e will drive the herd of slaves, buffoons,
and procurers from Whitehall, and make the happiness of his people the
rule of his conduct, he will have a much greater chance of reigning
in comfort to an advanced age; that his profusion and tyranny have
exasperated his subjects, and may, perhaps, bring him to an end as
terrible as his father's. He might answer, that he saw the danger, but
that life was not worth having without ease and vicious pleasures. And
what has our philosopher to say? Does he not see that it is no more
possible to reason a man out of liking a short life and a merry one more
than a long life and a dull one than to reason a Greenlander out of his
train oil? We may say that the tastes of the thief and the tyrant differ
from ours; but what right have we to say, looking at this world alone,
that they do not pursue their greatest happiness very judiciously?

It is the grossest ignorance of human nature to suppose that another man
calculates the chances differently from us, merely because he does what,
in his place, we should not do. Every man has tastes and propensities,
which he is disposed to gratify at a risk and expense which people of
different temperaments and habits think extravagant. "Why," says Horace,
"does one brother like to lounge in the forum, to play in the Campus,
and to anoint himself in the baths, so well, that he would not put
himself out of his way for all the wealth of the richest plantations of
the East; while the other toils from sunrise to sunset for the purpose
of increasing his fortune?" Horace attributes the diversity to the
influence of the Genius and the natal star: and eighteen hundred
years have taught us only to disguise our ignorance beneath a more
philosophical language.

We think, therefore, that the Westminster Reviewer, even if we admit his
calculation of the chances to be right, does not make out his case. But
he appears to us to miscalculate chances more grossly than any person
who ever acted or speculated in this world. "It is for the happiness,"
says he, "of a member of the House of Commons to govern well; for he
never can tell that he is not close on the moment when misgovernment
will be terribly punished: if he was sure that he should be as lucky as
his predecessors, it might be for his happiness to misgovern; but he is
not sure." Certainly a member of Parliament is not sure that he shall
not be torn in pieces by a mob, or guillotined by a revolutionary
tribunal fo