e the most sweeping legislative reform in our history, was said
to have produced no other effect than that of adding three words to
a conveyance. The universal admission of Mr Bentham's great principle
would, as far as we can see, produce no other effect than that those
orators who, while waiting for a meaning, gain time (like bankers paying
in sixpences during a run) by uttering words that mean nothing would
substitute "the greatest happiness," or rather, as the longer phrase,
"the greatest happiness of the greatest number," for "under existing
circumstances,"--"now that I am on my legs,"--and "Mr Speaker, I, for
one, am free to say." In fact, principles of this sort resemble those
forms which are sold by law-stationers, with blanks for the names of
parties, and for the special circumstances of every case--mere customary
headings and conclusions, which are equally at the command of the most
honest and of the most unrighteous claimant. It is on the filling up
that everything depends.

The "greatest happiness principle" of Mr Bentham is included in the
Christian morality; and, to our thinking, it is there exhibited in an
infinitely more sound and philosophical form than in the Utilitarian
speculations. For in the New Testament it is neither an identical
proposition, nor a contradiction in terms; and, as laid down by Mr
Bentham, it must be either the one or the other. "Do as you would be
done by: Love your neighbour as yourself:" these are the precepts of
Jesus Christ. Understood in an enlarged sense, these precepts are, in
fact, a direction to every man to promote the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. But this direction would be utterly unmeaning, as it
actually is in Mr Bentham's philosophy, unless it were accompanied by a
sanction. In the Christian scheme, accordingly, it is accompanied by
a sanction of immense force. To a man whose greatest happiness in this
world is inconsistent with the greatest happiness of the greatest number
is held out the prospect of an infinite happiness hereafter, from which
he excludes himself by wronging his fellow-creatures here.

This is practical philosophy, as practical as that on which penal
legislation is founded. A man is told to do something which otherwise
he would not do, and is furnished with a new motive for doing it. Mr
Bentham has no new motive to furnish his disciples with. He has talents
sufficient to effect anything that can be effected. But to induce men to
act w