Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays; Vol. 2 With a Memoir and Index

Just then one of the accomplice’s came up. “Praised be the gods,” said this second rogue, “that I have been saved the trouble of going to the market for a sheep! This is such a...

Mr. Sadler declares that he has never vilified Mr. Malthus personally, and has confined himself to attacking the doctrines which that gentleman maintains. We should wish to leav...

This single paragraph is sufficient to upset Mr. Mill’s theory. Will the people act against their own interest? Or will the middle rank act against its own interest? Or is the i...

Fourthly, Mr. Bentham says that in this balanced contest the people turned the scale in favour of the king against the aristocracy. But Mr. Mill has demonstrated that it cannot...

We will begin with the censuses of France given by Mr. Sadler. By joining the departments together in combinations which suit his purpose, he has contrived to produce three tabl...

Indeed the decisions of this editor on points of classical learning, though pronounced in a very authoritative tone, are generally such that, if a schoolboy under our care were...

“_Another of their perverted ingenuities is, that ‘they are rather inclined to think,’ that it would, on the whole, be for the interest of the majority to plunder the rich; and...

The labouring classes, however, were, according to Mr. Southey, better fed three hundred years ago than at present. We believe that he is completely in error on this point. The...

During the twenty years which followed the death of Cowper, the revolution in English poetry was fully consummated. None of the writers of this period, not even Sir Walter Scott...

While the King was in Scotland, the Irish rebellion broke out. The suddenness and violence of this terrible explosion excited a strange suspicion in the public mind. The Queen w...

Mr. Bentham has not demonstrated the “greatest happiness principle,” as now stated. He is far too wise a man to think of demonstrating any such thing. In those sections of his _...

Yet even his remarks on society, like his remarks on literature, indicate a mind at least as remarkable for narrowness as for strength. He was no master of the great science of...

“Surely, father, you must be mistaken there,” said the king. “Mistaken!” said the missionary. “It is an indisputable fact. My faith upon it! My life upon it!” The good man had h...

The latent principle of good government ought to {96}be tracked, as it appears to us, in the same manner in which Lord Bacon proposed to track the principle of Heat. Make as lar...

They met accordingly in no complying humour. They took into their most serious consideration the measures of the government concerning tonnage and poundage. They summoned the of...

The warmest admirers of Mr. Southey will scarcely, we think, deny that his success has almost always borne an inverse proportion to the degree in which his undertakings have req...

Of {5}those philosophers who call themselves Utilitarians, and whom others generally call Benthamites, Mr. Mill is, with the exception of the illustrious founder of the sect, by...

It does not appear very easy, on Mr. Mill’s principles, to find out any mode of making the interest of the representative body identical with that of the constituent body. The p...

{149}"’_How is it,’ said I, ‘that every thing which is connected with manufactures presents such features of unqualified deformity? From the largest of Mammon’s temples down to...

His enemies have allowed that he was a man in whom virtue showed itself in its mildest and least austere form. With the morals of a Puritan, he had the manners of an accomplishe...

Does Mr. Bentham’s principle tend to make any man wish for anything for which he would not have wished, or do any thing which he would not have done, if the principle had never...

The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to...

Certainly the ideas of eloquence, of untroubled repose, of placid eyes, on the lambent beauty of which it is sweet to gaze, harmonize admirably with the idea of a sentry.

But we must return to Bunyan. The Pilgrim’s Progress undoubtedly is not a perfect allegory. The types are often inconsistent with each other; and sometimes the allegorical disgu...

Constitutions are in politics what paper money is in commerce. They afford great facilities and conveniences. But we must not attribute to them that value which really belongs t...

The pretty fable by which the Duchess of Orleans illustrated the character of her son the Regent might, with little change, be applied to Byron. All the fairies, save one, had b...

There is only one excuse for the extreme acrimony with which this book is written; and that excuse is but a bad one. Mr. Sadler imagines that the theory of Mr. Malthus is incons...

In the sense in which we are now using the word correctness, we think that Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Coleridge, are for more correct poets than those who are commonl...

What our grandchildren may think of the character of Lord Byron, as exhibited in his poetry, we will not pretend to guess. It is certain, that the interest which he excited duri...

Mr. Malthus holds that subsistence will increase only in an arithmetical ratio. “As far as nature has to do with the question,” says Mr. Sadler, “men might, for instance, plant...

The cousins took their passage in a vessel which lay {460}in the Thames, and which was bound for North America. They were actually on board, when an order of council appeared, b...

Having thus, as we think, not unsuccessfully imitated Mr. Mill’s logic, we do not see why we should not imitate, what is at least equally perfect in its kind, his self-complacen...

Johnson came among them the solitary specimen of a past age, the last survivor of the genuine race of Grub Street hacks; the last of that generation of authors whose abject mise...

The argument has in it something plausible; but a close examination shows it to be quite, unsound. Even if the alleged facts are admitted, still the Jews are not the only people...

He tries to show that we have not taken a fair criterion of the fecundity of the peers. We are not quite sure that we understand his reasoning on this subject. The order of his...

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His blunders would not come in amiss among the stories of Hierocles. But these men attained literary eminence in spite of their weak...

We think, not only that the Commons were justified in demanding for themselves the power to dispose of the military force, but that it would have been absolute insanity in them...