reason about heat. Find all
the circumstances in which hot bodies agree, and you will determine
the principle of heat. Find all the circumstances in which good
governments agree, and you will find the principles of good
government. Certainly; but the process, as Macaulay admits, would be a
long one. Rather, it would be endless. What 'circumstances' can be the
same in all good governments in all times and places? Mill held in
substance, that we could lay down certain broad principles about
human nature, the existence of which is of course known from
'experience', and by showing how they would work, if restrained by no
distinct checks, obtain certain useful conclusions. Mill indicates
this line of reply in his own attack upon Mackintosh.[111] There he
explains that what he really meant was to set forth a principle
recognised by Berkeley, Hume, Blackstone, and, especially, in Plato's
_Republic_. Plato's treatise is a development of the principle that
'identity of interests affords the only security for good government.'
Without such identity of interest, said Plato, the guardians of the
flock become wolves. Hume[112] had given a pithy expression of the
same view in the maxim 'established,' as he says, 'by political
writers,' that in framing the 'checks and controls of the
constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave and to have no
other end in his actions than private interest.' Mill points this by
referring to the 'organs of aristocratical opinion' for the last fifty
years. The incessant appeal has been for 'confidence in public men,'
and confidence is another name for scope for misrule.[113] This, he
explains, was what he meant by the statement (which Mackintosh
considered to have been exploded by Macaulay) that every man pursued
his own interest.[114] It referred to the class legislation of the
great aristocratic ring: kings, nobles, church, law, and army.
Utilitarianism, in its political relations, was one continuous warfare
against these sinister 'interests,' The master-evil of the
contemporary political state undoubtedly implied a want of
responsibility. A political trust was habitually confounded with
private property. Moreover, whatever else may be essential to good
government, one essential is a strong sense of responsibility in the
governors. That is a very sound principle, though not an axiom from
which all political science can be deduced. If the essay on
'Government' was really meant as a kind of poli