This is my second charge against Utilitarianism. I maintain it to be a doctrine in most of its essentials erroneous; but I maintain, further, that, even if it were correct, instead of furnishing us with an infallible criterion of right and wrong, it would deprive us of the means of clearly distinguishing between right and wrong at all times at which the power of so distinguishing is of practical value. Bluntly enough, I have pronounced it to be false. With equal bluntness, I now add that, even if it were true, it would, all the same, be practically mischievous, and directly opposed to the very utility from which it takes its name. The argument in support of this charge shall now be stated. According to utilitarian ethics, the morality of actions depends wholly and solely on their consequences. On this point the language of authority is distinct, emphatic, unanimous, and self-contradictory. 'Utilitarian moralists,' says the chief amongst them, 'have gone beyond all others in affirming that the motive has nothing to do with the morality of an action.... He who saves a fellow-creature from drowning does what is morally right, whether his motive be duty or the hope of being paid for his trouble.' Upon which I would observe, in passing, that to save a fellow-creature from drowning can be deemed to be necessarily right by none but uncompromising opponents of capital punishment. Most others will be disposed to doubt its having been a sufficient reason for commuting the sentence of death passed upon the murderer of Dhuleep Sing's gamekeeper, that, owing to physical malformation, hanging might perhaps have given him more than ordinary pain in the neck, or perhaps have prolonged the pleasure which, according to the select few qualified to speak from experience, is attendant on that mode of strangulation. Neither, without sacrificing his judgment to his feelings, could one of these doubters, if Rutherford had been sentenced to be drowned instead of hanged, have stretched out a hand to save the miscreant from the watery grave he so richly deserved. That there are no actions which by reason of their beneficial consequences are always and invariably moral, might be too much to affirm; but I have no hesitation in saying that there are thousands, the morality or immorality of which--their results remaining the same--depends absolutely on their motives. Thus, if two doctors--of whom, for distinction's sake, we will call one Smethurst and the other Smith--in attendance on patients afflicted with precisely the same disease, were by the administration of overdoses of strychnine each to kill his man, the only difference between them being that whereas one intended and expected to kill, the other hoped to cure--would the act of killing be equally immoral in both cases? Would it not in the one case be murder, in the other mere error of judgment; and would both be equally crimes, or would the latter be in any degree criminal? And if it