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
Mr Mill attempts to prove that there is no point of saturation with the
objects of human desire. He then takes it for granted that men have no
objects of desire but those which can be obtained only at the expense
of the happiness of others. Hence he infers that absolute monarchs
and aristocracies will necessarily oppress and pillage the people to a
frightful extent.
We answered in substance thus. There are two kinds of objects of desire;
those which give mere bodily pleasure, and those which please through
the medium of associations. Objects of the former class, it is true, a
man cannot obtain without depriving somebody else of a share. But then
with these every man is soon satisfied. A king or an aristocracy
cannot spend any very large portion of the national wealth on the mere
pleasures of sense. With the pleasures which belong to us as reasoning
and imaginative beings we are never satiated, it is true; but then, on
the other hand, many of those pleasures can be obtained without injury
to any person, and some of them can be obtained only by doing good to
others.
The Westminster Reviewer, in his former attack on us, laughed at us for
saying that a king or an aristocracy could not be easily satiated with
the pleasures of sense, and asked why the same course was not tried with
thieves. We were not a little surprised at so silly an objection from
the pen, as we imagined, of Mr Bentham. We returned, however, a very
simple answer. There is no limit to the number of thieves. Any man who
chooses can steal: but a man cannot become a member of the aristocracy
or a king whenever he chooses. To satiate one thief, is to tempt twenty
other people to steal. But by satiating one king or five hundred nobles
with bodily pleasures we do not produce more kings or more nobles. The
answer of the Westminster Reviewer we have quoted above; and it will
amply repay our readers for the trouble of examining it. We never read
any passage which indicated notions so vague and confused. The number
of the thieves, says our Utilitarian, is not limited. For there are the
dependants and friends of the king and of the nobles. Is it possible
that he should not perceive that this comes under a different head? The
bodily pleasures which a man in power dispenses among his creatures are
bodily pleasures as respects his creatures, no doubt. But the pleasure
which he derives from bestowing them is not a bodily pleasure. It is one
of those pleasures which belong to him as a reasoning and imaginative
being. No man of common understanding can have failed to perceive that,
when we said that a king or an aristocracy might easily be supplied to
satiety with sensual pleasures, we were speaking of sensual pleasures
directly enjoyed by themselves. But "it is impossible," says the
Reviewer, "to define what are corporal pleasures." Our brother would
indeed, we suspect, find it a difficult task; nor, if we are to judge
of his genius for classification from the specimen which immediately
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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