d criterion
of utility. Upon this ground the State steps in, replaces religious
precept by positive law, and public morality is enforced by Acts of
Parliament. They were for entrusting the people with full political
power, to be exercised in vigilant restraint of the interference by
Government with individual rights and conduct; the people have
obtained the power, and are using it more and more to place their
affairs and even their moral interests under the control of organised
authority. We do not here question the expediency of the movement; we
are simply registering the tendency.

There are few literary enterprises more arduous than the task of
following and demarcating from the written record of a period the
general course of political and philosophic movements. The tendencies
are so various, the conditions which determine them are so
complicated, that it is difficult to keep hold of the clue which
guides and connects them. Mr. Leslie Stephen's _History of English
Thought in the Eighteenth Century_ took the broad ground that is
denoted by its title; but, as he now tells us in his preface, he has
found it expedient to reduce his present work within less
comprehensive limits, by confining it to 'an account of the compact
and energetic school of the English Utilitarians.' This reduction of
its scope has not, however, damaged the continuity of the narrative,
since in the great departments of morals, religion, and political
philosophy the Utilitarians were mainly the lineal heirs of the
characteristic English writers in the preceding century. It is true
that Mr. Stephen has not been able to bring within the compass of his
three volumes the subject of general literature, especially of poetry
and novels, which in the nineteenth century have given their vivid
expression to the doubts and the hopes, to the aims and aspirations of
the time. But we can see that such an enlargement of his plan would
have rendered it unmanageable, and that Mr. Stephen may have wisely
considered the example of Buckle's _History of Civilisation in
England_, which was projected on too large a scale, exhausted the
author's strength, and remains unfinished. Mr. Stephen's present work
fulfils its promise and completes its design. The Utilitarians are
very fortunate in having found a historian whose vivacity of style,
consummate literary knowledge, and masculine power of thought will
have revived their declining reputations, and secured to them their