till somebody shows us a reason for thinking otherwise.

Mr Bentham's answer to us is simple assertion. He must not think that
we mean any discourtesy by meeting it with a simple denial. The fact is,
that almost all the governments that have ever existed in the civilised
world have been, in part at least, monarchical and aristocratical. The
first government constituted on principles approaching to those which
the Utilitarians hold was, we think, that of the United States. That the
poor have never combined to plunder the rich in the governments of the
old world, no more proves that they might not combine to plunder the
rich under a system of universal suffrage, than the fact that the
English kings of the House of Brunswick have not been Neros and
Domitians proves that sovereigns may safely be intrusted with absolute
power. Of what the people would do in a state of perfect sovereignty we
can judge only by indications, which, though rarely of much moment in
themselves, and though always suppressed with little difficulty, are yet
of great significance, and resemble those by which our domestic animals
sometimes remind us that they are of kin with the fiercest monsters of
the forest. It would not be wise to reason from the behaviour of a dog
crouching under the lash, which is the case of the Italian people,
or from the behaviour of a dog pampered with the best morsels of a
plentiful kitchen, which is the case of the purpose of America, to the
behaviour of a wolf, which is nothing but a dog run wild, after a week's
fast among the snows of the Pyrenees. No commotion, says Mr Bentham,
was ever really produced by the wish of levelling; the wish has been put
forward as a blind; but something else has been the real object. Grant
all this. But why has levelling been put forward as a blind in times
of commotion to conceal the real objects of the agitators? Is it with
declarations which involve "a suicide of hope" that man attempt to
allure others? Was famine, pestilence, slavery, ever held out to attract
the people? If levelling has been made a pretence for disturbances, the
argument against Mr Bentham's doctrine is as strong as if it had been
the real object of disturbances.

But the great objection which Mr Bentham makes to our review, still
remains to be noticed:--

"The pith of the charge against the author of the Essays is, that he has
written 'an elaborate Treatise on Government,' and 'deduced the whole
science from the assu