st years of Mill's life correspond to the period in which
Utilitarianism reached, in certain respects, its highest pitch of
influence. The little band who acknowledged him as their chief leader,
and as the authorised lieutenant of Bentham, considered themselves to
be in the van of progress. Though differing on many points from each
other, and regarded with aversion or distrust by the recognised party
leaders, they were in their most militant and confident state of mind.
They were systematically reticent as to their religious views: they
left to popular orators the public advocacy of their favourite
political measures; and the credit of finally passing such of those
measures as were adopted fell chiefly to the hands of the great
political leaders. The Utilitarians are ignored in the orthodox Whig
legend. In the preface to his collected works, Sydney Smith runs over
the usual list of changes which had followed, and, as he seems to
think, had in great part resulted from, the establishment of the
_Edinburgh Review_. Smith himself, and Jeffrey and Horner and, above
all, 'the gigantic Brougham,' had blown the blast which brought down
the towers of Jericho. Sir G. O. Trevelyan, in his _Life of Macaulay_,
describes the advent of the Whigs to office in a similar sense.
'Agitators and incendiaries,' he says, 'retired into the background,
as will always be the case when the country is in earnest: and
statesmen who had much to lose, and were not afraid to risk it,
stepped quietly and firmly to the front. The men and the sons of the
men who had so long endured exclusion from office, embittered by
unpopularity, at length reaped their reward.'[32] The Radical version
of the history is different. The great men, it said, who had left the
cause to be supported by agitators so long as the defence was
dangerous and profitless, stepped forward now that it was clearly
winning, and received both the reward and the credit. Mill and Place
could not find words to express their contempt for the trimming,
shuffling Whigs. They were probably unjust enough in detail; but they
had a strong case in some respects. The Utilitarians represented that
part of the reforming party which had a definite and a reasoned creed.
They tried to give logic where the popular agitators were content with
declamation, and represented absolute convictions when the Whig
reformers were content with tentative and hesitating compromises. They
had some grounds for considering t