of having intended to make such an
admission. We still think that the words, "where power over a community
is attained, and nothing checks," must not be understood to mean that
under a monarchical or aristocratical form of government there can
really be any check which can in any degree mitigate the wretchedness of
the people.

For all possible checks may be classed under two general heads,--want
of will, and want of power. Now, if a king or an aristocracy, having
the power to plunder and oppress the people, can want the will, all Mr
Mill's principles of human nature must be pronounced unsound. He tells
us, "that the desire to possess unlimited power of inflicting pain upon
others, is an inseparable part of human nature;" and that "a chain of
inference, close and strong to a most unusual degree," leads to the
conclusion that those who possess this power will always desire to use
it. It is plain, therefore, that, if Mr Mill's principles be sound, the
check on a monarchical or an aristocratical government will not be the
want of will to oppress.

If a king or an aristocracy, having, as Mr Mill tells us that they
always must have, the will to oppress the people with the utmost
severity, want the power, then the government, by whatever name it may
be called, must be virtually a mixed government or a pure democracy: for
it is quite clear that the people possess some power in the state--some
means of influencing the nominal rulers. But Mr Mill has demonstrated
that no mixed government can possibly exist, or at least that such a
government must come to a very speedy end: therefore, every country in
which people not in the service of the government have, for any length
of time, been permitted to accumulate more than the bare means of
subsistence must be a pure democracy. That is to say, France before the
revolution, and Ireland during the last century, were pure democracies.
Prussia, Austria, Russia, all the governments of the civilised world,
are pure democracies. If this be not a reductio ad absurdum, we do not
know what is.

The errors of Mr Mill proceed principally from that radical vice in his
reasoning which, in our last number we described in the words of Lord
Bacon. The Westminster Reviewer is unable to discover the meaning of our
extracts from the "Novum Organum", and expresses himself as follows:

"The quotations from Lord Bacon are misapplications, such as anybody may
make to anything he dislikes. There is no mo