e model man of science of his age. To habits of
deep and thorough investigation, and rigid, penetrating, exhaustive
thought--pursuing a principle through all the details of its
application, and never stopping halfway to pause or digress--he adds a
calm but strong sympathy with the philanthropic movements of the age;
and the tendency of all his writings is to advance the cause of truth,
justice and benevolence. But he is a reformer in a peculiar sense, not
practically understood by many who bear the name. A comprehensive and
patient thinker, and discussing every question bearing on the
interest, happiness and elevation of mankind with a conscientious as
well as rigid logic, he indulges in no vituperation, uses none of the
weapons of passion and malice, and irresistibly conveys the impression
to the most prejudiced mind that it is truth he is seeking, not the
gratification of vanity or antipathy. The consequence is that he is
the only radical thinker in England who is read by all parties, and
who influences all parties. With more industry, mental vigor and
scientific precision than Mackintosh, he has a great deal of that
beneficence of spirit, that judicial comprehension, and that strict
impartiality of understanding, which enabled Mackintosh to reach minds
separated from his by the walls of sect and faction. Mill is one of
those rare men who make no distinction between moral and logical
honesty; who would as much disdain to utter a sophism as to tell a
lie; and who can discuss questions which array the passions of a
nation on different sides, without adopting any of the opposite
bigotries with which they are usually connected. As a matter of course
the prejudiced and the bigoted themselves, in those hours of calmness
when they really desire to know the truth and reason of the things
they are quarreling about, go to a man like him with perfect
confidence. Thus Mill, a philosophical English radical, is ever
treated with that respect which clings to a profound and conscientious
thinker, even by the most violent of his Tory opponents. One of the
late numbers of Blackwood's Magazine--a periodical accustomed to
blackguard the men it cannot answer, and in which Mackintosh himself
was ever treated with coarse invective or affected contempt--has a
long article on Mill's present work on political economy, admitting
its claim to be considered one of the greatest works of the century,
even though it takes strong ground against many o