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Updated: May 31, 2025
Like Brutus and the logical Romans, like the logical French Jacobins, like the logical English utilitarians, they taught the lesson that men's wants have always been right and their arguments always wrong. Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence.
The Utilitarians no more than the Intuitionists sought to make any fundamental change in the content of right and of wrong as acknowledged by modern society. Their controversies were almost entirely of what may be called an academic kind, and, however decided, would have little effect upon a man's practical attitude.
It lies, fortunately, outside of my field; and it will be enough if I try to suggest one or two sufficiently vague hints. In the first place, the contrast between the Utilitarians and their opponents may almost be identified with the contrast between the prosaic and the poetical aspects of the world in general. Bentham frankly objected to poetry in general. It proved nothing.
The Utilitarians now thought themselves entitled to enter the field of politics as a distinct body. An organ to defend their cause was desirable, and Bentham supplied the funds for the Westminster Review, of which the first number appeared in April 1824.
As the Chief advocates of Bentham he reckons Romilly, his parliamentary representative; Dumont, his literary interpreter; and James Mill, who, in his article upon 'jurisprudence, had popularised the essential principles of the doctrine. The Utilitarians had at last broken up the barriers of obstruction and set the stream flowing. Whigs and Tories were taking up their theories.
All which, he defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by a manner so agreeable as well as forcible, that he always either came off victor, or divided the honours of the field. It is my belief that much of the notion popularly entertained of the tenets and sentiments of what are called Benthamites or Utilitarians had its origin in paradoxes thrown out by Charles Austin.
But while this question of egoism and altruism has thus been recognised as a possible source of perplexity, affecting the ethical standard itself, both egoists and orthodox utilitarians have commonly agreed though for different reasons to insist that morality means the same for them both, and to hold with Epicurus that "we cannot lead a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honour, and justice."
Acknowledging his great indebtedness to Mill, he observes that it is necessary to take some definite statement for a starting point; and that it is 'natural to take the ablest, the most reasonable, and the clearest. Mill, too, he says, is the only living author with whom he 'agrees sufficiently to argue with him profitably. He holds that the doctrines of Mill's later books were really inconsistent with the doctrines of the 'Logic' and 'Political Economy. He is therefore virtually appealing from the new Utilitarians to the old.
It has, I suppose, been of service to education, and may be regarded as the one practical achievement of the Utilitarians in that direction, so far as its foundation was due to them. It must, however, be admitted that the actual body still falls very far short of the ideal present to the minds of its founders. From 1822 James Mill spent his vacations at Dorking, and afterwards at Mickleham.
Macaulay is called to the bar Does not make it a serious profession Speech before the Anti-Slavery Society Knight's Quarterly Magazine The Edinburgh Review and the Essay on Milton Macaulay's personal appearance and mode of existence His defects and virtues, likings and antipathies Croker Sadler Zachary Macaulay's circumstances Description of the family habits of life in Great Ormond Street Macaulay's sisters Hannah Macaulay the Judicious Poet Macaulay's humour in conversation His articles in the Review His attacks on the Utilitarians and on Southey Blackwood's Magazine Macaulay is made Commissioner of Bankruptcy Enters Parliament Letters from Circuit and Edinburgh.
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