ithout an inducement is too much, even for him. He should reflect
that the whole vast world of morals cannot be moved unless the mover can
obtain some stand for his engines beyond it. He acts as Archimedes would
have done, if he had attempted to move the earth by a lever fixed on
the earth. The action and reaction neutralise each other. The artist
labours, and the world remains at rest. Mr Bentham can only tell us
to do something which we have always been doing, and should still
have continued to do, if we had never heard of the "greatest happiness
principle"--or else to do something which we have no conceivable motive
for doing, and therefore shall not do. Mr Bentham's principle is at
best no more than the golden rule of the Gospel without its sanction.
Whatever evils, therefore, have existed in societies in which the
authority of the Gospel is recognised may, a fortiori, as it appears to
us, exist in societies in which the Utilitarian principle is recognised.
We do not apprehend that it is more difficult for a tyrant or a
persecutor to persuade himself and others that in putting to death those
who oppose his power or differ from his opinions he is pursuing "the
greatest happiness," than that he is doing as he would be done by. But
religion gives him a motive for doing as he would be done by: and Mr
Bentham furnishes him no motive to induce him to promote the general
happiness. If, on the other hand, Mr Bentham's principle mean only that
every man should pursue his own greatest happiness, he merely asserts
what everybody knows, and recommends what everybody does.

It is not upon this "greatest happiness principle" that the fame of
Mr Bentham will rest. He has not taught people to pursue their own
happiness; for that they always did. He has not taught them to promote
the happiness of others, at the expense of their own; for that they will
not and cannot do. But he has taught them HOW, in some most important
points, to promote their own happiness; and, if his school had emulated
him as successfully in this respect as in the trick of passing off
truisms for discoveries, the name of Benthamite would have been no word
for the scoffer. But few of those who consider themselves as in a more
especial manner his followers have anything in common with him but his
faults. The whole science of Jurisprudence is his. He has done much for
political economy; but we are not aware that in either department any
improvement has been made by