er 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.'[103] Now, 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,[104] as 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 Reviewer; and in 1829 he 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 M