he
world is in a mistake, and the Whigs have the true light. And for proof,
principally,--that the King of Denmark is not Caligula. To which the
answer is, that the King of Denmark is not a despot. He was put in his
present situation by the people turning the scale in his favour in a
balanced contest between himself and the nobility. And it is quite clear
that the same power would turn the scale the other way the moment a King
of Denmark should take into his head to be Caligula. It is of little
consequence by what congeries of letters the Majesty of Denmark is
typified in the royal press of Copenhagen, while the real fact is
that the sword of the people is suspended over his head, in case of
ill-behaviour, as effectually as in other countries where more noise is
made upon the subject. Everybody believes the sovereign of Denmark to be
a good and virtuous gentleman; but there is no more superhuman merit in
his being so than in the case of a rural squire who does not shoot his
land-steward or quarter his wife with his yeomanry sabre.

"It is true that there are partial exceptions to the rule, that all
men use power as badly as they dare. There may have been such things as
amiable negro-drivers and sentimental masters of press-gangs; and here
and there, among the odd freaks of human nature, there may have been
specimens of men who were 'No tyrants, though bred up to tyranny.' But
it would be as wise to recommend wolves for nurses at the Foundling on
the credit of Romulus and Remus as to substitute the exception for the
general fact, and advise mankind to take to trusting to arbitrary power
on the credit of these specimens."

Now, in the first place, we never cited the case of Denmark to prove
that all despots do not govern ill. We cited it to prove that Mr Mill
did not know how to reason. Mr Mill gave it as a reason for deducing the
theory of government from the general laws of human nature that the King
of Denmark was not Caligula. This we said, and we still say, was absurd.

In the second place, it was not we, but Mr Mill, who said that the King
of Denmark was a despot. His words are these:--"The people of Denmark,
tired out with the oppression of an aristocracy, resolved that their
king should be absolute; and under their absolute monarch are as well
governed as any people in Europe." We leave Mr Bentham to settle with Mr
Mill the distinction between a despot and an absolute king.

In the third place, Mr Bentham says