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 now leave the Westminster Reviewer to alter and amend his
"magnificent principle" as he thinks best. Unlimited, it is false.
Properly limited, it will be barren. The "greatest happiness principle"
of the 1st of July, as far as we could discern its meaning through
a cloud of rodomontade, was an idle truism. The "greatest happiness
principle" of the 1st of October is, in the phrase of the American
newspapers, "important if true." But unhappily it is not true. It is not
our business to conjecture what new maxim is to make the bones of sages
and patriots stir on the 1st of December. We can only say that, unless
it be something infinitely more ingenious than its two predecessors, we
shall leave it unmolested. The Westminster Reviewer may, if he pleases,
indulge himself like Sultan Schahriar with espousing a rapid succession
of virgin theories. But we must beg to be excused from playing the part
of the vizier who regularly attended on the day after the wedding to
strangle the new Sultana.
The Westminster Reviewer charges us with urging it as an objection to
the "greatest happiness principle" that "it is included in the Christian
morality." This is a mere fiction of his own. We never attacked the
morality of the Gospel. We blamed the Utilitarians for claiming the
credit of a discovery, when they had merely stolen that morality, and
spoiled it in the stealing. They have taken the precept of Christ and
left the motive; and they demand the praise of a most wonderful and
beneficial invention, when all that they have done has been to make
a most useful maxim useless by separating it from its sanction. On
religious principles it is true that every individual will best promote
his own happiness by promoting the happiness of others. But if religious
considerations be left out of the question it is not true. If we do not
reason on the supposition of a future state, where is the motive? If we
do reason on that supposition, where is the discovery?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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