And in that charter reads, with sparkling eyes,
Her title to a treasure in the skies.
Oh, happy peasant! oh, unhappy bard!
His the mere tinsel, hers the rich reward;
He, praised, perhaps, for ages yet to come;
She never heard of half a mile from home;
He, lost in errors his vain heart prefers,
She, safe in the simplicity of hers."
It was, perhaps, from a like want of inquiry into the full extent of the system, that his theory of utility encountered the charge of being a mere system of "expediency," which estimated actions according as they accomplished what appeared at the moment to be good or evil, without any regard to their ultimate consequences. He certainly left for Bentham the task of making a material addition to the utilitarian theory, by applying it to the secondary effects of actions. Thus, according to Bentham's view, when a successful highway robbery is committed, the direct evil done to the victim is but a part of the mischief accomplished. The secondary effects have an operation, if not so deep, yet very widely spread, in creating terror, anxiety, and distrust on the part of honest people, and emboldening the wicked to the perpetration of crimes. On the same principle a good measure must not be carried through the legislature by corrupt means; because the example so set, will, in the end, though not perhaps till the generation benefited by the measure has passed away, produce more bad measures than good, by lowering the tone of political morality. Had Hume kept in view these secondary effects, he never would have vindicated suicide, thought sudden death an occurrence rather fortunate than otherwise, or used expressions from which an opponent could with any plausibility infer, that, under any circumstances, he held strict female chastity in light esteem. But he was always careless about the offensive application of his principles; forgetting that if there be any thing in a set of opinions calculated deeply and permanently to outrage the feelings of mankind, the probability at least is, that they have something about them unsound,—that the mass of the public are right, and the solitary philosopher wrong.
Hume's account, in his "own life," of this period of his literary history, is contained in the following paragraph, in which, as in some other instances, it will be seen that his memory has not accurately retained the chronological sequence of his works.