives its morality; from the former, its
peculiar impressiveness and energy of self-assertion.
I have, throughout, treated the idea of a right resid-
ing in the injured person, and violated by the injury, not
as a separate element in the composition of the idea and
'sentiment, but as one of the forms in which the other
two elements clothe themselves. These elements are, a
hurt to some assignable person or persons on the one
hand, and a demand for punishment on the other. An
examination of our own minds, I think, will show that
these two things include all that we mean when we
speak of violation of a right. When we call any thing
a person’s right, we mean that he has a valid claim on
society to protect him in the possession of it, either by
the force of law, or by that of education and Opinion.
If he has what we consider a sufficient claim, on what-
ever account, to have something guaranteed to him by
society, we say that he has a right to it. If we desire
to prove that any thing does not belong to him by right,
we think this done as soon as it is admitted that society
ought not to take measures for securing it to him, but
should leave him to chance, or to his own exertions.
Thus a person is said to have a right to what he can
earn in fair professional competition, because society
ought not to allow any other person to hinder him from
endeavoring to earn in that manner as much as he‘ can.
But he has not a right to three hundred a year, though
he may happen to be earning it, because society is not
called on to provide that he shall earn that sum. On
the contrary, if he owns ten thousand pounds three-per-
cent stock, he has a right to three hundred a year, be—
‘
3 7 6 UTILITARIANISM.
cause society has come under an obligation to provide
him with an income of that amount.
To have a right, then, is, I conceive, to have some-
thing which society ought to defend me in the pos-
session of. If the objector goes on to ask why it
ought, I can give him no other reason than general
utility. If that expression does not seem to convey a
suflficient feeling of the strength of the obligation, nor
to account for the peculiar energy of the feeling, it is
because there goes to the composition of the sentiment,
not a rational only, but also an animal element, —the
thirst for retaliation ; and this thirst derives its intensity,
as well as its moral justification, from the extraordinarily
important and impressive kind of utility which is con-
cerned. The interest involved is that of security; to
every one’s feelings, the most vital of all interests. All
other earthly benefits are needed by one person, not
needed by another; and many of them can, if neces-
sary, be cheerfully foregone, or replaced by something
else. But security no human being can possibly do
without: on it we depend for all our immunity from
evil, and for the whole value of all and every good,
beyond the passing moment; since nothing but the
gratification of the instant could be of any worth to us
if we could be deprived of every thing the next instant
by whoever was momentarily stronger than ourselves.
Now, this most indispensable of all necessaries, after
physical nutriment, cannot be had, unless the machine-
ry for providing it is kept unintermittedly in active
play. Our notion, .therefore, of the claim we have on
our fellow-creatures to join in making safe for us the
very groundwork of our existence, gathers feelings
How CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 377
around it so much more intense than those concerned
in any of the more common cases of utility, that the
difference in degree (as is often the case in psychol-
ogy) becomes a real difference in kind. The claim
assumes that character of absoluteness, that apparent
infinity, and incommensurability with all other consid-
erations, which constitute the distinction between the
feeling of right and wrong and that of ordinary expe-
diency and inexpediency. The feelings concerned are
so powerful, and we count so positively on finding a
responsive feeling in others (all being alike interested),
that ought and should grow into must, and recognized
indispensability becomes a moral necessity, analogous
to physical, and Often not inferior to it in binding
force.
If the preceding analysis, or something resembling
it, be not the correct account of the notion of justice;
if justice be totally independent of utility, and be a
standard per se, which the mind can recognize by sim-
ple introspection of itself, — it is hard to understand why
that internal oracle is so ambiguous, and why so many
things appear either just or unjust, accordipg tp. the VJ;-
light in which they are regarded. . ‘4'“.
“Te are continually informed that Utility is an unw *3"
certain standard, which every different person inter-
if“
prets differently; and that there is no safety but in the '
immutable, ineffaceable, and unmistakable dictates of
Justice, which carry their evidence in themselves, and are
independent of the fluctuations of opinion. One would
suppose from this, that, on questions of justice, there
could be no controversy; that, if we take that fOr our
3 7 8 UTILITARIANISM.
rule, its application to any given case could leave us in
as little doubt as a mathematical demonstration. So
far is this from being the fact, that there is as much
difference of opinion and as much discussion about
what is just as about What is useful to society. Not
only have different nations and individuals different
notions of justice, but, in the mind of one and the
same individual, justice is not some one rule, principle,
or maxim, but many, which do not always coincide in
their dictates, and, in choosing between which, he is
guided either by some extraneous standard, or by his
own personal predilections.
For instance: there are some who say that it is un-
just to punish any one for the sake of example to
others; that punishment is just, only when intended
for the good of the sufferer himself. Others maintain
the extreme reverse ; contending that to punish persons
who have attained years of discretion, for their own
benefit, is despotism and injustice; since, if the matter
at issue is solely their own good, no one has a right to
control their own judgment of it; but that they may
justly be punished to prevent evil to others, this being
the exercise of the legitimate right of self-defence.
Mr. Owen, again, affirms that it is unjust to punish at
all; for the criminal did not make his own character:
his education, and the circumstances which surrounded
him, have made him a criminal ; and for these he is not
responsible. All these opinions are extremely plausi-
ble; and so long as the question is argued as one of
justice simply, without going down to the principles
which lie under justice, and are the source of its au-
thority, I am unable to see how any of these reasoners
How CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 379
can be refiited. For, in truth, every one of the three
builds upon rules of justice confessedly true. The first
appeals to the acknowledged injustice of singling out
an individual, and making him a sacrifice, without his
consent, for other people’s benefit. The second relies
on the acknowledged justice of self-defence, and the
admitted injustice of forcing one person to conform to
another’s notions of what constitutes his good. The
Owenite invokes the admitted principle, that it is unjust
to punish any one for what he cannot help. Each is
triumphant so long as he is not compelled to take into
consideration any other maxims of justice than the one
he has selected; but, as soon as their several maxims
are brought face to face, each disputant seems to have
exactly as much to say for himself as the others. No
one of them can carry out his own notion of justice
without trampling upon another equally binding. These
are difficulties ; they have always been felt to be such ;
and many devices have been invented to turn rather
than to overcome them. As a refuge from the last of
the three, men imagined what they called the " freedom
of the will ; ” fancying that they could not justify pun-
ishing a man whose will is in a thoroughly hateful
state, unless it be supposed to have come into that state
through no influence of anterior circumstances. To
escape from the other difficulties, a favorite contrivance
has been the fiction of a contract, whereby at some un-
known period all the members of society engaged to
obey the laws, and consented to be punished for any
disobedience to them ; thereby giving to their legislators
the right, which it is assumed they would not otherwise
have had, of punishing them, either for their own good
380 “ UTILITARIANISM.
or for that of society. This happy thought was con-
sidered to get rid of the whole difficulty, and to legiti-
mate the infliction Of punishment, in virtue of another
received maxim of justice, Valenti non fit injuria,
" That is not unjust which is done with the consent of the
person who is supposed to be hurt by it.” I need hardly
remark, that, even if the consent were not a mere fic-
tion, this maxim is not superior in authority to the
others which it is brought in to supersede. It is, on
the contrary, an instructive specimen of the loose and
irregular manner in which supposed principles of jus-
tice grow up. This particular one evidently came into
use as a help to the coarse exigencies of courts of law,
which are sometimes obliged to be content with very
uncertain presumptions, on account of the greater evils
which would often arise from any attempt on their
part to cut finer. But even courts of law are not able
to adhere consistently to the maxim; for they allow
voluntary engagements to be set aside on the ground
of fraud, and sometimes on that of mere mistake or
misinformation.
Again : when the legitimacy of inflicting punishment
is admitted, how many conflicting conceptions of justice
come to light in discussing the proper apportionment
of punishments to offences! N 0 rule on the subject
recommends itself so strongly to the primitive and
spontaneous sentiment Of justice, as the lea: talionis,
“ An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” Though
this principle of the Jewish and of the Mahometan
law has been generally abandoned in Europe as a prac-
tical maxim, there is, I suspect, in most minds, a secret
hankering after it; and, when retribution accidentally
How CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 381
falls on an offender in that precise shape, the general
feeling of satisfaction evinced bears witness how nat-
ural is the sentiment to which this repayment in kind
is acceptable. With many, the test of justice in penal
infliction is that the punishment should be proportioned
to the offence, -— meaning that it should be exactly
measured by the moral guilt of the culprit (whatever
be their standard for measuring moral guilt) ; the con-
sideration, what amount of punishment is necessary to
deter from the offence, having nothing to do with the
question of justice, in their estimation: while there
are others to whom that consideration is all in all ; who
maintain that it is not just, at least for man, to inflict
on a fellow-creature, whatever may be his offences, any
amount of suffering beyond the least that will suffice to
prevent him from repeating, and others from imitating,
his misconduct.
To take another example from a subject already
once referred to. In a co-Operative industrial associa-
tion, is it just or not that talent or skill should give a
title to superior remuneration? On the negative side
of the question it is argued, that whoever does the: best
he can deserves equally well, and ought not in justice
to be put in a position of inferiority for no fault of his
own; that superior abilities have already advantages
more than enough, in the admiration they excite, the
personal influence they command, and the internal
sources of satisfaction attending them, without adding
to these a superior share of the world’s goods; and
that society is bound in justice rather to make compen-
sation to the less favored, for this unmerited inequality
Of advantages, than to aggravate it. On the contrary
382 UTILITARIANISM.
side it is contended, that society receives more from the
more efficient laborer; that, his services being more use-
ful, society owes him a larger return for them; that a
greater share of the joint result is actually his work,
and not to allow his claim to it is a kind of robbery;
that, if he is only to receive as much as others, he can
only be justly required to produce as much, and to give
a smaller amount of time and exertion, proportioned to
his superior efficiency. Who shall decide between these
appeals to conflicting principles of justice? Justice
has in this case two sides to it, which it is impossible
to bring into harmony; and the two disputants have
chosen opposite sides: the one looks to what it is just
that the individual should receive; the other, to what
it is just that the community should give. Each, from
his own point of view, is unanswerable; and any
choice between them, on grounds of justice, must be
perfectly arbitrary. Social utility alone can decide the
preference.
How many, again, and how irreconcilable, are the
standards of justice to which reference is made in dis-
cussing the repartition of taxation! One opinion is,
that payment to the State should be in numerical
proportion to pecuniary means. Others think that
justice dictates what they term “ graduated taxation,”
—-taking a higher percentage from those who have more
to spare. In point of natural justice, a strong case
might be made for disregarding means altogether, and
taking the same absolute sum (whenever it could be
got) from every one; as the subscribers to a mess, or
to a club, all pay the same sum for the same privileges,
whether they can all equally afford it or not. Since
How CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 383
the protection (it might be said) of law and govern—
ment is afforded to and is equally required by all,
there is no injustice in making all buy it at the same
price. It is reckoned justice, not injustice, that a
dealer should charge to all customers the same price
for the same article; not a price varying according to
their means of payment. This doctrine, as applied
to taxation, finds no advocates, because it conflicts so
strongly with man’s feelings of humanity and of social
expediency; but the principle of justice which it in-
vokes is as true and as binding as those which can be
appealed to against it. Accordingly, it exerts a tacit
influence on the line of defence employed for other
modes of assessing taxation. People feel obliged to
argue that the State does more for the rich than for
the poor, as a justification for its taking more from
them: though this is in reality not true; for the rich
would be far better able to protect themselves, in the
absence of law or government, than the poor, and in-
deed would probably be successful in converting the
poor into their slaves. Others, again, so far defer to
the same conception of justice as to maintain that all
should pay an equal capitation—tax for the protection
of their persons (these being of equal value to all),
and an unequal tax for the protection of their prop-ii
erty, which is unequal. To this others reply, that
the all of one man is as valuable to him as the all of
another. From these confusions, there is no other
mode of extrication than the utilitarian.
Is, then, the difference between the Just and the
Expedient a merely imaginary distinction? Have man-
384 UTILITARIANISM.
kind been under a delusion in thinking that justice is a
more sacred thing than policy, and that the latter ought
only to be listened to after the former has been satisfied?
By no means. The exposition we have given of the
nature and origin of the sentiment recognizes a real
distinction; and no one of those who profess the most
sublime contempt for the consequences of actions as an
element in their morality attaches more importance to
the distinction than I do. While I dispute the preten-
sions of any theory which sets up an imaginary standard
of justice not grounded on utility, I account the justice
which is grounded on utility to be the chief part, and
incomparably the most sacred and binding part, of all
morality. Justice is a name for certain classes of
moral rules which concern the essentials of human well-
being more nearly, and are therefore of more absolute
obligation, than any other rules for the guidance of life;
and the notion which we have found to be of the essence
of the idea of justice, that of a right residing in an
individual, implies and testifies to this more binding
obligation.
The moral rules which forbid mankind to hurt one
another (in which we must never forget to include
wrongful interference with each other’s freedom) are
more vital to human well-being than any maxims, how-
ever important, which only point out the best mode of
managing some department of human affairs. They
have also the peculiarity, that they are the main ele-
ment in determining the whole of the social feelings of
mankind. It is their observance which alone preserves
peace among human beings : if obedience to them were
not the rule, and disobedience the exception, every one
How CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 385
would see in every one else an enemy, against whom he
must be perpetually guarding himself; What is hardly
less important, these are the precepts which mankind
have the strongest and the most direct inducements for
impressing upon one another. By merely giving to
each other prudential instruction or exhortation, they
may gain, or think they gain, nothing; in inculcating
on each other the duty of positive beneficence, they have
an unmistakable interest, but far less in degree: a per-
son may possibly not need the benefits of others; but
he always needs that they should not do him hurt.
Thus the moralities which protect every individual from
being harmed by others, either directly or by being
hindered in his freedom of pursuing his own good, are
at once those which he himself has most at heart, and
those which he has the strongest interest in publishing
and enforcing by word and deed. It is by a person’s
observance of these, that his fitness to exist as one of
the fellowship of human beings is tested and decided;
for on that depends his being a nuisance or not to those
with whom he is in contact. N ow, it is these morali-
ties, primarily, which compose the obligations ofjustice.
The most marked cases of injustice, and those which
give the tone to the feeling of repugnance which char-
acterizes the sentiment, are acts of wrongful aggression,
or wrongful exercise of power over some one; the next
are those. which consist in wrongfully withholding from
him something which is his due: in both cases inflict-
ing on him a positive hurt, either in the form of direct
suffering, or of the privation of some good which he had
reasonable ground, either of a physical or of a social
kind, for counting upon.
VOL. III. 25
386 UTILITARIANISM.
The same powerful motives which command the ob-
servance of these primary moralities enjoin the punish-
ment of those who violate them; and as the impulses
of self-defence, of defence of others, and of vengeance,
are all called forth against such persons, retribution, or
evil for evil, becomes closely connected with the sen-
timent of justice, and is universally included in the
idea.~ Good for good is also one of the dictates of
justice; and this, though its social utility is evident,
and though it carries with it a natural human feeling,
has not at first sight that obvious connection with hurt
or injury, which, existing in the most elementary cases
of just and unjust, is the source of the characteristic
intensity of the sentiment. But the connection, though
less obvious, is not less real. He who accepts benefits,
and denies a return of them when needed, inflicts a real
hurt, by disappointing one of the most natural and
reasonable of expectations, and one which he must at
least tacitly have encouraged, otherwise the benefits
would seldom have been conferred. The important
rank, among human evils and wrongs, of the disap-
pointment of expectation, is shown in the fact, that it
constitutes the principal criminality of two such highly
immoral acts as a breach of friendship and a breach of
promise. Few hurts which human beings can sustain
are greater, and none wound more, than when that on
which they habitually and with full assurance relied
fails them in the hour of need; and few wrongs are
greater than this mere Withholding of good: none
excite more resentment, either in the person suffering,
or in a sympathizing spectator. The principle, there-
fore, of giving to each what they deserve, —that is,
How CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 387
good for good, as well as evil for evil, —is not only
included within the idea of Justice as we have defined
it, but is a proper object of that intensity of sentiment
which places the Just, in human estimation, above the
simply Expedient. .
Most of the maxims of justice current in the world,
and commonly appealed to in its transactions, are simply
instrumental to carrying into effect the principles of
justice which we have now spoken of. That a person
is only responsible for what he has done voluntarily,
or could voluntarily have avoided; that it is unjust
to condemn any person unheard; that the punishment
ought to be proportioned to the offence, and the like, -—
are maxims intended to prevent the just principle of
evil for evil from being perverted to the infliction of evil
without that justification. The greater part of these
common maxims have come into use from the practice of
courts of justice, which have been naturally led to a more
complete recognition and elaboration than was likely to
suggest itself to others, of the rules necessary to enable
them to fulfil their doubleifunction, of inflicting punish-
ment when due, and of awarding to each person his
right.
That first of judicial virtues, impartiality, is an Obli-
gation of justice, partly for the reason last mentioned,
as being a necessary condition of the fulfilment Of the
other obligations of justice. But this is not the only
source of the exalted rank, among human obligations,
of those maxims of equality and impartiality, which,
both in popular estimation and in that of the most
enlightened, are included among the precepts of justice.
In one point of view, they may be considered as corol-
388 UTILITARIANISM.
laries from the principles already laid down. If it is a
duty to do to each according to his deserts, returning
good for good as well as repressing evil by evil, it
necessarily follows that we should treat all equally well
(when no higher duty forbids) who have deserved
equally well of us ,' and that society should treat all
equally well who have deserved equally well of it,——that
is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is
the highest abstract standard of social and distributive
justice, towards which all institutions, and the efforts
of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost
possible degree to converge. But this great moral duty
rests upon a still deeper foundation; being a direct
emanation from the first principle of morals, and not a ,
mere logical corollary from secondary or derivative doc-
trines. It is involved in the very meaning of Utility, or
the Greatest—happiness Principle. That principle is a
mere form of words without rational signification, unless
one person’s happiness, supposed equal in degree (with
the proper allowance made for kind), is counted for
exactly as much as another’s. Those conditions being
supplied, Bentham’s dictum, " Everybody to count for
one, nobody for more than one,” might be written under
the principle of utility as an explanatory commentary.ale
* This implication, in the first principle of the utilitarian scheme of per-
fect impartiality between persons, is regarded by Mr. Herbert Spencer (in
his “ Social Statics ”) as a disproof of the pretensions of utility to be a suffi-
cient guide to right; since (he says) the principle of utility presupposes the
anterior principle, that everybody has an equal right to happiness. It may
be more correctly described as supposing that equal amounts of happiness
are equally desirable, whether felt by the same or by different persons. This,
however, is not a presupposition; not a premise needful to support the
principle of utility, but the very principle itself: for what is the principle
of utility, if it be not that “happiness” and “desirable” are synonymous
HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE. 389
The equal claim of everybody to happiness, in the esti-
mation of the moralist and the legislator, involves an
equal claim to all the means of happiness, except in so
far as the inevitable conditions of human life, and the
general interest, in which that of every individual is in-
cluded, set limits to the maxim ; and those limits ought
to be strictly construed. As every other maxim of jus-
tice, so this, is by no means applied or held applicable
universally: on the contrary, as I have already remarked,
it bends to every person’s ideas of social expediency.
But, in whatever case it is deemed applicable at all, it is
held to be the dictate of justice. All persons are deemed
to have a right to equality of treatment, except when
some recognized social expediency requires the reverse.
terms? If there is any anterior principle implied, it can be no other than
this,--that the truths of arithmetic are applicable to the valuation of hap-
piness, as of all other measurable quantities.
[Mn Herbert Spencer, in a private communication on the subject of the
preceding note, objects to being considered an opponent of Utilitarianism,
and states that he regards happiness as the ultimate end of morality; but
deems that end only partially attainable by empirical generalizations from
the observed results of conduct, and completely attainable only by deducing,
from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of action
necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappi-
ness. With the exception of the word “necessarily,” I have no dissent to
express from this doctrine; and (omitting that word) I am not aware that
any modern advocate of utilitarianism is of a different opinion. Bentham
certainly, to whom, in the “Social Statics,” Mr. Spencer particularly referred,
is, least of all writers, chargeable with unwillingness to deduce the effect
of actions on happiness from the laws of human nature and the universal
conditions of human life. The common charge against him is of relying too
exclusively upon such deductions, and declining altogether to be bound by
the generalizations from specific experience which Mr. Spencer thinks that
utilitarians generally confine themselves to. My own opinion (and, as I
collect, Mr. Spencer’s) is, that in ethics, as in all other branches of scientific
study, the consilience of the results of both these processes, each corrobo-
rating and verifying the other, is requisite to give to any general proposi-
tion the kind and degree of evidence which constitutes scientific proof] _
390 UTILITARIANISM.
And hence all social inequalities, which have ceased to be
considered expedient, assume the character, not of sim-
ple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyran-
nical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could
have been tolerated ; forgetful that they themselves per-
haps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken
notion of expediency, the correction of which would
make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous
as what they have at last learnt to condemn. The
entire history of social improvement has been a series
of transitions, by which one custom or institution after
another, from being a supposed primary necessity of
social existence, has passed into the rank of an univer-
sally stigmafIzed injustice and tyranny. So it has been
with the distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and
serfs, patricians and plebeians ; and so it will be, and in
part already is, with the aristocracies of color, race, and
sex.
It appears, from what has been said, that justice is
a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded
collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility,
and are therefore of more paramount Obligation, than
any others ; though particular cases may occur in which
some other social duty is so important as to overrule
any one of the general maxims of justice. Thus, to
save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty,
to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medi-
cine, 01' to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only
qualified medical practitioner. In such cases, as we do
not call any thing justice which is not a virtue, we
usually say, not that justice must give way to some
other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary
HOW CONNECTED WITH JUSTICE.
cases is, by reason of that other principle, not just in
the particular case. By this useful accommodation of
language, the character of indefeasibility attributed to
justice is kept up, and we are saved from the necessity
of maintaining that there can be laudable injustice.
The considerations which have now been adduced,
resolve, I conceive, the only real difficulty in the utili-
tarian theory of morals. It has always been evident
that all cases of justice are also cases of expediency:
the difference is in the peculiar sentiment which attaches
to the former, as contradistinguished from the latter.
If this characteristic sentiment has been sufficiently
accounted for; if there is no necessity to assume for it
any peculiarity of origin; if it is simply the natural
feeling of resentment, moralized by being made co-
extensive with the demands of social good; and if this
feeling not only does but ought to exist in all the classes
of cases to which the idea of justice corresponds,--that
idea no longer presents itself as a stumbling-block to the
utilitarian ethics. Justice remains the appropriate name
for certain social utilities which are vastly more im-
portant, and therefore more absolute and imperative,
than any others are as a class (though not more so than
others may be in particular cases), and which there-
fore ought to be, as well as naturally are, guarded by
a sentiment not only different in degree, but also in
kind; distinguished from the milder feeling which at-
taches to the mere idea of promoting human pleasure
or convenience, at once by the more definite nature of
its commands, and by the sterner character of its
sanctions.
THE END.


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