a representative system, with a pretty high qualification, would do
directly.

So ends this celebrated Essay. And such is this philosophy for which the
experience of three thousand years is to be discarded; this philosophy,
the professors of which speak as if it had guided the world to the
knowledge of navigation and alphabetical writing; as if, before its
dawn, the inhabitants of Europe had lived in caverns and eaten each
other! We are sick, it seems, like the children of Israel, of the
objects of our old and legitimate worship. We pine for a new idolatry.
All that is costly and all that is ornamental in our intellectual
treasures must be delivered up, and cast into the furnace--and there
comes out this Calf!

Our readers can scarcely mistake our object in writing this article.
They will not suspect us of any disposition to advocate the cause of
absolute monarchy, or of any narrow form of oligarchy, or to exaggerate
the evils of popular government. Our object at present is, not so much
to attack or defend any particular system of polity, as to expose the
vices of a kind of reasoning utterly unfit for moral and political
discussions; of a kind of reasoning which may so readily be turned to
purposes of falsehood that it ought to receive no quarter, even when by
accident it may be employed on the side of truth.

Our objection to the essay of Mr Mill is fundamental. We believe that
it is utterly impossible to deduce the science of government from the
principles of human nature.

What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely
and universally true? We know of only one: and that is not only true,
but identical; that men always act from self-interest. This truism the
Utilitarians proclaim with as much pride as if it were new, and as much
zeal as if it were important. But in fact, when explained, it means only
that men, if they can, will do as they choose. When we see the actions
of a man we know with certainty what he thinks his interest to be. But
it is impossible to reason with certainty from what WE take to be his
interest to his actions. One man goes without a dinner that he may add
a shilling to a hundred thousand pounds: another runs in debt to
give balls and masquerades. One man cuts his father's throat to get
possession of his old clothes: another hazards his own life to save that
of an enemy. One man volunteers on a forlorn hope: another is drummed
out of a regiment for cowardice. Each of