influence of the time was a philosophy which was identified with revolution and free thought rather than with Toryism and religion. This was the philosophy of Bentham, or Utilitarianism.
Unlike the philosophies of men like Cartwright and Paine, Utilitarianism extended far beyond the boundaries of politics. It was a system of ethics from which political principles were deduced, and it was directed not only to political institutions, but to social institutions of every kind, including property and marriage. Burke's French Revolution, though primarily political, had in fact expressed a whole intellectual system, and its almost mystical Conservatism, believing in the irrational working of human instincts through illogical and hardly comprehended instruments, had been developed and extended by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Benthamism was a rationalistic and criticizing system, which referred everything to reason and experience, and would accept nothing merely because it had become by age the centre of human confidence. The intellectual Conservative tended to identify truth with antiquity. That an institution had existed, that an idea had been generally accepted for a long period, was sufficient proof of its rightness; it should be criticized with reverence and modified, if at all, without substantial change. The Benthamite respected nothing and criticized everything. Armed with his own practical philosophy, he summoned every institution and every idea to stand and give an account of itself, and if it failed to satisfy him, no degree of antiquity could save it from condemnation. Benthamism was thus a profoundly modifying force in other fields than that of politics. But for the purposes of this book it is not necessary to undertake a general examination of it.
Bentham began to preach his philosophy before the end of the eighteenth century. But its influence was not great until the French War had exhausted practical Toryism. Largely under the direction of James Mill the new thinking then began to make headway, and it had produced considerable political results even before the enfranchisement of the middle class in 1832.
In the turmoil of warring theories Bentham laid about him with great impartiality. He had no sympathy with antiquity and prescription. These were but "the infantile foolishness of the cradle of the race."[[193]] But his contempt for historical Conservatism was equalled by his contempt for the conception of natural rights. "Rights, properly so called, are the creatures of law, properly so called; real laws give birth to real rights."[[194]] He had no patience either with appeals to history or with abstract reasoning. He was as ready as Paine to cut off society and begin it afresh, and as little ready as Burke to construct a theory in the air and apply it without regard to its practical effects. He had one guiding principle—that of utility, by which he meant a tendency to promote human happiness. Burke and Coleridge asked, "How has it grown?" Cartwright and Paine asked, "How does it conform to reason?" Bentham asked, "How does it work?" Every institution—the monarchy, the Established Church, the law, property, marriage—was to be examined. If it promoted the general happiness, it might remain, however little it realized an abstract ideal. If it did not, it must go, whatever its antiquity and splendour. Cumbrous legal forms and savage punishments which did not prevent crime must be abolished, even if they dated from the reign of Richard I. The House of Commons must be reformed, root and branch, because it was corrupt and selfish. Property was essential to the stability of society, and it must be preserved, whatever advantages it gave to one class over another. Marriage must be made dissoluble, because, while divorce was impossible, indissoluble unions meant misery for many men and women.
It is easy to find fallacies in the philosophy of Benthamism. It is untrue to say that morality consists in the pursuit of pleasure. There are logical fallacies in the expression "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." Men do not habitually pursue their own interests, and if they are left free to pursue them it is not true that each of them will secure the greatest happiness for
himself. But whatever difficulties reasoners may find in the philosophy, there is no question that the practice of the Utilitarians was of immense value to society. The abstraction at which they aimed was not a mere abstraction. Cartwright wanted liberty as an end in itself. Bentham wanted happiness, which involved an indefinite number of tangible benefits. A Benthamite might reason absurdly about "self-interest" and "happiness," but in effect he was seeking to improve conditions of life and to redress grievances. An assertion that it is the duty of Government to produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number might confuse a logician. To the ordinary Englishman, incapable of deep reasoning, it meant that it was his business, whenever he saw an abuse which could be remedied by legislation, to promote legislation to remove it. Utilitarianism provided a working formula for practical philanthropy.
Its direct influence upon politics was distinctly of a Liberal kind. Every man was to count for one, and no man for more than one. No man could know the interest of another better than the other himself, and each must be left free to pursue his own. A restricted franchise and government by a class could not stand. Where each man's conduct was directed solely to the pursuit of his own interest this could only mean the abuse of the majority for the benefit of the minority. "Whatsoever evil it is possible for man to do for the advancement of his own private and personal interest that evil sooner or later he will do, unless by some means or other, intentional or otherwise, he be prevented from doing it.... If it be true, according to the homely proverb, that the eye of the master makes the ox fat, it is no less so that the eye of the public makes the statesman virtuous."[[195]] The argument is, of course, only partly true, and if it were entirely true it would be a poor argument for a wide franchise. If every man will, sooner or later, subject the public interest to his own, are we likely to be any more happy under a democracy than under an oligarchy? If all are corrupt, does it matter very much whether all or only a few have power? Democratic
government has its peculiar dangers, and it may be corrupted by absolute power no less than despotism or aristocracy. But it at least diffuses power among an infinitely greater variety of people, who are less likely to be animated by a single interest than a closely knit and homogeneous class. For the practical purposes of the time, where the privileges were all in the hands of the minority and the deprivations were all suffered by the impotent majority, the argument was good enough. It led to universal suffrage no less directly than reasoning from the abstract rights of man. In practice some of the Benthamites stopped short at a middle-class franchise. This class was so large and so varied in character that it might be trusted to legislate for the nation as a whole. But the Benthamite reasoning went beyond this. It involved, as Bentham himself admitted, the enfranchisement of women. James Mill and many of his friends would not go so far, and drew from William Thompson, in 1825, his Appeal of One-Half of the Human Race, which is the second of the great marks in the progress of English women.
Disputes about subjects of this sort, which were not yet practically important, did not weaken the general influence of the Utilitarians. Even where their philosophy was rejected, their sustained and general attack upon abuses produced its effect. They were allied with Tories like Wilberforce in abolishing the Slave Trade. Romilly, Mackintosh, and Peel reformed the criminal law in the very spirit of Bentham. Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, Macaulay, Brougham, and the other Whigs, who since 1802 had written in the Edinburgh Review, habitually spoke with contempt of Utilitarians. But their practical politics were hardly different from those of James Mill and George Grote.[[196]] Restrictions on trade, excessive punishments for crime, costly and incomprehensible legal procedure, religious inequalities, anomalies
of the franchise, sinecures, jobs, all the fetters which hampered the individual in the pursuit of his own interest, were attacked by Whigs and Utilitarians together, and with the irregular assistance of Tories like Peel, the two contrived, between 1820 and 1850, to transform English politics.