combination of Bentham's point of view with that of the modern political
economy, and with the Hartleian metaphysics. Malthus's population
principle was quite as much a banner, and point of union among us, as
any opinion specially belonging to Bentham. This great doctrine,
originally brought forward as an argument against the indefinite
improvability of human affairs, we took up with ardent zeal in the
contrary sense, as indicating the sole means of realizing that
improvability by securing full employment at high wages to the whole
labouring population through a voluntary restriction of the increase of
their numbers. The other leading characteristics of the creed, which we
held in common with my father, may be stated as follows:

In politics, an almost unbounded confidence in the efficacy of two
things: representative government, and complete freedom of discussion.
So complete was my father's reliance on the influence of reason over the
minds of mankind, whenever it is allowed to reach them, that he felt as
if all would be gained if the whole population were taught to read, if
all sorts of opinions were allowed to be addressed to them by word and
in writing, and if by means of the suffrage they could nominate a
legislature to give effect to the opinions they adopted. He thought that
when the legislature no longer represented a class interest, it would
aim at the general interest, honestly and with adequate wisdom; since
the people would be sufficiently under the guidance of educated
intelligence, to make in general a good choice of persons to represent
them, and having done so, to leave to those whom they had chosen a
liberal discretion. Accordingly aristocratic rule, the government of the
Few in any of its shapes, being in his eyes the only thing which stood
between mankind and an administration of their affairs by the best
wisdom to be found among them, was the object of his sternest
disapprobation, and a democratic suffrage the principal article of his
political creed, not on the ground of liberty, Rights of Man, or any of
the phrases, more or less significant, by which, up to that time,
democracy had usually been defended, but as the most essential of
"securities for good government." In this, too, he held fast only to
what he deemed essentials; he was comparatively indifferent to
monarchical or republican forms--far more so than Bentham, to whom a
king, in the character of "corrupter-general," appeared necessarily v