in his Essay on
Education, "what are the ordinary pursuits of wealth and power, which
kindle to such a height the ardour of mankind? Not the mere love of
eating and of drinking, or all the physical objects together which
wealth can purchase or power command. With these every man is in the
long run speedily satisfied." What the difference is between being
speedily satisfied and being soon saturated, we leave Mr Bentham and Mr
Mill to settle together.

The word "saturation," however, seems to provoke Mr Bentham's mirth. It
certainly did not strike us as very pure English; but, as Mr Mill used
it, we supposed it to be good Benthamese. With the latter language we
are not critically acquainted, though, as it has many roots in common
with our mother tongue, we can contrive, by the help of a converted
Utilitarian, who attends us in the capacity of Moonshee, to make out a
little. But Mr Bentham's authority is of course decisive; and we bow to
it.

Mr Bentham next represents us as maintaining:--

"Thirdly, That 'though there may be some tastes and propensities that
have no point of saturation, there exists a sufficient check in the
desire of the good opinion of others.' The misfortune of this argument
is, that no man cares for the good opinion of those he has been
accustomed to wrong, If oysters have opinions, it is probable they think
very ill of those who eat them in August; but small is the effect upon
the autumnal glutton that engulfs their gentle substances within his
own. The planter and the slave-driver care just as much about negro
opinion, as the epicure about the sentiments of oysters. M. Ude throwing
live eels into the fire as a kindly method of divesting them of the
unsavoury oil that lodges beneath their skins, is not more convinced of
the immense aggregate of good which arises to the lordlier parts of the
creation, than is the gentle peer who strips his fellow man of country
and of family for a wild-fowl slain. The goodly landowner, who lives by
morsels squeezed indiscriminately from the waxy hands of the cobbler and
the polluted ones of the nightman, is in no small degree the object of
both hatred and contempt; but it is to be feared that he is a long way
from feeling them to be intolerable. The principle of 'At mihi plaudo
ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca,' is sufficient to make
a wide interval between the opinions of the plaintiff and defendant in
such cases. In short, to banish law and leave al