Macaulay to be essentially wrong. He entertained a very strong
conviction that the only sound foundation for a theory of Government
must be laid in careful and copious historical induction; and he
believed that Mr Mill's work rested upon a vicious reasoning a priori.
Upon this point he felt the more earnestly, owing to his own passion for
historical research, and to his devout admiration of Bacon, whose works
he was at that time studying with intense attention. There can, however,
be little doubt that he was also provoked by the pretensions of some
members of a sect which then commonly went by the name of Benthamites,
or Utilitarians. This sect included many of his contemporaries, who had
quitted Cambridge at about the same time with him. It had succeeded, in
some measure, to the sect of the Byronians, whom he has described in the
review of Moore's Life of Lord Byron, who discarded their neckcloths,
and fixed little models of skulls on the sand-glasses by which they
regulated the boiling of their eggs for breakfast. The members of these
sects, and of many others that have succeeded, have probably long ago
learned to smile at the temporary humours. But Macaulay, himself a
sincere admirer of Bentham, was irritated by what he considered the
unwarranted tone assumed by several of the class of Utilitarians. "We
apprehend," he said, "that many of them are persons who, having read
little or nothing, are delighted to be rescued from the sense of their
own inferiority by some teacher who assures them that the studies which
they have neglected are of no value, puts five or six phrases into their
mouths, lends them an odd number of the Westminster Review, and in
a month transforms them into philosophers;" and he spoke of them as
"smatterers, whose attainments just suffice to elevate them from the
insignificance of dunces to the dignity of bores, and to spread dismay
among their pious aunts and grand mothers." The sect, of course, like
other sects, comprehended some pretenders, and these the most arrogant
and intolerant among its members. He, however, went so far as to apply
the following language to the majority:--"As to the greater part of
the sect, it is, we apprehend, of little consequence what they study or
under whom. It would be more amusing, to be sure, and more reputable, if
they would take up the old republican cant and declaim about Brutus and
Timoleon, the duty of killing tyrants and the blessedness of dying for
liberty.