e estimated. The first
law of motion is, that a ball once projected will fly on to all eternity
with undiminished velocity, unless something checks. The fact is, that
a ball stops in a few seconds after proceeding a few yards with very
variable motion. Every man would wring his child's neck and pick his
friend's pocket if nothing checked him. In fact, the principle thus
stated means only that governments will oppress unless they abstain
from oppressing. This is quite true, we own. But we might with equal
propriety turn the maxim round, and lay it down, as the fundamental
principle of government, that all rulers will govern well, unless some
motive interferes to keep them from doing so.

If there be, as the Westminster Reviewer acknowledges, certain checks
which, under political institutions the most arbitrary in seeming,
sometimes produce good government, and almost always place some
restraint on the rapacity and cruelty of the powerful, surely the
knowledge of those checks, of their nature, and of their effect, must
be a most important part of the science of government. Does Mr Mill say
anything upon this part of the subject? Not one word.

The line of defence now taken by the Utilitarians evidently degrades Mr
Mill's theory of government from the rank which, till within the last
few months, was claimed for it by the whole sect. It is no longer a
practical system, fit to guide statesmen, but merely a barren exercise
of the intellect, like those propositions in mechanics in which the
effect of friction and of the resistance of the air is left out of
the question; and which, therefore, though correctly deduced from the
premises, are in practice utterly false. For, if Mr Mill professes to
prove only that absolute monarchy and aristocracy are pernicious
without checks,--if he allows that there are checks which produce good
government even under absolute monarchs and aristocracies,--and if he
omits to tell us what those checks are, and what effects they produce
under different circumstances,--he surely gives us no information which
can be of real utility.

But the fact is,--and it is most extraordinary that the Westminster
Reviewer should not have perceived it--that if once the existence
of checks on the abuse of power in monarchies and aristocracies be
admitted, the whole of Mr Mill's theory falls to the ground at once.
This is so palpable, that in spite of the opinion of the Westminster
Reviewer, we must acquit Mr Mill