o assassinate
a bad neighbor,--to rob a miser and distribute his goods,--to marry
Rochester, while his insane wife is living, (for Jane Eyre,)--to put to
death an imbecile and uncomfortable grandmother, (for a
Feegeean,)--these are actions which are indefensible, though the balance
of public advantages might seem greatly in their favor. It is probable
that at this moment a great good would be done to this nation and to the
world by the death of Jefferson Davis; yet the bare suggestion of his
assassination, in the case of Colonel Dahlgren, was received with a
universal shudder, and disavowed as an atrocious slander. But Mr. Mill
can meet such ethical problems only by reverting to that general
principle of Kant, which he elsewhere repudiates: "So act that the rule
on which thou actest would admit of being adopted as a law for all
rational beings." Mr. Mill says of such instances, "The action is of a
class which, if practised generally, would be generally injurious, and
this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from it." But under the
rule of utilitarianism, it is the injuriousness itself which should be
the principle of classification, and to prove an action innoxious is at
once to separate it from that class; so that the objection falls. By his
own principles, a murder which would benefit the community is by that
very attribute differenced from ordinary and injurious murders, nor can
any good argument be found against its commission. The possible bad
precedent is at best a possible misapprehension, to be sufficiently
averted by concealment, where concealment is practicable.

In dealing with contemporary and practical questions, Mr. Mill shows
always pre-eminent ability, with less of the Insular traits than any
living Englishman. While there is perhaps no single passage in these
volumes so thoroughly grand as his argument for religions freedom in his
essay on Liberty,--an argument which the most heretical theologians of
either Continent could hardly have put so boldly or so well,--yet
through the whole series of essays there runs the same fine strain. He
repeatedly renews his clear and irresistible appeal for the equal
political rights of the sexes: a point on which there is coming to be
but one opinion among the most advanced minds of Europe and America,--a
unanimity which, after the more immediate problem of Slavery is disposed
of, must erelong bring about some practical application of the
principle, in our republ