it. The Edinburgh
Reviewers have a waiting gentlewoman's ideas of 'Utilitarianism.' It
is unsupported by anything but the pitiable 'We are rather inclined to
think'--and is utterly contradicted by the whole course of history and
human experience besides,--that there is either danger or possibility of
such a consummation as the majority agreeing on the plunder of the rich.
There have been instances in human memory, of their agreeing to plunder
rich oppressors, rich traitors, rich enemies,--but the rich simpliciter
never. It is as true now as in the days of Harrington that 'a people
never will, nor ever can, never did, nor ever shall, take up arms for
levelling.' All the commotions in the world have been for something
else; and 'levelling' is brought forward as the blind to conceal what
the other was."

We say, again and again, that we are on the defensive. We do not think
it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison. Let the vendor
prove it to be sanative. We do not pretend to show that universal
suffrage is an evil. Let its advocates show it to be a good. Mr Mill
tells us that, if power be given for short terms to representatives
elected by all the males of mature age, it will then be for the interest
of those representatives to promote the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. To prove this, it is necessary that he should prove
three propositions: first, that the interest of such a representative
body will be identical with the interest of the constituent body;
secondly, that the interest of the constituent body will be identical
with that of the community; thirdly, that the interest of one generation
of a community is identical with that of all succeeding generations. The
two first propositions Mr Mill attempts to prove and fails. The last he
does not even attempt to prove. We therefore refuse our assent to his
conclusions. Is this unreasonable?

We never even dreamed, what Mr Bentham conceives us to have maintained,
that it could be for the greatest happiness of MANKIND to plunder the
rich. But we are "rather inclined to think," though doubtingly and with
a disposition to yield to conviction, that it may be for the pecuniary
interest of the majority of a single generation in a thickly-peopled
country to plunder the rich. Why we are inclined to think so we will
explain, whenever we send a theory of government to an Encyclopaedia.
At present we are bound to say only that we think so, and shall think so