nd what
are myriads of lives in comparison with a regenerate--what violation of
the most solemn engagements in comparison with a united, people? Did not
the millions of Frenchmen who survived the Reign of Terror gain more
than was lost by the thousands who were guillotined at Paris, or drowned
at Nantes, or shot down at Lyons? Is not Germany likely to turn Kiel to
far better account than Denmark ever did or could have done? and will
not German ascendency be abundant compensation for Danish decadence? How
culpably misplaced, then, were conscientious scruples that would have
impeded the march of events in such directions! Ends need but to be
great enough to justify any means. Let but the good promise to exceed
the evil, and there is no evil which ought not to be done in order that
good may come of it. Thus slightly qualified, the Satanic adage, 'Evil,
be thou my good,' is, without more ado, accepted as the utilitarian
watchword.

And what though it be only the most thorough-paced Utilitarians who go
these extreme lengths? These lengths, extreme as they are, are
legitimate deductions from tenets held in common by the most moderate
and cautious as well as by the most reckless of the sect. Crime in the
abstract is condemned not less vehemently by the latter than by the
former; but by both equally it is condemned on account, not of its
inherent vileness, but solely of its observed results. If the results
were different, the agency to which they are due would be fitted with a
different epithet. If a world could be conceived to be so organised, or,
if this world of ours could be conceived to be so changed as that the
practice of killing, stealing, or telling lies would be conducive to the
general good, the practice in question would obtain a new name in the
Utilitarian vocabulary. Crime would become beneficence; and to kill, to
steal, or to tell lies would be not wrong, but right. These are
propositions which, without abjuring the prime articles of his creed,
the most timid Utilitarian has no alternative but to endorse; but how,
then, can he shut his eyes to their obvious application? How presume to
rebuke those earnest philanthropists, who, to judge from their habitual
language, are firmly of opinion that annihilation of one half of mankind
would be a small price to pay for conversion of the other moiety into
citizens of a world-wide Red Republic; or those admirers of Prince
Bismarck, who, holding national aggrandisement to be