e of faith sufficiently hard: but to believe in a theory BECAUSE
a fact contradicts it is what neither philosopher nor pope ever before
required. This, however, is what Mr Mill demands of us. He seems to
think that, if all despots, without exception, governed ill, it would
be unnecessary to prove, by a synthetical argument, what would then
be sufficiently clear from experience. But, as some despots will be
so perverse as to govern well, he finds himself compelled to prove the
impossibility of their governing well by that synthetical argument
which would have been superfluous had not the facts contradicted it.
He reasons a priori, because the phenomena are not what, by reasoning a
priori, he will prove them to be. In other words, he reasons a priori,
because, by so reasoning, he is certain to arrive at a false conclusion!

In the course of the examination to which we propose to subject the
speculations of Mr Mill we shall have to notice many other curious
instances of that turn of mind which the passage above quoted indicates.

The first chapter of his Essay relates to the ends of government. The
conception on this subject, he tells us, which exists in the minds of
most men is vague and undistinguishing. He first assumes, justly enough,
that the end of government is "to increase to the utmost the pleasures,
and diminish to the utmost the pains, which men derive from each other."
He then proceeds to show, with great form, that "the greatest possible
happiness of society is attained by insuring to every man the greatest
possible quantity of the produce of his labour." To effect this is, in
his opinion, the end of government. It is remarkable that Mr Mill, with
all his affected display of precision, has here given a description of
the ends of government far less precise than that which is in the mouths
of the vulgar. The first man with whom Mr Mill may travel in a stage
coach will tell him that government exists for the protection of
the PERSONS and property of men. But Mr Mill seems to think that the
preservation of property is the first and only object. It is true,
doubtless, that many of the injuries which are offered to the persons of
men proceed from a desire to possess their property. But the practice of
vindictive assassination as it has existed in some parts of Europe--the
practice of fighting wanton and sanguinary duels, like those of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which bands of seconds risked
their l