and ritual which he treated as obsolete and nonsensical; nor is there anything more remarkable or unexpected in the political changes of the last sixty years, than the discomfiture of those prophets who have foretold the decay of all liturgies and the speedy dissolution of ecclesiastical establishments. This phenomenon is by no means confined to England, or even to Europe; and at the present day, when the power of religious idealism is better understood upon wider experience, no practical politician attempts to disregard sentiments that defy logic and pass the understanding. Nevertheless Utilitarianism, as represented by James Mill's 'Essay on Government,' was attracting increased attention, and was provoking serious alarm. It was a period of confidence in theories which have been partly confirmed and partly contradicted by subsequent experiences of those 'principles of human nature' in which political speculators so unreservedly trusted. In France, some fifty years earlier, the destructive theorist had swept all before him; in England, while he was assaulting with effect the entrenchments of Conservatism, he was taken in flank by the moderate reformers. Mill had denounced the Whigs as half-hearted and even treacherous allies, who dallied with Radicalism to conceal their nefarious design of obtaining political mastery with the fewest concessions possible. He relied upon universal education to qualify the masses for the possession of an extensive franchise, and upon enlightened self-interest to guarantee their proper use of it. Macaulay rejoined, in the _Edinburgh Review_, that the masses might possibly conclude that they would get more pleasure than pain out of universal spoliation; and that if his opponent's principles were correct and his scheme adopted, 'literature, science, commerce, and manufactures might be swept away, and a few half-naked fishermen would divide with the owls and foxes the ruins of the greatest of European cities.' It was a notable controversial tournament, at which the intelligent bystander probably assisted with much satisfaction and no excessive alarm, having little faith in the absolute theorist, and not much in the disinterestedness of the Whigs. For the moment it was sufficient that both parties agreed in supporting the Reform Bill, although, as Mr. Stephen remarks, the Radical regarded it as a payment on account, while the Whig hoped that it would be a full and final discharge. We may observe, to the honour of a great Liberal family, that as the first Lord Lansdowne discerned Bentham's talents and gave him his start in life, so the impression made upon the second marquis by Macaulay's articles induced him to offer the writer his first seat in Parliament.