Autobiography
John Stuart Mill
[Part 2 of 2]
II. MORAL INFLUENCES IN EARLY YOUTH. MY FATHER'S CHARACTER AND
OPINIONS.
In my education, as in that of everyone, the moral influences, which
are so much more important than all others, are also the most
complicated, and the most difficult to specify with any approach to
completeness. Without attempting the hopeless task of detailing the
circumstances by which, in this respect, my early character may have
been shaped, I shall confine myself to a few leading points, which
form an indispensable part of any true account of my education.
I was brought up from the first without any religious belief, in the
ordinary acceptation of the term. My father, educated in the creed of
Scotch presbyterianism, had by his own studies and reflections been
early led to reject not only the belief in revelation, but the
foundations of what is commonly called Natural Religion. I have heard
him say, that the turning point of his mind on the subject was reading
Butler's Analogy. That work, of which he always continued to speak
with respect, kept him, as he said, for some considerable time, a
believer in the divine authority of Christianity; by proving to him,
that whatever are the difficulties in believing that the Old and New
Testaments proceed from, or record the acts of, a perfectly wise and
good being, the same and still greater difficulties stand in the way
of the belief, that a being of such a character can have been the
Maker of the universe. He considered Butler's argument as conclusive
against the only opponents for whom it was intended. Those who admit
an omnipotent as well as perfectly just and benevolent maker and ruler
of such a world as this, can say little against Christianity but what
can, with at least equal force, be retorted against themselves.
Finding, therefore, no halting place in Deism, he remained in a state
of perplexity, until, doubtless after many struggles, he yielded to
the conviction, that, concerning the origin of things nothing whatever
can be known. This is the only correct statement of his opinion; for
dogmatic atheism he looked upon as absurd; as most of those, whom the
world has considered Atheists, have always done. These particulars are
important, because they show that my father's rejection of all that is
called religious belief, was not, as many might suppose, primarily a
matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more
than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world so
full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with
perfect goodness and righteousness. His intellect spurned the
subtleties by which men attempt to blind themselves to this open
contradiction. The Sabaean, or Manichaean theory of a Good and Evil
Principle, struggling against each other for the government of the
universe, he would not have equally condemned; and I have heard him
express surprise, that no one revived it in our time. He would have
regarded it as a mere hypothesis; but he would have ascribed to it no
depraving influence. As it was, his aversion to religion, in the sense
usually attached to the term, was of the same kind with that of
Lucretius: he regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental
delusion, but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest
enemy of morality: first, by setting up factitious excellencies, --
belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected
with the good of human kind, -- and causing these to be accepted as
substitutes for genuine virtues: but above all, by radically vitiating
the standard of morals; making it consist in doing the will of a
being, on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of adulation, but
whom in sober truth it depicts as eminently hateful. I have a hundred
times heard him say, that all ages and nations have represented their
gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression, that mankind
have gone on adding trait after trait till they reached the most
perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind can devise, and
have called this God, and prostrated themselves before it. This ne
plus ultra of wickedness he considered to be embodied in what is
commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity. Think (he
used to say) of a being who would make a Hell -- who would create the
human race with the infallible foreknowledge, and therefore with the
intention, that the great majority of them were to be consigned to
horrible and everlasting torment. The time, I believe, is drawing near
when this dreadful conception of an object of worship will be no
longer identified with Christianity; and when all persons, with any
sense of moral good and evil, will look upon it with the same
indignation with which my father regarded it. My father was as well
aware as anyone that Christians do not, in general, undergo the
demoralizing consequences which seem inherent in such a creed, in the
manner or to the extent which might have been expected from it. The
same slovenliness of thought, and subjection of the reason to fears,
wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a theory involving
a contradiction in terms, prevents them from perceiving the logical
consequences of the theory. Such is the facility with which mankind
believe at one and the same time things inconsistent with one another,
and so few are those who draw from what they receive as truths, any
consequences but those recommended to them by their feelings, that
multitudes have held the undoubting belief in an Omnipotent Author of
Hell, and have nevertheless identified that being with the best
conception they were able to form of perfect goodness. Their worship
was not paid to the demon which such a being as they imagined would
really be, but to their own idea of excellence. The evil is, that such
a belief keeps the ideal wretchedly low; and opposes the most
obstinate resistance to all thought which has a tendency to raise it
higher. Believers shrink from every train of ideas which would lead
the mind to a clear conception and an elevated standard of excellence,
because they feel (even when they do not distinctly see) that such a
standard would conflict with many of the dispensations of nature, and
with much of what they are accustomed to consider as the Christian
creed. And thus morality continues a matter of blind tradition, with
no consistent principle, nor even any consistent feeling, to guide it.
It would have been wholly inconsistent with my father's ideas of
duty, to allow me to acquire impressions contrary to his convictions
and feelings respecting religion: and he impressed upon me from the
first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a
subject on which nothing was known: that the question, "Who made
me?" cannot be answered, because we have no experience or
authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer
only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question
immediately presents itself, Who made God? He, at the same time, took
care that I should be acquainted with what had been thought by mankind
on these impenetrable problems. I have mentioned at how early an age
he made me a reader of ecclesiastical history; and he taught me to
take the strongest interest in the Reformation, as the great and
decisive contest against priestly tyranny for liberty of thought.
I am thus one of the very few examples, in this country, of one who
has, not thrown off religious belief, but never had it: I grew up in a
negative state with regard to it. I looked upon the modern exactly as
I did upon the ancient religion, as something which in no way
concerned me. It did not seem to me more strange that English people
should believe what I did not, than that the men I read of in
Herodotus should have done so. History had made the variety of
opinions among mankind a fact familiar to me, and this was but a
prolongation of that fact. This point in my early education had,
however, incidentally One bad consequence deserving notice. In giving
me an opinion contrary to that of the world, my father thought it
necessary to give it as one which could not prudently be avowed to the
world. This lesson of keeping my thoughts to myself, at that early
age, was attended with some moral disadvantages; though my limited
intercourse with strangers, especially such as were likely to speak to
me on religion, prevented me from being placed in the alternative of
avowal or hypocrisy. I remember two occasions in my boyhood, on which
I felt myself in this alternative, and in both cases I avowed my
disbelief and defended it. My opponents were boys, considerably older
than myself: one of them I certainly staggered at the time, but the
subject was never renewed between us: the other who was surprised, and
somewhat shocked, did his best to convince me for some time, without
effect.
The great advance in liberty of discussion, which is one of the most
important differences between the present time and that of my
childhood, has greatly altered the moralities of this question; and I
think that few men of my father's intellect and public spirit, holding
with such intensity of moral conviction as he did, unpopular opinions
on religion, or on any other of the great subjects of thought, would
now either practise or inculcate the withholding of them from the
world, unless in the cases, becoming fewer every day, in which
frankness on these subjects would either risk the loss of means of
subsistence, or would amount to exclusion from some sphere of
usefulness peculiarly suitable to the capacities of the individual. On
religion in particular the time appears to me to have come, when it is
the duty of all who being qualified in point of knowledge, have on
mature consideration satisfied themselves that the current opinions
are not only false but hurtful, to make their dissent known; at least,
if they are among those whose station or reputation, gives their
opinion a chance of being attended to. Such an avowal would put an
end, at once and for ever, to the vulgar prejudice, that what is
called, very improperly, unbelief, is connected with any bad qualities
either of mind or heart. The world would be astonished if it knew how
great a proportion of its brightest ornaments -- of those most
distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue -- are
complete sceptics in religion; many of them refraining from avowal,
less from personal considerations, than from a conscientious, though
now in my opinion a most mistaken apprehension, lest by speaking out
what would tend to weaken existing beliefs, and by consequence (as
they suppose) existing restraints, they should do harm instead of
good.
Of unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, there are many
species, including almost every variety of moral type. But the best
among them, as no one who has had opportunities of really knowing them
will hesitate to affirm (believers rarely have that opportunity), are
more genuinely religious, in the best sense of the word religion, than
those who exclusively arrogate to themselves the title. The liberality
of the age, or in other words the weakening of the obstinate prejudice
which makes men unable to see what is before their eyes because it is
contrary to their expectations, has caused it to be very commonly
admitted that a Deist may be truly religious: but if religion stands
for any graces of character and not for mere dogma, the assertion may
equally be made of many whose belief is far short of Deism. Though
they may think the proof incomplete that the universe is a work of
design, and though they assuredly disbelieve that it can have an
Author and Governor who is absolute in power as well as perfect in
goodness, they have that which constitutes the principal worth of all
religions whatever, an ideal conception of a Perfect Being, to which
they habitually refer as the guide of their conscience; and this ideal
of Good is usually far nearer to perfection than the objective Deity
of those, who think themselves obliged to find absolute goodness in
the author of a world so crowded with suffering and so deformed by
injustice as ours.
My father's moral convictions, wholly dissevered from religion, were
very much of the character of those of the Greek Philosophers; and
were delivered with the force and decision which characterized all
that came from him. Even at the very early age at which I read with
him the Memorabilia of Xenophon, I imbibed from that work and from his
comments a deep respect for the character of Socrates; who stood in my
mind as a model of ideal excellence: and I well remember how my father
at that time impressed upon me the lesson of the "Choice of
Hercules." At a somewhat later period the lofty moral standard
exhibited in the writings of Plato operated upon me with great force.
My father's moral inculcations were at all times mainly those of the "Socratici
viri;" justice, temperance (to which he gave a very extended
application), veracity, perseverance, readiness to encounter pain and
especially labour; regard for the public good; estimation of persons
according to their merits, and of things according to their intrinsic
usefulness; a life of exertion in contradiction to one of
self-indulgent sloth. These and other moralities he conveyed in brief
sentences, uttered as occasion arose, of grave exhortation, or stern
reprobation and contempt.
But though direct moral teaching does much, indirect does more; and
the effect my father produced on my character, did not depend solely
on what he said or did with that direct object, but also, and still
more, on what manner of man he was.
In his views of life he partook of the character of the Stoic, the
Epicurean, and the Cynic, not in the modern but the ancient sense of
the word. In his personal qualities the Stoic predominated. His
standard of morals was Epicurean, inasmuch as it was utilitarian,
taking as the exclusive test of right and wrong, the tendency of
actions to produce pleasure or pain. But he had (and this was the
Cynic element) scarcely any belief in pleasure; at least in his later
years, of which alone, on this point, I can speak confidently. He was
not insensible to pleasures; but he deemed very few of them worth the
price which, at least in the present state of society, must be paid
for them. The greater number of miscarriages in life, he considered to
be attributable to the overvaluing of pleasures. Accordingly,
temperance, in the large sense intended by the Greek philosophers --
stopping short at the point of moderation in all indulgences -- was
with him, as with them, almost the central point of educational
precept. His inculcations of this virtue fill a large place in my
childish remembrances. He thought human life a poor thing at best,
after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by.
This was a topic on which he did not often speak, especially, it may
be supposed, in the presence of young persons: but when he did, it was
with an air of settled and profound conviction. He would sometimes
say, that if life were made what it might be, by good government and
good education, it would be worth having: but he never spoke with
anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility. He never varied in
rating intellectual enjoyments above all others, even in value as
pleasures, independently of their ulterior benefits. The pleasures of
the benevolent affections he placed high in the scale; and used to
say, that he had never known a happy old man, except those who were
able to live over again in the pleasures of the young. For passionate
emotions of all sorts, and for everything which has been said or
written in exaltation of them, he professed the greatest contempt. He
regarded them as a form of madness. "The intense" was with
him a bye-word of scornful disapprobation. He regarded as an
aberration of the moral standard of modern times, compared with that
of the ancients, the great stress laid upon feeling. Feelings, as
such, he considered to be no proper subjects of praise or blame. Right
and wrong, good and bad, he regarded as qualities solely of conduct-of
acts and omissions; there being no feeling which may not lead, and
does not frequently lead, either to good or to bad actions: conscience
itself, the very desire to act right, often leading people to act
wrong. Consistently carrying out the doctrine, that the object of
praise and blame should be the discouragement of wrong conduct and the
encouragement of right, he refused to let his praise or blame be
influenced by the motive of the agent. He blamed as severely what he
thought a bad action, when the motive was a feeling of duty, as if
the agents had been consciously evil doers. He would not have accepted
as a plea in mitigation for inquisitors, that they sincerely believed
burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience. But though he did
not allow honesty of purpose to soften his disapprobation of actions,
it had its full effect on his estimation of characters. No one prized
conscientiousness and rectitude of intention more highly, or was more
incapable of valuing any person in whom he did not feel assurance of
it. But he disliked people quite as much for any other deficiency,
provided he thought it equally likely to make them act ill. He
disliked, for instance, a fanatic in any bad cause, as much or more
than one who adopted the same cause from self-interest, because he
thought him even more likely to be practically mischievous. And thus,
his aversion to many intellectual errors, or what he regarded as
such, partook, in a certain sense, of the character of a moral
feeling. All this is merely saying that he, in a degree once common,
but now very unusual, threw his feelings into his opinions; which
truly it is difficult to understand how any one who possesses much of
both, can fail to do. None but those who do not care about opinions,
will confound it with intolerance. Those, who having opinions which
they hold to be immensely important, and their contraries to be
prodigiously hurtful, have any deep regard for the general good, will
necessarily dislike, as a class and in the abstract, those who think
wrong what they think right, and right what they think wrong: though
they need not therefor.e be, nor was my father, insensible to good
qualities in an opponent, nor governed in their estimation of
individuals by one general presumption, instead of by the whole of
their character. I grant that an earnest person, being no more
infallible than other men, is liable to dislike people on account of
opinions which do not merit dislike; but if he neither himself does
them any ill office, nor connives at its being done by others, he is
not intolerant: and the forbearance which flows from a conscientious
sense of the importance to mankind of the equal Freedom of all
opinions, is the only tolerance which is commendable, or, to the
highest moral order of minds, possible.
It will be admitted, that a man of the opinions, and the character,
above described, was likely to leave a strong moral impression on any
mind principally formed by him, and that his moral teaching was not
likely to err on the side of laxity or indulgence. The element which
was chiefly deficient in his moral relation to his children was that
of tenderness. I do not believe that this deficiency lay in his own
nature. I believe him to have had much more feeling than he habitually
showed, and much greater capacities of feeling than were ever
developed. He resembled most Englishmen in being ashamed of the signs
of feeling, and by the absence of demonstration, starving the feelings
themselves. If we consider further that he was in the trying position
of sole teacher, and add to this that his temper was constitutionally
irritable, it is impossible not to feel true pity for a father who
did, and strove to do, so much for his children, who would have so
valued their affection, yet who must have been constantly feeling that
fear of him was drying it up at its source. This was no longer the
case later in life, and with his younger children. They loved him
tenderly. and if I cannot say so much of myself, I was always loyally
devoted to him. As regards my own education, I hesitate to pronounce
whether I was more a loser or gainer by his severity it was not such
as to prevent me from having a happy childhood. And I do not believe
that boys can be induced to apply themselves with vigour, and what is
so much more difficult, perseverance, to dry and irksome studies, by
the sole force of persuasion and soft words. Much must be done, and
much must be learnt, by children, for which rigid discipline, and
known liability to punishment, are indispensable as means. It is, no
doubt, a very laudable effort, in modern teaching, to render as much
as possible of what the young are required to learn, easy and
interesting to them. But when this principle is pushed to the length
of not requiring them to learn anything but what has been made easy
and interesting, one of the chief objects of education is sacrificed.
I rejoice in the decline of the old brutal and tyrannical system of
teaching, which, however, did succeed in enforcing habits of
application; but the new, as it seems to me, is training up a race of
men who will be incapable of doing anything which is disagreeable to
them. I do not, then, believe that fear, as an element in education,
can be dispensed with; but I am sure that it ought not to be the main
element; and when it predominates so much as to preclude love and
confidence on the part of the child to those who should be the
unreservedly trusted advisers of after years, and perhaps to seal up
the fountains of frank and spontaneous communicativeness in the
child's nature, it is an evil for which a large abatement must be made
from the benefits, moral and intellectual, which may flow from any
other part of the education.
During this first period of my life, the habitual frequenters of my
father's house were limited to a very few persons, most of them little
known to the world, but whom personal worth, and more or less of
congeniality with at least his political opinions (not so frequently
to be met with then as since) inclined him to cultivate; and his
conversations with them I listened to with interest and instruction.
My being an habitual inmate of my father's study made me acquainted
with the dearest of his friends, David Ricardo, who by his benevolent
countenance, and kindliness of manner, was very attractive to young
persons, and who after I became a student of political economy,
invited me to his house and to walk with him in order to converse on
the subject. I was a more frequent visitor (from about 1817 or 1818)
to Mr Hume, who, born in the same part of Scotland as my father, and
having been, I rather think, a younger schoolfellow or college
companion of his, had on returning from India renewed their youthful
acquaintance, and who coming like many others greatly under the
influence of my father's intellect and energy of character, was
induced partly by that influence to go into Parliament, and there
adopt the line of conduct which has given him an honourable place in
the history of his country. Of Mr Bentham I saw much more, owing to
the close intimacy which existed between him and my father. I do not
know how soon after my father's first arrival in England they became
acquainted. But my father was the earliest Englishman of any great
mark, who thoroughly understood, and in the main adopted, Bentham's
general views of ethics, government and law: and this was a natural
foundation for sympathy between them, and made them familiar
companions in a period of Bentham's life during which he admitted much
fewer visitors than was the case subsequently. At this time Mr Bentham
passed some part of every year at Barrow Green House, in a beautiful
part of the Surrey hills, a few miles from Godstone, and there I each
summer accompanied my father in a long visit. In 1813, Mr Bentham, my
father, and I made an excursion, which included Oxford, Bath and
Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, and Portsmouth. In this journey I saw many
things which were instructive to me, and acquired my first taste for
natural scenery, in the elementary form of fondness for a "view."
in the succeeding winter we moved into a house very near Mr Bentham's,
which my father rented from him, in Queen Square, Westminster. From
1814 to 1817 Mr Bentham lived during half of each year at Ford Abbey
in Somersetshire (or rather in a part of Devonshire surrounded by
Somersetshire), which intervals I had the advantage of passing at that
place. This sojourn was, I think, an important circumstance in my
education. Nothing contributes more to nourish elevation of sentiments
in a people, than the large and free character of their habitations.
The middle-age architecture, the baronial hall, and the spacious and
lofty rooms, of this fine old place, so unlike the mean and cramped
externals of English middle class life, gave the sentiment of a large
and freer existence, and were to me a sort of poetic cultivation,
aided also by the character of the grounds in which the Abbey stood;
which were riant and secluded, umbrageous, and full of the sound of
falling waters.
I owed another of the fortunate circumstances in my education, a
year's residence in France, to Mr Bentham's brother, General Sir
Samuel Bentham. I had seen Sir Samuel Bentham and his family at their
house near Gosport in the course of the tour already mentioned (he
being then Superintendent of the Dockyard at Portsmouth), and during a
stay of a few days which they made at Ford Abbey shortly after the
peace, before going to live on the Continent. In 1820 they invited me
for a six months' visit to them in the South of France, which their
kindness ultimately prolonged to nearly a twelvemonth. Sir Samuel
Bentham, though of a character of mind different from that of his
illustrious brother, was a man of very considerable attainments and
general powers, with a decided genius for mechanical art. His wife, a
daughter of the celebrated chemist, Dr Fordyce, was a woman of strong
will and decided character, much general knowledge, and great
practical good sense of the Edgeworth kind: she was the ruling spirit
of the household, as she deserved, and was well qualified, to be.
Their family consisted of one son (the eminent botanist) and three
daughters, the youngest about two years my senior. I am indebted to
them for much and various instruction, and for an almost parental
interest in my welfare. When I first joined them, in May 1820, they
occupied the Ch teau of Pompignan (still belonging to a descendant of
Voltaire's enemy) on the heights overlooking the plain of the Garonne
between Montauban and Toulouse. I accompanied them in an excursion to
the Pyrenees, including a stay of some duration at Bagn res de
Bigorre, a journey to Pau, Bayonne, and Bagn res de Luchon, and an
ascent of the Pic du Midi de Bigorre.
This first introduction to the highest order of mountain scenery made
the deepest impression on me, and gave a colour to my tastes through
life. In October we proceeded by the beautiful mountain route of
Castres and St. Pons, from Toulouse to Montpellier, in which last
neighbourhood Sir Samuel had just bought the estate of Restincli re,
near the foot of the singular mountain of St. Loup. During this
residence in France I acquired a familiar knowledge of the French
language, and acquaintance with the ordinary French literature; I took
lessons in various bodily exercises, in none of which however I made
any proficiency; and at Montpellier I attended the excellent winter
courses of lectures at the Facult des Sciences, those of M. Anglada on
chemistry, of M. Proven al on zoology, and of a very accomplished
representative of the eighteenth century metaphysics, M. Gergonne, on
logic, under the name of Philosophy of the Sciences. I also went
through a course of the higher mathematics under the private tuition
of M. Lenth ric, a professor at the Lyce of Montpellier. But the
greatest, perhaps, of the many advantages which I owed to this episode
in my education, was that of having breathed for a whole year, the
free and genial atmosphere of Continental life. This advantage was not
the less real though I could not then estimate, nor even consciously
feel it. Having so little experience of English life, and the few
people I knew being mostly such as had public objects, of a large and
personally disinterested kind, at heart, I was ignorant of the low
moral tone of what, in England, is called society'. the habit of, not
indeed professing, but taking for granted in every mode of
implication, that conduct is of course always directed towards low and
petty objects; the absence of high feelings which manifests itself by
sneering depreciation of all demonstrations of them, and by general
abstinence (except among a few of the stricter religionists) from
professing any high principles of action at all, except in those
preordained cases in which such profession is put on as part of the
costume and formalities of the occasion. I could not then know or
estimate the difference between this manner of existence, and that of
a people like the French, whose faults, if equally real, are at all
events different; among whom sentiments, which by comparison at least
may be called elevated, are the current coin of human intercourse,
both in books and in private life; and though often evaporating in
profession, are yet kept alive in the nation at large by constant
exercise, and stimulated by sympathy, so as to form a living and
active part of the existence of great numbers of persons, and to be
recognized and understood by all. Neither could I then appreciate the
general culture of the understanding, which results from the habitual
exercise of the feelings, and is thus carried down into the most
uneducated classes of several countries on the Continent, in a degree
not equalled in England among the so-called educated, except where an
unusual tenderness of conscience leads to a habitual exercise of the
intellect on questions of right and wrong. I did not know the way in
which, among the ordinary English, the absence of interest in things
of an unselfish kind, except occasionally in a special thing here and
there, and the habit of not speaking to others, nor much even to
themselves, about the things in which they do feel interest, causes
both their feelings and their intellectual faculties to remain
undeveloped, or to develope themselves only in some single and very
limited direction; reducing them, considered as spiritual beings, to a
kind of negative existence. All these things I did not perceive till
long afterwards; but I even then felt, though without stating it
clearly to myself, the contrast between the frank sociability and
amiability of French personal intercourse, and the English mode of
existence in which everybody acts as if everybody else (with few, or
no exceptions) was either an enemy or a bore. In France, it is true,
the bad as well as the good points, both of individual and of national
character, come more to the surface, and break out more fearlessly in
ordinary intercourse, than in England: but the general habit of the
people is to show, as well as to expect, friendly feeling in every one
towards every other, wherever there is not some positive cause for the
opposite. In England it is only of the best bred people, in the upper
or upper middle ranks, that anything like this can be said.
In my way through Paris, both going and returning, I passed some time
in the house of M. Say, the eminent political economist, who was a
friend and correspondent of my father, having become acquainted with
him on a visit to England a year or two after the peace. He was a man
of the later period of the French Revolution, a fine specimen of the
best kind of French Republican, one of those who had never bent the
knee to Bonaparte though courted by him to do so; a truly upright,
brave, and enlightened man. He lived a quiet and studious life, made
happy by warm affections, public and private. He was acquitted with
many of the chiefs of the Liberal party, and I saw various noteworthy
persons while staying at his house; among whom I have pleasure in the
recollection of having once seen Saint-Simon, not yet the founder
either of a philosophy or a religion, and considered only as a clever
original. The chief fruit which I carried away from the society I saw,
was a strong and permanent interest in Continental Liberalism, of
which I ever afterwards kept myself au courant, as much as of English
politics: a thing not at all usual in those days with Englishmen, and
which had a very salutary influence on my development, keeping me free
from the error always prevalent in England, and from which even my
father with all his superiority to prejudice was not exempt, of
judging universal questions by a merely English standard. After
passing a few weeks at Caen with an old friend of my father's, I
returned to England in July 1821; and my education resumed its
ordinary course.
III. LAST STAGE OF EDUCATION AND FIRST OF SELF-EDUCATION.
For the first year or two after my visit to France, I continued my
old studies, with the addition of some new ones. When I returned, my
father was just finishing for the press his "Elements of
Political Economy," and he made me perform an exercise on the
manuscript, which Mr Bentham practised on all his own writings, making
what he called, "marginal contents"; a short abstract of
every paragraph, to enable the writer more easily to judge of, and
improve, the order of the ideas, and the general character of the
exposition. Soon after, my father put into my hands Condillac's Trait
des Sensations, and the logical and metaphysical volumes of his Cours
d'Etudes; the first (notwithstanding the superficial resemblance
between Condillac's Psychological system and my father's) quite as
much for a warning as for an example. I am not sure whether it was in
this winter or the next that I first read a history of the French
Revolution. I learnt with astonishment, that the principles of
democracy, then apparently in so insignificant and hopeless a minority
everywhere in Europe, had borne all before them in France thirty years
earlier, and had been the creed of the nation. As may be supposed from
this, I had previously a very vague idea of that great commotion. I
knew only that the French had thrown off the absolute monarchy of
Louis XIV and XV, had put the King and Queen to death, guillotined
many persons, one of whom was Lavoisier, and had ultimately fallen
under the despotism of Bonaparte. From this time, as was natural, the
subject took an immense hold of my feelings. It allied itself with all
my juvenile aspirations to the character of a democratic champion.
What had happened so lately, seemed as if it might easily happen
again: and the most transcendant glory I was capable of conceiving,
was that of figuring, successful or unsuccessful, as a Girondist in an
English Convention.
During the winter of 1821-2, Mr John Austin, with whom at the time of
my visit to France my father had but lately become acquainted, kindly
allowed me to read Roman law with him. My father, notwithstanding his
abhorrence of the chaos of barbarism called English Law, had turned
his thoughts towards the bar as on the whole less ineligible for me
than any other profession: and these readings with Mr Austin, who had
made Bentham's best ideas his own, and added much to them from other
sources and from his own mind, were not only a valuable introduction
to legal studies, but an important portion of general education. With
Mr Austin I read Heineccius on the Institutes, his Roman Antiquities,
and part of his exposition of the Pandects; to which was added a
considerable portion of Blackstone. It was at the commencement of
these studies that my Gather, as a needful accompaniment to them, put
into my hands Bentham's principal speculations, as interpreted to the
Continent, and indeed to all the world, by Dumont, in the Trait de L
gislation. The reading of this book was an epoch in my life; one of
the turning points in my mental history.
My previous education had been, in a certain sense, already a course
of Benthamism. The Benthamic standard of "the greatest happiness"
was that which I had always been taught to apply; I was even familiar
with an abstract discussion of it, forming an episode in an
unpublished dialogue on Government, written by my father on the
Platonic model. Yet in the first pages of Bentham it burst upon me
with all the force of novelty. What thus impressed me was the chapter
in which Bentham passed judgment on the common modes of reasoning in
morals and legislation, deduced from phrases like "law of nature,"
"right reason," "the moral sense," "natural
rectitude," and the like, and characterized them as dogmatism in
disguise, imposing its sentiments upon others under cover of sounding
expressions which convey no reason for the sentiment, but set up the
sentiment as its own reason. It had not struck me before, that
Bentham's principle put an end to all this. The feeling rushed upon
me, that all previous moralists were superseded, and that here indeed
was the commencement of a new era in thought. This impression was
strengthened by the manner in which Bentham put into scientific form
the application of the happiness principle to the morality of actions,
by analysing the various classes and orders of their consequences. But
what struck me at the time most of all, was the Classification of
Offences, which is much more clear, compact and imposing in Dumont's r
daction than in the original work of Bentham from which it was taken.
Logic and the dialectics of Plato, which had formed so large a part of
my previous training, had given me a strong relish for accurate
classification. This taste had been strengthened and enlightened by
the study of botany, on the principles of what is called the Natural
Method, which I had taken up with great zeal, though only as an
amusement, during my stay in France; and when I found scientific
classification applied to the great and complex subject of Punishable
Acts, under the guidance of the ethical principle of Pleasurable and
Painful Consequences, followed out in the method of detail introduced
into these subjects by Bentham, I felt taken up to an eminence from
which I could survey a vast mental domain, and see stretching out into
the distance intellectual results beyond all computation. As I
proceeded further, there seemed to be added to this intellectual
clearness, the most inspiring prospects of practical improvements in
human affairs. To Bentham's general view of the construction of a body
of law I was not altogether a stranger, having read with attention
that admirable compendium, my father's article "Jurisprudence":
but I had read it with little profit and scarcely any interest, no
doubt from its extremely general and abstract character, and also
because it concerned the form more than the substance of the corpus
juris, the logic rather than the ethics of law. But Bentham's subject
was Legislation, of which Jurisprudence is only the formal part: and
at every page he seemed to open a clearer and broader conception of
what human opinions and institutions ought to be, how they might be
made what they ought to be, and how far removed from it they now are.
When I laid down the last volume of the Trait , I had become a
different being. The "principle of utility" understood as
Bentham understood it, and applied in the manner in which he applied
it through these three volumes, fell exactly into its place as the
keystone which held together the detached and fragmentary component
parts of my knowledge and beliefs. It gave unity to my conceptions of
things. I now had opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one
among the best senses of the word, a religion; the inculcation and
diffusion of which could be made the principal outward purpose of a
life. And I had a grand conception laid before me of changes to be
effected in the condition of mankind through that doctrine. The Trait
de L gislation wound up with what was to me a most impressive picture
of human life as it would be made by such opinions and such laws as
were recommended in the treatise. The anticipations of practicable
improvement were studiously moderate, deprecating and discountenancing
as reveries of vague enthusiasm many things which will one day seem so
natural to human beings, that injustice will probably be done to those
who once thought them chimerical. But, in my state of mind, this
appearance of superiority to illusion added to the effect which
Bentham's doctrines produced on me, by heightening the impression of
mental power, and the vista of improvement which he did open was
sufficiently large and brilliant to light up my life, as well as to
give a definite shape to my aspirations.
After this I read, from time to time, the most important of the other
works of Bentham which had then seen the light, either as written by
himself or as edited by Dumont. This was my private reading: while,
under my father's direction, my studies were carried into the higher
branches of analytic psychology. I now read Locke's Essay, and wrote
out an account of it, consisting of a complete abstract of every
chapter, with such remarks as occurred to me: which was read by, or (I
think) to, my father, and discussed throughout. I performed the same
process with Helvetius De l'Esprit, which I read of my own choice.
This preparation of abstracts, subject to my father's censorship, was
of great service to me, by competing precision in conceiving and
expressing psychological doctrines, whether accepted as truths or only
regarded as the opinion of others. After Helvetius, my father made me
study what he deemed the really master-production in the philosophy of
mind, Hartley's Observations on Man. This book, though it did not,
like the Trait de L gislation, give a new colour to my existence, made
a very similar impression on me in regard to its immediate subject.
Hartley's explanation, incomplete as in many points it is, of the more
complex mental phenomena by the law of association, commended itself
to me at once as a real analysis, and made me feel by contrast the
insufficiency of the merely verbal generalizations of Condillac, and
even of the instructive gropings and feelings about for psychological
explanations, of Locke. It was at this very time that my father
commenced writing his Analysis of the Mind, which carried Hartley's
mode of explaining the mental phenomena to so much greater length and
depth. He could only command the concentration of thought necessary
for this work, during the complete leisure of his holiday of a month
or six weeks annually: and he commenced it in the summer of 1822, in
the first holiday he passed at Dorking; in which neighbourhood, from
that time to the end of his life, with the exception of two years, he
lived, as far as his official duties permitted, for six months of
every year. He worked at the Analysis during several successive
vacations, up to the year 1829 when it was published, and allowed me
to read the manuscript, portion by portion, as it advanced. The other
principal English writers on mental philosophy I read as I felt
inclined, particularly Berkeley, Hume's Essays, Reid, Dugald Stewart
and Brown on Cause and Effect. Brown's Lectures I did not read until
two or three years later, nor at that time had my father himself read
them.
Among the works read in the course of this year, which contributed
materially to my development, I ought to mention a book (written on
the foundation of some of Bentham's manuscripts and published under
the pseudonyme of Philip Beauchamp) entitled "Analysis of the
Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind."
This was an examination not of the truth, but of the usefulness of
religious belief, in the most general sense, apart from the
peculiarities of any special Revelation; which, of all the parts of
the discussion concerning religion, is the most important in this age,
in which real belief in any religious doctrine is feeble and
precarious, but the opinion of its necessity for moral and social
purposes almost universal; and when those who reject revelation, very
generally take refuge in an optimistic Deism, a worship of the order
of Nature, and the supposed course of Providence, at least as full of
contradictions, and perverting to the moral sentiments, as any of the
forms of Christianity, if only it is as completely realized. Yet, very
little, with any claim to a philosophical character, has been written
by sceptics against the usefulness of this form of belief. The volume
bearing the name of Philip Beauchamp had this for its special object.
Having been shown to my father in manuscript, it was put into my hands
by him, and I made a marginal analysis of it as I had done of the
Elements of Political Economy. Next to the Trait de L gislation, it
was one of the books which by the searching character of its analysis
produced the greatest effect upon me. On reading it lately after an
interval of many years, I find it to have some of the defects as well
as the merits of the Benthamic modes of thought, and to contain, as I
now think, many weak arguments, but with a great overbalance of sound
ones, and much good material for a more completely philosophic and
conclusive treatment of the subject.
I have now, I believe, mentioned all the books which had any
considerable effect on my early mental development. From this point I
began to carry on my intellectual cultivation by writing still more
than by reading. In the summer of 1822 I wrote my first argumentative
essay. I remember very little about it, except that it was an attack
on what I regarded as the aristocratic prejudice, that the rich were,
or were likely to be, superior in moral qualities to the poor. My
performance was entirely argumentative, without any of the declamation
which the subject would admit of, and might be expected to suggest to
a young writer. In that department however I was, and remained, very
inapt. Dry argument was the only thing I could manage, or willingly
attempted; though passively I was very susceptible to the effect of
all composition, whether in the form of poetry or oratory, which
appealed to the feelings on any basis of reason. My father, who knew
nothing of this essay until it was finished, was well satisfied, and
as I learnt from others, even pleased with it; but, perhaps from a
desire to promote the exercise of other mental faculties than the
purely logical, he advised me to make my next exercise in composition
one of the oratorical kind: on which suggestion, availing myself of my
familiarity with Greek history and ideas and with the Athenian
orators, I wrote two speeches, one an accusation, the other a defence
of Pericles, on a supposed impeachment for not marching out to fight
the Lacedaemonians on their invasion of Attica. After this I continued
to write papers on subjects often very much beyond my capacity, but
with great benefit both from the exercise itself, and from the
discussions which it led to with my father. I had now also begun to
converse, on general subjects, with the instructed men with whom I
came in contact: and the opportunities of such contact naturally
became more numerous. The two friends of my father from whom I derived
most, and with whom I most associated, were Mr Grote and Mr John
Austin. The acquaintance of both with my father was recent, but had
ripened rapidly into intimacy. Mr Grote was introduced to my father by
Mr Ricardo, I think in 1819, (being then about twenty-five years old),
and sought assiduously his society and conversation. Already a highly
instructed man, he was yet, by the side of my father, a tyro on the
great subjects of human opinion; but he rapidly seized on my father's
best ideas; and in the department of political opinion he made himself
known as early as 1820, by a pamphlet in defence of Radical Reform, in
reply to a celebrated article by Sir James Mackintosh, then lately
published in the Edinburgh Review. Mr Grote's father, the banker, was,
I believe, a thorough Tory, and his mother intensely Evangelical; so
that for his liberal opinions he was in no way indebted to home
influences. But, unlike most persons who have the prospect of being
rich by inheritance, he had, though actively engaged in the business
of banking, devoted a great portion of time to philosophic studies;
and his intimacy with my father did much to decide the character of
the next stage in his mental progress. Him I often visited, and my
conversations with him on political, moral, and philosophical subjects
gave me, in addition to much valuable instruction, all the pleasure
and benefit of sympathetic communion with a man of the high
intellectual and moral eminence which his life and writings have since
manifested to the world.
Mr Austin, who was four or five years older than Mr Grote, was the
eldest son of a retired miller in Suffolk, who had made money by
contracts during the war, and who must have been a man of remarkable
qualities, as I infer from the fact that all his sons were of more
than common ability and all eminently gentlemen. The one with whom we
are now concerned, and whose writings on jurisprudence have made him
celebrated, was for some time in the army, and served in Sicily under
Lord William Bentinck. After the peace he sold his commission and
studied for the bar, to which he had been called for some time before
my father knew him. He was not, like Mr Grote, to any extent a pupil
of my father, but he had attained, by reading and thought, a
considerable number of the same opinions, modified by his own very
decided individuality of character. He was a man of great intellectual
powers which in conversation appeared at their very best; from the
vigour and richness of expression with which, under the excitement of
discussion, he was accustomed to maintain some view or other of most
general subjects; and from an appearance of not only strong, but
deliberate and collected will; mixed with a certain bitterness, partly
derived from temperament, and partly from the general cast of his
feelings and reflexions. The dissatisfaction with life and the world,
felt more or less in the present state of society and intellect by
every discerning and highly conscientious mind, gave in his case a
rather melancholy tinge to the character, very natural to those whose
passive moral susceptibilities are more than proportioned to their
active energies. For it must be said, that the strength of will of
which his manner seemed to give such strong assurance, expended itself
principally in manner. With great zeal for human improvement, a strong
sense of duty and capacities and acquirements the extent of which is
proved by the writings he has left, he hardly ever completed any
intellectual task of magnitude. He had so high a standard of what
ought to be done, so exaggerated a sense of deficiencies in his own
performances, and was so unable to content himself with the amount of
elaboration sufficient for the occasion and the purpose, that he not
only spoilt much of his work for ordinary use by over-labouring it,
but spent so much time and exertion in superfluous study and thought,
that when his task ought to have been completed, he had generally
worked himself into an illness, without having half finished what he
undertook. From this mental infirmity (of which he is not the sole
example among the accomplished and able men whom I have known),
combined with liability to frequent attacks of disabling though not
dangerous ill-health, he accomplished, through life, little in
comparison with what he seemed capable of; but what he did produce is
held in the very highest estimation by the most competent judges; and,
like Coleridge, he might plead as a set-off that he had been to many
persons, through his conversation, a source not only of much
instruction but of great elevation of character. On me his influence
was most salutary. It was moral in the best sense. He took a sincere
and kind interest in me, far beyond what could have been expected
towards a mere youth from a man of his age, standing, and what seemed
austerity of character. There was in his conversation and demeanour a
tone of high-mindedness which did not show itself so much, if the
quality existed as much, in any of the other persons with whom at that
time I associated. My intercourse with him was the more beneficial,
owing to his being of a different mental type from all other
intellectual men whom I frequented, and he from the first set himself
decidedly against the prejudices and narrownesses which are almost
sure to be found in a young man formed by a particular mode of thought
or a particular social circle.
His younger brother, Charles Austin, of whom at this time and for the
next year or two I saw much, had also a great effect on me, though of
a very different description. He was but a few years older than
myself, and had then just left the University, where he had shone with
great clat as a man of intellect and a brilliant orator and converser.
The effect he produced on his Cambridge contemporaries deserves to be
accounted an historical event; for to it may in part be traced the
tendency towards Liberalism in general, and the Benthamic and
politico-economic form of it in particular, which showed itself in a
portion of the more active-minded young men of the higher classes from
this time to 1830. The Union Debating Society at that time at the
height of its reputation, was an arena where what were then thought
extreme opinions, in politics and philosophy, were weekly asserted,
face to face with their opposites, before audiences consisting of the
lite of the Cambridge youth: and though many persons afterwards of
more or less note, (of whom Lord Macaulay is the most celebrated),
gained their first oratorical laurels in those debates, the really
influential mind among these intellectual gladiators was Charles
Austin. He continued, after leaving the University, to be, by his
conversation and personal ascendancy, a leader among the same class of
young men who had been his associates there; and he attached me among
others to his car. Through him I became acquainted with Macaulay, Hyde
and Charles Villiers, Strutt (now Lord Belper), Romilly (now Lord
Romilly and Master of the Rolls), and various others who subsequently
figured in literature or politics, and among whom I heard discussions
on many topics, as yet to a certain degree new to me. The influence
of Charles Austin over me differed from that of the persons I have
hitherto mentioned, in being not the influence of a man over a boy,
but that of an elder contemporary. It was through him that I first
felt myself, not a pupil under teachers, but a man among men. He was
the first person of intellect whom I met on a ground of equality,
though as yet much his inferior on that common ground. He was a man
who never failed to impress greatly those with whom he came in
contact, even when their opinions were the very reverse of his. The
impression he gave was that of boundless strength, together with
talents which, combined with such apparent force of will and
character, seemed capable of dominating the world. Those who knew him,
whether friendly to him or not, always anticipated that he would play
a conspicuous part in public life. It is seldom that men produce so
great an immediate effect by speech, unless they, in some degree, lay
themselves out for it; and he did this in no ordinary degree. He loved
to strike, and even to startle. He knew that decision is the greatest
element of effect, and he uttered his opinions with all the decision
he could throw into them, never so well pleased as when he astonished
any one by their audacity. Very unlike his brother, who made war
against the narrower interpretations and applications of the
principles they both professed, he, on the contrary, presented the
Benthamic doctrines in the most startling form of which they were
susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to
consequences offensive to any one's preconceived feelings. All which,
he defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by a manner
so agreeable as well as forcible, that he always either came off
victor, or divided the honours of the field. It is my belief that much
of the notion popularly entertained of the tenets and sentiments of
what are called Benthamites or Utilitarians had its origin in
paradoxes thrown out by Charles Austin. It must be said, however, that
his example was followed, haud passibus aequis, by younger proselytes,
and that to outrer whatever was by anybody considered offensive in the
doctrines and maims of Benthanism, became at one time the badge of a
small coterie of youths. All of these who had anything in them, myself
among others, quickly outgrew this boyish vanity; and those who had
not, became tired of differing from other people, and gave up both the
good and the bad part of the heterodox opinions they had for some time
professed.
It was in the winter of 1822-3 that I formed the plan of a little
society, to be composed of young men agreeing in fundamental
principles -- acknowledging Utility as their standard in ethics and
politics, and a certain number of the principal corollaries drawn from
it in the philosophy I had accepted -- and meeting once a fortnight to
read essays and discuss questions conformably to the premises thus
agreed on. The fact would hardly be worth mentioning, but for the
circumstance, that the name I gave to the society I had planned was
the Utilitarian Society. It was the first time that any one had taken
the title of Utilitarian; and the term made its way into the language
from this humble source. I did not invent the word, but found it in
one of Galt's novels, the "Annals of the Parish," in which
the Scotch clergyman, of whom the book is a supposed autobiography, is
represented as warning his parishioners not to leave the Gospel and
become utilitarians. With a boy's fondness for a name and a banner I
seized on the word, and for some years called myself and others by it
as a sectarian appellation; and it came to be occasionally used by
some others holding the opinions which it was intended to designate.
As those opinions attracted more notice, the term was repeated by
strangers and opponents, and got into rather common use just about the
time when those who had originally assumed it, laid down that along
with other sectarian characteristics. The Society so called consisted
at first of no more than three members, one of whom, being Mr
Bentham's amanuensis, obtained for us permission to hold our meetings
in his house. The number never, I think, reached ten, and the society
was broken up in 1826. It had thus an existence of about three years
and a half. The chief effect of it as regards myself, over and above
the benefit of practice in oral discussion, was that of bringing me in
contact with several young men at that time less advanced than myself,
among whom, as they professed the same opinions, I was for some time a
sort of leader, and had considerable influence on their mental
progress. Any young man of education who fell in my way, and whose
opinions were not incompatible with those of the Society, I
endeavoured to press into its service; and some others I probably
should never have known, had they not joined it. Those of the members
who became my intimate companions -- no one of whom was in any sense
of the word a disciple, but all of them independent thinkers on their
own basis -- were William Eyton Tooke, son of the eminent political
economist, a young man of singular worth both moral and intellectual,
lost to the world by an early death; his friend William Ellis, an
original thinker in the field of political economy, now honourably
known by his apostolic exertions for the improvement of education;
George Graham, afterwards an official assignee of the Bankruptcy
Court, a thinker of originality and power on almost all abstract
subjects; and (from the time when he came first to England to study
for the bar in 1824 or 1825) a man who has made considerably more
noise in the world than any of these, John Arthur Roebuck.
In May, 1823, my professional occupation and status for the next
thirty-five years of my life, were decided by my father's obtaining
for me an appointment from the East India Company, in the office of
the Examiner of india Correspondence, immediately under himself. I was
appointed in the usual manner, at the bottom of the list of clerks, to
rise, at least in the first instance, by seniority; but with the
understanding that I should be employed from the beginning in
preparing drafts of despatches, and be thus trained up as a successor
to those who then filled the higher departments of the office. My
drafts of course required, for some time, much revision from my
immediate superiors, but I soon became well acquainted with the
business, and by my father's instructions and the general growth of my
own powers, I was in a few years qualified to be, and practically was,
the chief conductor of the correspondence with India in one of the
leading departments, that of the Native States. This continued to be
my official duty until I was appointed Examiner, only two years before
the time when the abolition of the East India Company as a political
body determined my retirement. I do not know any one of the
occupations by which a subsistence can now be gained, more suitable
than such as this to any one who, not being in independent
circumstances, desires to devote a part of the twenty-four hours to
private intellectual pursuits. Writing for the press, cannot be
recommended as a permanent resource to any one qualified to accomplish
anything in the higher departments of literature or thought: not only
on account of the uncertainty of this means of livelihood, especially
if the writer has a conscience, and will not consent to serve any
opinions except his own; but also because the writings by which one
can live, are not the writings which themselves live, and are never
those in which the writer does his best. Books destined to form future
thinkers take too much time to write, and when written come, in
general, too slowly into notice and repute, to be relied on for
subsistence. Those who have to support themselves by their pen must
depend on literary drudgery, or at best on writings addressed to the
multitude; and can employ in the pursuits of their own choice, only
such time as they can spare from those of necessity; which is
generally less than the leisure allowed by office occupations, while
the effect on the mind is far more enervating and fatiguing. For my
own part I have, through life, found office duties an actual rest from
the other mental occupations which I have carried on simultaneously
with them. They were sufficiently intellectual not to be a distasteful
drudgery, without being such as to cause any strain upon the mental
powers of a person used to abstract thought, or to the labour of
careful literary composition. The drawbacks, for every mode of life
has its drawbacks, were not, however, unfelt by me. I cared little for
the loss of the chances of riches and honours held out by some of the
professions, particularly the bar, which had been, as I have already
said, the profession thought of for me. But I was not indifferent to
exclusion from Parliament, and public life: and I felt very sensibly
the more immediate unpleasantness of confinement to London; the
holiday allowed by India-house practice not exceeding a month in the
year, while my taste was strong for a country life, and my sojourn in
France had left behind it an ardent desire of travelling. But though
these tastes could not be freely indulged, they were at no time
entirely sacrificed. I passed most Sundays, throughout the year, in
the country, taking long rural walks on that day even when residing in
London. The month's holiday was, for a few years, passed at my
father's house in the country. afterwards a part or the whole was
spent in tours, chiefly pedestrian, with some one or more of the young
men who were my chosen companions; and, at a later period, in longer
journeys or excursions, alone or with other friends. France, Belgium,
and Rhenish Germany were within easy reach of the annual holiday: and
two longer absences, one of three, the other of six months, under
medical advice, added Switzerland, the Tyrol, and Italy to my list.
Fortunately, also, both these journeys occurred rather early, so as to
give the benefit and charm of the remembrance to a large portion of
life.
I am disposed to agree with what has been surmised by others, that
the opportunity which my official position gave me of learning by
personal observation the necessary conditions of the practical conduct
of public affairs, has been of considerable value to me as a
theoretical reformer of the opinions and institutions of my time. Not,
indeed, that public business transacted on paper, to take effect on
the other side of the globe, was of itself calculated to give much
practical knowledge of life. But the occupation accustomed me to see
and hear the difficulties of every course, and the means of obviating
them, stated and discussed deliberately with a view to execution; it
gave me opportunities of perceiving when public measures, and other
political facts, did not produce the effects which had been expected
of them, and from what causes; above all, it was valuable to me by
making me, in this portion of my activity, merely one wheel in a
machine, the whole of which had to work together. As a speculative
writer, I should have had no one to consult but myself, and should
have encountered in my speculations none of the obstacles which would
have started up whenever they came to be applied to practice. But as a
Secretary conducting political correspondence, I could not issue an
order or express an opinion, without satisfying various persons very
unlike myself, that the thing was fit to be done. I was thus in a good
position for finding out by practice the mode of putting a thought
which gives it easiest admittance into minds not prepared for it by
habit; while I became practically conversant with the difficulties of
moving bodies of men, the necessities of compromise, the art of
sacrificing the non-essential to preserve the essential. I learnt how
to obtain the best I could, when I could not obtain everything;
instead of being indignant or dispirited because I could not have
entirely my own way, to be pleased and encouraged when I could have
the smallest part of it; and when even that could not be, to bear with
complete equanimity the being overruled altogether. I have found,
through life, these acquisitions to be of the greatest possible
importance for personal happiness, and they are also a very necessary
condition for enabling any one, either as theorist or as practical
man, to effect the greatest amount of good compatible with his
opportunities.
IV. YOUTHFUL PROPAGANDISM. THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW.
The occupation of so much of my time by office work did not relax my
attention to my own pursuits, which were never carried on more
vigorously. It was about this time that I began to write in
newspapers. The first writings of mine which got into print were two
letters published towards the end of 1822, in the Traveller evening
newspaper. The Traveller (which afterwards grew into the "Globe
and Traveller," by the purchase and incorporation of the Globe)
was then the property of the well-known political economist, Colonel
Torrens, and under the editorship of an able man, Mr Walter Coulson
(who, after being an amanuensis of Mr Bentham, became a reporter, then
an editor, next a barrister and conveyancer, and died Counsel to the
Home Office), it had become one of the most important newspaper organs
of liberal politics. Col. Torrens himself wrote much of the political
economy of his paper; and had at this time made an attack upon some
opinion of Ricardo and my father, to which, at my father's
instigation, I attempted an answer, and Coulson, out of consideration
for my father and goodwill to me, inserted it. There was a reply by
Torrens, to which I again rejoined. I soon after attempted something
considerably more ambitious. The prosecutions of Richard Carlile and
his wife and sister for publications hostile to Christianity, were
then exciting much attention, and nowhere more than among the people I
frequented. Freedom of discussion even in politics, much more in
religion, was at that time far from being, even in theory, the
conceded point which it at least seems to be now; and the holders of
obnoxious opinions had to be always ready to argue and re-argue for
the liberty of expressing them. I wrote a series of five letters,
under the signature of Wickliffe, going over the whole length and
breadth of the question of free publication of all opinions on
religion, and offered them to the Morning Chronicle. Three of them
were published in January and February 1823; the other two, containing
things too outspoken for that journal, never appeared at all. But a
paper which I wrote soon after on the same subject, propos of a debate
in the House of Commons, was inserted as a leading article; and during
the whole of this year, 1823, a considerable number of my
contributions were printed in the Chronicle and Traveller: sometimes
notices of books but oftener letters, commenting on some nonsense
talked in Parliament, or some defect of the law or misdoings of the
magistracy or the courts of justice. In this last department the
Chronicle was now rendering signal service. After the death of Mr
Perry, the editorship and management of the paper had devolved on Mr
John Black, long a reporter on its establishment; a man of most
extensive reading and information, great honesty and simplicity of
mind; a Particular friend of my father, imbued with many of his and
Bentham's ideas, which he reproduced in his articles, among other
valuable thoughts, with great facility and skill. From this time the
Chronicle ceased to be the merely Whig organ it waS before, and during
the next ten years became to a considerable extent a vehicle of the
opinions of the Utilitarian radicals. This was mainly by what Black
himself wrote, with some assistance from Fonblanque, who first showed
his eminent qualities as a writer by articles and jeux d'esprit in the
Chronicle. The defects of the law, and of the administration of
justice, were the subject on which that paper rendered most service to
improvement. Up to that time hardly a word had been said, except by
Bentham and my father, against that most peccant part of English
institutions and of their administration. It was the almost universal
creed of Englishmen, that the law of England, the judicature of
England, the unpaid magistracy of England, were models of excellence.
I do not go beyond the mark in saying, that after Bentham, who
supplied the principal materials, the greatest share of the merit of
breaking down this wretched superstition belongs to Black, as editor
of the Morning Chronicle. He kept up an incessant fire against it,
exposing the absurdities and vices of the law and the courts of
justice, paid and unpaid, until he forced some sense of them into
people's minds. On many other questions he became the organ of
opinions much in advance of any which had ever before found regular
advocacy in the newspaper press. Black was a frequent visitor of my
father, and Mr Grote used to say that he always knew by the Monday
morning's article, whether Black had been with my father on the
Sunday. Black was one of the most influential of the many channels
through which my father's conversation and personal influence made his
opinions tell on the world; cooperating with the effect of his
writings in making him a power in the country, such as it has rarely
been the lot of an individual in a private station to be, through the
mere force of intellect and character: and a power which was often
acting the most efficiently where it was least seen and suspected. I
have already noticed how much of what was done by Ricardo, Hume, and
Grote, was the result, in part, of his prompting and persuasion. He
was the good genius by the side of Brougham in most of what he did for
the public, either on education, law reform, or any other subject. And
his influence flowed in minor streams too numerous to be specified.
This influence was now about to receive a great extension by the
foundation of the Westminster Review.
Contrary to what may have been supposed, my father was in no degree a
party to setting up the Westminster Review. The need of a Radical
organ to make head against the Edinburgh and Quarterly (then in the
period of their greatest reputation and influence), had been a topic
of conversation between him and Mr Bentham many years earlier, and it
had been a part of their ch teau en Espagne that my father should be
the editor; but the idea had never assumed any practical shape. In
1823, however, Mr Bentham determined to establish the review at his
own cost, and offered the editorship to my father, who declined it as
incompatible with his india House appointment. It was then entrusted
to Mr (now Sir John) Bowring, at that time a merchant in the City. Mr
Bowring had been for two or three years previous an assiduous
frequenter of Mr Bentham, to whom he was recommended by many personal
good qualities, by an ardent admiration for Bentham, a zealous
adoption of many, though not all, of his opinions, and, not least, by
an extensive acquaintanceship and correspondence with Liberals of all
countries, which seemed to qualify him for being a powerful agent in
spreading Bentham's fame and doctrines through all quarters of the
world. My father had seen little of Bowring, but knew enough of him to
have formed a strong opinion, that he was a man of an entirely
different type from what my father considered suitable for conducting
a political and philosophical review: and he augured so ill of the
enterprise that he regretted it altogether, feeling persuaded not only
that Mr Bentham would lose his money, but that discredit would
probably be brought upon radical principles. He could not, however,
desert Mr Bentham, and he consented to write an article for the first
number. As it had been a favourite portion of the scheme formerly
talked of, that part of the work should be devoted to reviewing the
other Reviews, this article of my father's was to be a general
criticism of the Edinburgh Review from its commencement. Before
writing it he made me read through all the volumes of the Review, or
as much of each as seemed of any importance (which was not so arduous
a task in 1823 as it would be now), and make notes for him of the
articles which I thought he would wish to examine, either on account
of their good or their bad qualities. This paper of my father's was
the chief cause of the sensation which the Westminster Review produced
at its first appearance, and is, both in conception and in execution,
one of the most striking of all his writings. He began by an analysis
of the tendencies of periodical literature in general; pointing out,
that it cannot, like books, wait for success, but must succeed
immediately, or not at all, and is hence almost certain to profess and
inculcate the opinions already held by the public to which it
addresses itself, instead of attempting to rectify or improve those
opinions. He next, to characterize the position of the Edinburgh
Review as a political organ, entered into a complete analysis, from
the Radical point of view, of the British Constitution. He held up to
notice its thoroughly aristocratic character: the nomination of a
majority of the House of Commons by a few hundred families; the entire
identification of the more independent portion, the county members,
with the great landholders; the different classes whom this narrow
oligarchy was induced, for convenience, to admit to a share of power;
and finally, what he called its two props, the Church, and the legal
profession. He pointed out the natural tendency of an aristocratic
body of this composition, to group itself into two parties, one of
them in possession of the executive, the other endeavouring to
supplant the former and become the predominant section by the aid of
public opinion, without any essential sacrifice of the aristocratic
predominance. He described the course likely to be pursued, and the
political ground occupied, by an aristocratic party in opposition,
coquetting with popular principles for the sake of popular support. He
showed how this idea was realized in the conduct of the Whig party,
and of the Edinburgh Review as its chief literary organ. He described,
as their main characteristic, what he termed " seesaw;"
writing alternately on both sides of every question which touched the
power or interest of the governing classes; sometimes in different
articles, sometimes in different parts of the same article: and
illustrated his position by copious specimens. So formidable an attack
on the Whig party and policy had never before been made; nor had so
great a blow been ever struck, in this country, for radicalism; nor
was there, I believe, any living person capable of writing that
article, except my father.(2*)
In the meantime the nascent review had formed a junction with another
project, of a purely literary periodical, to be edited by Mr Henry
Southern, afterwards a diplomatist, then a literary man by profession.
The two editors agreed to unite their corps, and divide the
editorship, Bowring taking the political, Southern the literary
department. Southern's review was to have been published by Longman,
and that firm, though part proprietors of the Edinburgh, were willing
to be the publishers of the new journal. But when all the arrangements
had been made, and the prospectuses sent out, the Longmans saw my
father's attack on the Edinburgh, and drew back. My father was now
appealed to for his interest with his own publisher, Baldwin, which
was exerted with a successful result. And so, in April, 1824, amidst
anything but hope on my father's part, and that of most of those who
afterwards aided in carrying on the review, the first number made its
appearance.
That number was an agreeable surprise to most of us. The average of
the articles was of much better quality than had been expected. The
literary and artistic department had rested chiefly on Mr Bingham, a
barrister (subsequently a Police Magistrate), who had been for some
years a frequenter of Bentham, was a friend of both the Austins, and
had adopted with great ardour Mr Bentham's philosophical opinions.
Partly from accident, there were in the first number as many as five
articles by Bingham; and we were extremely pleased with them. I well
remember the mixed feeling I myself had about the Review; the joy at
finding, what we did not at all expect, that it was sufficiently good
to be capable of being made a creditable organ of those who held the
opinions it professed; and extreme vexation, since it was so good on
the whole, at what we thought the blemishes of it. When, however, in
addition to our generally favourable opinion of it, we learned that it
had an extraordinarily large sale for a first number, and found that
the appearance of a Radical review, with pretensions equal to those of
the established organs of parties, had excited much attention, there
could be no room for hesitation, and we all became eager in doing
everything we could to strengthen and improve it.
My father continued to write occasional articles. The Quarterly
Review received its exposure, as a sequel to that of the Edinburgh. Of
his other contributions, the most important were an attack on
Southey's Book of the Church, in the fifth number, and a political
article in the twelfth. Mr Austin only contributed one paper, but one
of great merit, an argument against primogeniture, in reply to an
article then lately published in the Edinburgh Review by McCulloch.
Grote also was a contributor only once; all the time he could spare
being already taken up with his History of Greece. The article he
wrote was on his own subject, and was a very complete exposure and
castigation of Mitford. Bingham and Charles Austin continued to write
for some time; Fonblanque was a frequent contributor from the third
number. Of my particular associates, Ellis was a regular writer up to
the ninth number; and about the time when he left off, others of the
set began; Eyton Tooke, Graham, and Roebuck. I was myself the most
frequent writer of all, having contributed, from the second number to
the eighteenth, thirteen articles; reviews of books on history and
political economy, or discussions on special political topics, as corn
laws, game laws, laws of libel. Occasional articles of merit came in
from other acquaintances of my father's, and, in time, of mine; and
some of Mr Bowring's writers turned out well. On the whole, however,
the conduct of the Review was never satisfactory to any of the persons
strongly interested in its principles, with whom I came in contact.
Hardly ever did a number come out without containing several things
extremely offensive to us, either in point of opinion, of taste, or by
mere want of ability. The unfavourable judgments passed by my father,
Grote, the two Austins, and others, were re-echoed with exaggeration
by us younger people; and as our youthful zeal tendered us by no means
backward in making complaints, we led the two editors a sad life. From
my knowledge of what I then was, I have no doubt that we were at least
as often wrong as right; and I am very certain that if the Review had
been carried on according to our notions (I mean those of the
juniors), it would have been no better, perhaps not even so good as it
was. But it is worth noting as a fact in the history of Benthanism,
that the periodical organ, by which it was best known, was from the
first extremely unsatisfactory to those whose opinions on all subjects
it was supposed specially to represent.
Meanwhile, however, the Review made considerable noise in the world,
and gave a recognised status, in the arena of opinion and discussion,
to the Benthamic type of radicalism, out of all proportion to the
number of its adherents, and to the personal merits and abilities, at
that time, of most of those who could be reckoned among them. It was a
time, as is known, of rapidly rising Liberalism. When the fears and
animosities accompanying the war with France had been brought to an
end, and people had once more a place in their thoughts for home
politics, the tide began to set towards reform. The renewed oppression
of the Continent by the old reigning families, the countenance
apparently given by the English Government to the conspiracy against
liberty called the Holy Alliance, and the enormous weight of the
national debt and taxation occasioned by so long and costly a war,
tendered the government and parliament very unpopular. Radicalism,
under the leadership of the Burdetts and Cobbetts, had assumed a
character and importance which seriously alarmed the Administration:
and their alarm had scarcely been temporarily assuaged by the
celebrated Six Acts, when the trial of Queen Caroline roused a still
wider and deeper feeling of hatred. Though the outward signs of this
hatred passed away with its exciting cause, there arose on all sides a
spirit which had never shown itself before, of opposition to abuses in
detail. Mr Hume's persevering scrutiny of the public expenditure,
forcing the House of Commons to a division on every objectionable item
in the estimates, had begun to tell with great force on public
opinion, and had extorted many minor retrenchments from an unwilling
administration. Political economy had asserted itself with great
vigour in public affairs, by the Petition of the Merchants of London
for Free Trade, drawn up in 1820 by Mr Tooke and presented by Mr
Alexander Baring; and by the noble exertions of Ricardo during the few
years of his parliamentary life. His writings, following up the
impulse given by the Bullion controversy, and followed up in their
turn by the expositions and comments of my father and McCulloch (whose
writings in the Edinburgh Review during those years were most
valuable), had drawn general attention to the subject, making at least
partial converts in the Cabinet itself; and Huskisson, supported by
Canning, had commenced that gradual demolition of the protective
system, which one of their colleagues virtually completed in 1846,
though the last vestiges were only swept away by Mr Gladstone in 1860.
Mr Peel, then Home Secretary, was entering cautiously into the
untrodden and peculiarly Benthamic path of Law Reform. At this period,
when Liberalism seemed to be becoming the tone of the time, when
improvement of institutions was preached from the highest places, and
a complete change of the constitution of Parliament was loudly
demanded in the lowest, it is not strange that attention should have
been roused by the regular appearance in controversy of what seemed a
new school of writers, claiming to be the legislators and theorists of
this new tendency. The air of strong conviction with which they
wrote, when scarcely any one else seemed to have an equally strong
faith in as definite a creed: the boldness with which they tilted
against the very front of both the existing political Parties; their
uncompromising profession of opposition to many of the generally
received opinions, and the suspicion they lay under of holding others
still more heterodox than they professed; the talent and verve of at
least my father's articles, and the appearance of a corps behind him
sufficient to carry on a review; and finally, the fact that the review
was bought and read, made the so-called Bentham school in philosophy
and politics fill a greater place in the public mind than it had held
before, or has ever again held since other equally earnest schools of
thought have arisen in England. As I was in the headquarters of it,
knew of what it was composed, and as one of the most active of its
very small number, might say without undue assumption, quorum pars
magna fui, it belongs to me more than to most others, to give some
account of it.
This supposed school, then, had no other existence than what was
constituted by the fact, that my father's writings and conversation
drew round him a certain number of young men who had already imbibed,
or who imbibed from him, a greater or smaller portion of his very
decided political and philosophical opinions. The notion that Bentham
was surrounded by a band of disciples who received their opinions from
his lips, is a fable to which my father did justice in his "Fragment
on Mackintosh," and which, to all who knew Mr Bentham's habits of
life.
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