tead of private objects in view, in order to be able
to look with approbation, from an utilitarian point of view, on any
amount of homicide or robbery. It was the very same Robespierre that,
while as yet diocesan judge at Arras, felt constrained to abdicate
because, 'behold, one day comes a culprit whose crime merits hanging,
and strict-minded, strait-laced Max's conscience will not permit the
dooming of any son of Adam to die,' who, shortly after, when
sufficiently imbued with the utilitarian spirit, was fully prepared to
wade through floods of slaughter towards the enthronisation of his
principles--one of those principles evidently being that, if the
decimation of mankind would conduce to the greater happiness of the
residue, adding more to the happiness of the nine-tenths whom it spared
than it took from the tenth whom it destroyed, the said decimation would
be a duty incumbent on any one possessed of power to perpetrate it.

Nor are principles like these appealed to only by those who have
recourse to them for the vindication of their own procedure. At those
_petits-soupers_--bachelors' dinners is their modern English name,
_noctes coenaeque deum_ their ancient classical--for which some of our
London clubs are deservedly celebrated, and with which the Garrick in
especial is, in my mind, gratefully associated--at those choice
gatherings of congenial spirits, conversation, changing from gay to
grave, turns not unfrequently, among other lofty topics, on that which
we are here discussing. Then, even at such divine symposium, one at
least of the guests is pretty sure to take the part of devil's advocate,
and to exercise his forensic skill in showing how easily interchangeable
are the names of virtue and iniquity, crime and well-doing. September
massacres then find, not their apologist, but their eulogist. _Noyades_
of Carrier, _fusilades_ of Collot d'Herbois, are cited as examples very
suitable for imitation in adequate emergencies. Prussia's seizure, on
behalf of Germany, of Schleswig and Holstein, on pretence of their being
not Danish, but German, and her subsequent retention of them for herself
on the plea of their having always been not German, but Danish, are
applauded as acts perfectly consistent with each other and with the
eternal fitness of things. And all this is urged in the best possible
faith. Of the recited enormities, were not some, steps to the
regeneration of France--others, to the unifaction of Germany? A