supreme importance of prescription and
historic continuity, and by admitting that the philosophers had not
yet constructed a science bearing to practical politics the same
relation as geometry to mechanics. He applied his theory to the
question of parliamentary reform in the _Edinburgh Review_.[142] Here
he accepts the doctrine, criticised by James Mill, that a proper
representative system must be judged, not, as Mill maintained, solely
by the identity of its interest with that of the community at large,
but by its fitness to give power to different classes. It follows that
the landowners, the professional classes, and the populace should all
be represented. And he discovers that the variety of the English
system was calculated to secure this end. Though it was only in a few
constituencies that the poorest class had a voice, their vote in such
places represented the same class elsewhere. It was as well that there
should be some extreme Radicals to speak for the poorest. But he
thinks that any uniform suffrage would be bad, and that universal
suffrage would be the most mischievous of all systems.[143] That would
mean the swamping of one class by all--a tyranny more oppressive,
perhaps, than any other tyranny. If one class alone were to be
represented, it should be the favourite middle class, which has the
'largest share of sense and virtue,' and is most connected in interest
with other classes.[144] A legitimate aim of the legislator is,
therefore, to prevent an excess of democracy. With Mackintosh it seems
essential not simply to suppress 'sinister interests,' but to save
both the aristocracy and the middle class from being crushed by the
lower classes. The opposition is vital; and it is plain that the
argument for the aristocracy, that is, for a system developed from all
manner of historical accidents and not evolved out of any simple
logical principles, must be defended upon empirical grounds.

Mackintosh was in India during the early period of the _Edinburgh
Review_. Jeffrey, as editor for its first quarter of a century, may be
taken more fully to represent its spirit. Jeffrey's trenchant, if not
swaggering style, covered a very timid, sensitive, and, in some
respects, a very conservative temperament. His objection to the 'Lake
Poets' was the objection of the classical to the romantic school.
Jeffrey's brightness of intellect may justify Carlyle's comparison of
him to Voltaire,--only a Voltaire qualified by dislike t