-ruling benevolence.' The contrary will be the case where the
political machine prompts to the flattery of a small ruling body.

This characteristic passage betrays an enthusiasm which really burned
under Mill's stern outside. He confines himself habitually to the
forms of severe logic, and scorns anything like an appeal to
sentiment. The trammels of his scientific manner impede his utterance
a little, even when he is speaking with unwonted fervour. Yet the
prosaic Utilitarian who has been laying down as a universal law that
the strong will always plunder the weak, and that all rulers will
reduce their subjects to abject slavery, is absolutely convinced, it
seems, of the possibility of somehow transmuting selfishness into
public spirit, justice, generosity, and devotion to truth. Equally
characteristic is the faith in the 'political machine.' Mill speaks as
if somebody had 'discovered' the representative system as Watt (more
or less) discovered the steam-engine; that to 'discover' the system is
the same thing as to set it to work; and that, once at work, it will
be omnipotent. He is not less certain that a good constitution will
make men virtuous, than was Bentham that he could grind rogues honest
by the Panopticon. The indefinite modifiability of character was the
ground upon which the Utilitarians based their hopes of progress; and
it was connected in their minds with the doctrine of which his essay
upon education is a continuous application. The theory of 'association
of ideas' appeared to him to be of the utmost importance in education
and in politics, because it implied almost unlimited possibilities of
moulding human beings to fit them for a new order. In politics this
implied, as J. S. Mill says,[102] 'unbounded confidence' in the
influence of 'reason.' Teach the people and let them vote freely, and
everything would follow.

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 low