Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
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Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English essays
We have had great reason, we think, to be gratified by the success of
our late attack on the Utilitarians. We could publish a long list of the
cures which it has wrought in cases previously considered as hopeless.
Delicacy forbids us to divulge names; but we cannot refrain from
alluding to two remarkable instances. A respectable lady writes to
inform us that her son, who was plucked at Cambridge last January, has
not been heard to call Sir James Mackintosh a poor ignorant fool
more than twice since the appearance of our article. A distinguished
political writer in the Westminster and Parliamentary Reviews has
borrowed Hume's History, and has actually got as far as the battle of
Agincourt. He assures us that he takes great pleasure in his new study,
and that he is very impatient to learn how Scotland and England became
one kingdom. But the greatest compliment that we have received is that
Mr Bentham himself should have condescended to take the field in defence
of Mr Mill. We have not been in the habit of reviewing reviews: but, as
Mr Bentham is a truly great man, and as his party have thought fit to
announce in puffs and placards that this article is written by him, and
contains not only an answer to our attacks, but a development of the
"greatest happiness principle," with the latest improvements of the
author, we shall for once depart from our general rule. However the
conflict may terminate, we shall at least not have been vanquished by an
ignoble hand.
Of Mr Bentham himself we shall endeavour, even while defending ourselves
against his reproaches, to speak with the respect to which his venerable
age, his genius, and his public services entitle him. If any harsh
expression should escape us, we trust that he will attribute it to
inadvertence, to the momentary warmth of controversy,--to anything, in
short, rather than to a design of affronting him. Though we have
nothing in common with the crew of Hurds and Boswells, who, either from
interested motives, or from the habit of intellectual servility and
dependence, pamper and vitiate his appetite with the noxious sweetness
of their undiscerning praise, we are not perhaps less competent than
they to appreciate his merit, or less sincerely disposed to acknowledge
it. Though we may sometimes think his reasonings on moral and political
questions feeble and sophistical--though we may sometimes smile at his
extraordinary language--we can never be weary of admiring the amplitude
of his comprehension, the keenness of his penetration, the exuberant
fertility with which his mind pours forth arguments and illustrations.
However sharply he may speak of us, we can never cease to revere in him
the father of the philosophy of Jurisprudence. He has a full right to
all the privileges of a great inventor: and, in our court of criticism,
those privileges will never be pleaded in vain. But they are limited
in the same manner in which, fortunately for the ends of justice, the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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