This gives Mill's answer to one obvious objection.The Conservative who answered him by dwelling upon the ignorance of the lower classes was in some respects preaching to a convert.Nobody was more convinced than Mill of the depths of popular ignorance or,indeed,of the stupidity of mankind in general.The labourers who cheered Orator Hunt at Peterloo were dull enough;but so were the peers who cheered Eldon in the House of Lords;and the labourers at least desired general prosperity,while the peers were content if their own rents were kept up.With general education,however,even the lower orders of the people would be fit for power,especially when we take into account one other remarkable conclusion.The 'wise and good,'he says,'in any class of men do,for all general purposes,govern the rest.'24Now,the class in which wisdom and virtue are commonest is not the aristocracy,but the middle rank.Another truth follows 'from the principles of human nature in general.'That is the rather surprising truth that the lower orders take their opinions from the middle class;apply to the middle class for help in sickness and old age;hold up the same class as a model to be imitated by their children,and 'account it an honour'to adopt its opinions.Consequently,however far the franchise were extended,it is this class which has produced the most distinguished ornaments of art,science,and even of legislation,which will ultimately decide upon political questions.'the great majority of the people,'is his concluding sentence,'never cease to be guided by that rank;and we may with some confidence challenge the adversaries of the people to produce a single instance to the contrary in the history of the world.'
This article upon 'Government'gives the very essence of Utilitarian politics.I am afraid that it also suggests that the political theory was chiefly remarkable for a simple-minded audacity.Good political treatises are rare.They are apt to be pamphlets in disguise,using 'general principles'for showy perorations,or to be a string of platitudes with no definite application to facts.They are fit only for the platform,or only for the professor's lecture-room.Mill's treatise,according to his most famous antagonist,was a mere bundle of pretentious sophistry.
Macaulay came forth like a Whig David to slay the Utilitarian Goliath.The Encyclopaedia articles,finished in 1824,were already in 1825,25as Mill says,text-books of the young men at the Cambridge Union.Macaulay,who won his Trinity fellowship in 1824,had there argued the questions with his friend Charles Austin,one of Bentham's neophytes.In the next year Macaulay made his first appearance as an Edinburgh Review er;and in 1829he took the field against Mill.In the January number he attacked the essay upon 'Government';and in two articles in the succeeding numbers of the Review replied to a defence made by some Utilitarian in the Westminster.
Mill himself made no direct reply;and Macaulay showed his gratitude for Mill's generosity in regard to the Indian appointment by declining to republish the articles.26He confessed to have treated his opponent with a want of proper respect,though he retracted none of his criticisms.The offence had its excuses.Macaulay was a man under thirty,in the full flush of early success;nor was Mill's own treatment of antagonists conciliatory.
The dogmatic arrogance of the Utilitarians was not unnaturally met by an equally arrogant countercheck.Macaulay ridicules the Utilitarians for their claim to be the defenders of the true political faith.He is afraid not of them but of the 'discredit of their alliance,'he wishes to draw a broad line between judicious reformers and a 'sect which having derived all its influence from the countenance which they imprudently bestowed upon it,hates them with the deadly hatred of ingratitude.'No party,he says,was ever so unpopular.It had already disgusted people with political economy;and would disgust them with parliamentary reform,if it could associate itself in public opinion with the cause.27This was indeed to turn the tables.The half-hearted disciple was insulting the thoroughbred teacher who had borne the heat and burthen of the day,and from whom he had learned his own doctrine.Upon this and other impertinences --the assertion,for example,that Utilitarians were as incapable of understanding an argument as any 'true blue baronet after the third bottle at a Pitt Club'--it is needless to dwell.They illustrate,however,the strong resentment with which the Utilitarians were regarded by the classes from whom the Whigs drew their most cultivated supporters.Macaulay's line of argument will show what was the real conflict of theory.
His view is,in fact,a long amplification of the charge that Mill was adopting a purely a priori method.
Mill's style is as dry as Euclid,and his arguments are presented with an affectation of logical precision.Mill has inherited the 'spirit and style of the Schoolmen.He is an Aristotelian of the fifteenth century.'
He writes about government as though he was unaware that any actual governments had ever existed.He deduces his science from a single assumption of certain 'propensities of human nature.'28After dealing with Mill's arguments,Macaulay winds up with one of his characteristic purple patches about the method of induction.He invokes the authority of Bacon --a great name with which in those days writers conjured without a very precise consideration of its true significance,By Bacon's method we are to construct in time the 'noble science of politics,'which is equally removed from the barren theories of Utilitarian sophists and the petty craft of intriguing jobbers.
