'During one hundred and fifty years the Constitution in its present form has been in force; and I would ask any man who hears me to declare whether the experience of history has produced any form of government so calculated to promote the happiness and secure the liberties of a free and enlightened people.'[30]
Both parties, in fact, appealed to experience; but Peel took his stand upon history, which the Utilitarians disregarded as a mere record of unscientific errors, or at most as a lighthouse to give warning of rocks, rather than a lamp to show the road ahead. And the point upon which they joined issue was as to the consequences of staking the whole fabric of government upon the basis of public opinion, operating through almost unlimited popular suffrage. The Tory foretold that this would end in wrecking the Constitution, with the ship among breakers, and steering by ballot voting. The Benthamite persuaded himself that enlightened self-interest, empirical perceptions of utility, and general education, would prevail with the multitude for their support of a rational system. But with those who demanded sovereignty for the people a strict limitation of the sphere of government was one essential maxim; and the Utilitarians would have agreed with Guizot when he declared it to be 'a mere commonplace that as civilisation and reason progress, the sphere of public authority contracts.' They do not appear to have foreseen that whenever the masses should have got votes legislation would become democratic, or even socialistic, in order to capture them. This discovery was eventually made by the Tories, who availed themselves of it to dish the Whigs, and to come forward again upon a popular suffrage as the true friends and guardians of the people.
In Mr. Stephen's second volume James Mill is the principal figure, as the apostle of Benthamism, though he also describes briefly, in his terse and incisive style, the lives and opinions of some notable men, foes as well as friends to the party, who represented different expressions of energetic protest against existing institutions. To each of them is allotted his proper place in the line of attack, and his due share in the general enterprise of rousing, by argument or invective, the slow-thinking English people to a sense of their lamentable condition. Cobbett and Owen were at feud with true Utilitarians, and in unconscious alliance, against the orthodox economists, with the Tories, who, as we have said, have eventually found their advantage in the democratic movement. Cobbett fought for the cause of the agricultural labourer, trodden under foot by squires and parsons. Owen believed that the grasping capitalist, with his steam machinery, would further degrade and impoverish the working classes. Godwin, who is merely mentioned by Mr. Stephen, was a peaceful anarchist, who proposed 'to abolish the whole craft and mystery of government,' to abandon coercion and rely upon just reasoning, upon the enlightened assent of individuals to the payment of taxes. They all embodied ideas that are incessantly fermenting in some ardent minds, and that maintain a perceptible influence on political controversies at the present day. Godwin agreed with the Utilitarians that government is a bad thing in itself, but he went beyond them in concluding that it is, or ought to be, unnecessary to society. To both Radical and Socialist, Utilitarianism, with its frigid philanthropy and its reliance on self-help, prudence, and free competition for converting miserable masses into a healthy and moral population, was the gospel of selfishness, invented for the salvation of landlords and capitalists. Malthus was the heartless exponent of natural laws that kept down multiplication by famine, while the rich man fared sumptuously every day; and the Ricardians, with their mechanical balancing of supply and demand, were mocking distress by solemn formulas. It must be admitted that these sharp assailants hit some palpable rifts in the Utilitarian armour of proof; and we know that popular sentiment has since been compelling later economists to take up much wider ground in defence of their scientific position.