, either from
interested motives, or from the habit of intellectual servility and
dependence, pamper and vitiate his appetite with the noxious sweetness
of their undiscerning praise, we are not perhaps less competent than
they to appreciate his merit, or less sincerely disposed to acknowledge
it. Though we may sometimes think his reasonings on moral and political
questions feeble and sophistical--though we may sometimes smile at his
extraordinary language--we can never be weary of admiring the amplitude
of his comprehension, the keenness of his penetration, the exuberant
fertility with which his mind pours forth arguments and illustrations.
However sharply he may speak of us, we can never cease to revere in him
the father of the philosophy of Jurisprudence. He has a full right to
all the privileges of a great inventor: and, in our court of criticism,
those privileges will never be pleaded in vain. But they are limited
in the same manner in which, fortunately for the ends of justice, the
privileges of the peerage are now limited. The advantage is personal and
incommunicable. A nobleman can now no longer cover with his protection
every lackey who follows his heels, or every bully who draws in his
quarrel: and, highly as we respect the exalted rank which Mr Bentham
holds among the writers of our time, yet when, for the due maintenance
of literary police, we shall think it necessary to confute sophists,
or to bring pretenders to shame, we shall not depart from the ordinary
course of our proceedings because the offenders call themselves
Benthamites.

Whether Mr Mill has much reason to thank Mr Bentham for undertaking his
defence, our readers, when they have finished this article, will perhaps
be inclined to doubt. Great as Mr Bentham's talents are, he has, we
think, shown an undue confidence in them. He should have considered how
dangerous it is for any man, however eloquent and ingenious he may
be, to attack or defend a book without reading it: and we feel quite
convinced that Mr Bentham would never have written the article before
us if he had, before he began, perused our review with attention, and
compared it with Mr Mill's Essay.

He has utterly mistaken our object and meaning. He seems to think that
we have undertaken to set up some theory of government in opposition to
that of Mr Mill. But we distinctly disclaimed any such design. From
the beginning to the end of our article, there is not, as far as
we remember, a si