ossibly 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.

Mr. Stephen deals with the duel between Mill and Macaulay from the
standpoint of an impartial umpire, with an expert's appreciation of
their logical fencing and some humorous glances at the heated
combatants. Mill was an austere Puritan, who would fell the Tory like
an ox and would trample upon the cunning self-seeking Whig. The
Edinburgh Reviewers were a set of brilliant young men who represented
intellectual Liberalism; but 'they were men who meant to become
judges, members of Parliament, or even bishops, and nothing in their
social atmosphere had stimulated the deep resentment against social
injustice which makes the fanatic or the enthusiast.' As a sample of
Whiggism Mr. Stephen takes Mackintosh, who, on the subject of the
French Revolution, stood half-way between Burke's holy horror of a
diabolic outburst and the applause of root-and-branch Radicals. For a
type of Conservatism he gives us Robert Southey, whose fortune it was
to be fiercely abused by the Utilitarians and ridiculed by the Whigs.
Southey, like many others, had been frightened out of early Liberalism
into the conviction that Reform would be the inevitable precursor of
revolution; and in 1817 he had written to Lord Liverpool that the only
hope of saving the country lay in gagging the seditious press.
'Concessions,' he said, 'can only serve to hasten the catastro