A political sect has sprung up avowedly adverse to the Estates of the Realm, and
seeking by means which, of course, it holds legal, the abrogation of a majority of them.
These anti-constitutional writers, like all new votaries, are remarkable for their zeal
and activity. They omit no means of disseminating their creed: they are very active
missionaries: there is no medium of the public press of which they do not avail
themselves: they have their newspapers, daily and weekly, their magazines, and their
reviews. The unstamped press takes the cue from them, and the members of the party who are
in Parliament lose no opportunity of dilating on the congenial theme at the public
meetings of their constituents.
The avowed object of this new sect of statesmen is to submit the institutions of the
country to the test Of UTILITY and to form a new Constitution on the abstract principles
of theoretic science. I think it is Voltaire who tells us that there is nothing more
common than to read and to converse to no purpose, and that in history, in morals, and in
divinity, we should beware Of EQUIVOCAL TERMS. I do not think that politics should form an
exception to this salutary rule; and, for my own part, it appears to me that this term,
UTILITY, is about as equivocal as any one which, from the time of the Nominalists and
Realists to our present equally controversial and equally indefinite days, hath been let
loose to breed sects and set men a-brawling. The fitness of a material object for a
material purpose is a test of its utility which our senses and necessities can decide; but
what other test there is of moral and political utility than the various and varying
opinions of mankind I am at a loss to discover; and that this is utterly unsatisfactory
and insuffinent, all, I apprehend, must agree.
Indeed, I have hitherto searched in vain in the writings of the Utilitarian sect for
any definition of their fundamental phrase with which it is possible to grapple. That they
pretend to afford us a definition it would be disingenuous to conceal, and we are informed
that Utility is "the principle which produces the greatest happiness of the greatest
number." Does this advance us in comprehension? Who is to decide upon the greatest
happiness of the greatest number? According to Prince Metternich, the government of
Austria secures the greatest happiness of the greatest number: it is highly probable that
the effect of the Austrian education and institutions may occasion the majority of the
Austrian population to be of the same opinion. Yet the government of Austria is no
favourite with the anti-constitutional writers of our own country. Gross superstition may
secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number, as it has done in Spain and
Portugal: a military empire may secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number, as
it has done in Rome and France: a coarse and unmitigated despotism may secure the greatest
happiness of the greatest number, as it does to this day in many regions of Asia and
Africa. Every government that ever existed, that has enjoyed any quality of duration, must
have been founded on this "greatest happiness principle," for, had not the
majority thought or felt that such were its result, the government could never have
endured. There have been times, and those too not far gone, when the greatest happiness of
Christian nations has been secured by burning men alive for their religious faith; and
unless we are prepared to proclaim that all religious creeds which differ from our own are
in fact not credited by their pretended votaries, we must admit that the greatest
happiness of the greatest number of mankind is even now secured by believing that which we
know to be false. If the greatest happiness of the greatest number, therefore, be the only
test of the excellence of political institutions, that may be the plea for institutions
which, according to the Utilitarians especially, are monstrous or absurd: and if to avoid
this conclusion we maintain that the greatest number are not the proper judges of the
greatest happiness, we are only referred to the isolated opinions of solitary
philosophers, or at the best to the conceited conviction of some sectarian minority.
UTILITY, in short, is a mere phrase, to which any man may ascribe any meaning that his
interests prompt or his passions dictate. With this plea, a nation may consider it in the
highest degree useful that all the statues scattered throughout the museums of Christendom
should be collected in the same capital, and conquer Christendom in consequence to obtain
their object; and by virtue of the same plea, some Iconoclastic enemy may declare war upon
this nation of Dilettanti tomorrow, and dash into fragments their cosmopolite collection.
Viewed merely in relation to the science of govemment, the effect of the test of
utility, as we have considered it, would in all probability be harmless, and its practical
tendency, if any, would rather lead to a spirit of conservation and optimism than to one
of discontent and change. But optimism is assuredly not the system of the Utilitarians:
far from thinking everything is for the best, they decidedly are of opinion that
everything is for the worst. In order, therefore, that their test of utility should lead
to the political results which they desire, they have dovetailed their peculiar system of
government into a peculiar system of morals, in connection with which we must alone
subject it to our consideration. The same inventive sages, who have founded all political
science on UTILITY, have founded all moral science on SELFINTEREST, and have then declared
that a system of govemment should be deduced alone from the principles of human nature. If
mankind could agree on a definition of Self-interest, I willingly admit that they would
not be long in deciding upon a definition of Utility. But what do the Utilitarians mean by
the term Self-interest? I at once agree that man acts from no other principle than
self-interest, but I include a self-interest, and I should think every accurate reasoner
must do the same, every motive that can possibly influence man. If every motive that can
possibly influence man be included in selfinterest, then it is impossible to form a
science on a principle which includes the most contrary motives. If the Utilitarians will
not admit all the motives, but only some of the motives, then their science of government
is not founded on human nature, but only on a part of human nature, and must be
consequently and proportionately imperfect. But the Utilitarian only admits one or two of
the motives that influence man; a desire of power and desire of property; and therefore
infers that it is the interest of man to tyrannise and to rob.The blended Utilitarian system of morals and politics, then, runs thus: man is only
influenced by selfinterest: it is the interest of man to be a tyrant and a robber: a man
does not change his nature because he is a king; therefore a king is a tyrant and a
robber. If it be the interest of one man to be a tyrant and a robber, it is the interest
of fifty or five thousand to be tyrants and robbers; therefore we cannot trust an
aristocracy more than a monarch. But the eternal principle of human nature must always
hold good. A privileged class is always an aristocracy, whether it consists of five
thousand or fifty thousand, a band of nobles or a favoured sect; therefore the power of
government should be entrusted to all; therefore the only true and useful govemment is a
representative polity, founded on universal suffrage. This is the Utilitarian system of
morals and government, drawn from their "great works" by one who has no wish to
misrepresent them. Granting for a moment their premises, I do not see that their
deduction, even then, is logically correct. It is possible to conceive a state of society
where the government may be in the hands of a favoured majority; a community of five
million, of which three might form a privileged class. Would not the greatest happiness of
the greatest number be secured by such an arrangement? and, if so secured, would or would
not the utilitarian, according to his theory, feel justified in disturbing it? If he
oppose such a combination, he overthrows his theory; if he consents to such a combination,
his theory may uphold tyranny and spoliation.But I will not press this point: it is enough for me to show that, to render their
politics practical, they are obliged to make their metaphysics impossible. Let the
Utilitarian prove that the self-interest of man always leads him to be a tyrant and a
robber, and I will grant that universal suffrage is a necessary and useful institution. A
nation that conquers the world acts from selfinterests; a nation that submits to a
conqueror acts from self-interest. A spendthrift and a miser alike act from self-interest:
the same principle animated Messalina and Lucretia, Bayard and Bying. To say that when a
man acts he acts from self-interest is only to announce that when a man does act he acts.
An important truth, a great discovery, calling assuredly for the appearance of prophets,
or, if necessary, even ghosts. But to announce that when a man acts he acts from
self-interest, and that the self-interest of every man prompts him to be a tyrant and a
robber, is to declare that which the experience of all human nature contradicts; because
we all daily and hourly feel and see that there arc a thousand other motives which
influence human conduct besides the idea of exercising power and obtaining property; every
one of which motives must rank under the term Selfinterest, because every man who acts
under their influence must necessarily believe that in so actin he a , for his happiness,
and therefore for his self!intcrecstts Utility, Pain, Power, Pleasure, Happiness,
Self-interest, are all phrases to which any man may annex any meaning he pleases, and from
which any acute and practise reasoner may most syllogistically deduce any theo he chooses.
"Such words," says Locke, "no more improve our understanding than the move
of a jack will fill our bellies." This waste of ingenuity on nonsense is like the
condescending union that occasionally occurs between some high-bred steed and some
long-eared beauty of the Pampas: the base and fantastical embrace only produces a barren
and mulish progeny.
We have before this had an a priori system of celestial mechanics, and its votaries
most syllogistically sent Galileo to a dungeon, after having triumphantly refuted him. We
have before this had an a priori system of metaphysics, but where now are the golden
volumes of Erigena, and Occam, and Scotus, and Raymond Lully? And now we have an a priori
system of politics. The schoolmen are revived in the nineteenth century, and are going to
settle the State with their withering definitions, their fruitless logo-machines, and
barren dialectics.
I should suppose that there is no one of the Utilitarian sages who would not feel
offended if I were to style him the Angelical Doctor, like Thomas Aquinas; and I regret
from bitter experience, that they have not yet condescended sufficiently to cultivate the
art of composition to entitle them to the style of the Perspicuous Doctor, like Walter
Burley.
These reflections naturally lead me to a consideration of the great object of our new
school of statesmen in general, which is to form political institutions on abstract
principles of theoretic science, instead of permitting them to spring from the course of
events, and to be naturally created by the necessities of nations. It would appear that
this scheme originated in the fallacy of supposing that theories produce circumstances,
whereas the very converse of the proposition is correct, and circumstances indeed produce
theories. If we survey the career of an individual, we shall on the whole observe a
remarkable consistency in his conduct; yet it is more than possible that the individual
has never acted from that organised philosophy which we. style system. What, then, has
produced this consistency? what, then, has occasioned this harmony of purpose? His
individual character. Nations have characters as well as individuals, and national
character is precisely the quality which the new sect of statesmen in their schemes and
speculations either deny or overlook. The ruling passion, which is the result of
organisation, regulates the career of an individual, subject to those superior accidents
of fortune whose secondary influence is scarcely inferior to the impulse of his nature.
The blended influences of nature and fortune form his character; 'fis the same with
nations. There were important events in the career of an individual which force the man to
ponder over the past, and, in these studies of experience and struggles for
self-knowledge, to ascertain certain principles of conduct which he recognises as the
cause of past success, and anticipates as the guarantee of future prosperity: and there
are great crises in the fortunes of an ancient people which impel them to examine the
nature of the institutions which have gradually sprung up among them. In this great
national review, duly and wisely separating the essential character of their history from
that which is purely adventitious, they discover certain principles of ancestral conduct,
which they acknowledge as the causes that these institutions have flourished and descended
to them; and in their future career, and all changes, reforms, and alterations, that they
may deem expedient, they resolve that these principles shall be their guides and their
instructors. By these examinations they become more deeply intimate with their national
character; and on this increased knowledge, and on this alone, they hold it wise to act.
This, my Lord, 1 apprehend to be the greatest amount of theory that ever enters into those
political institutions, which, from their permanency, are alone entitled to the
consideration of a philosophical statesman; and this moderate, prudent, sagacious, and
eminently practical application of principles to conduct has ever been, in the old time, the illustrious characteristics of our English politicians...
