has on the goodness of her cause, and on the basis of her orderly and well-laid arguments. It is because I count so much-and will any Protestant here present say that I count too much?-on her Bible and her evidences, and the blessing of God upon her churches, and the force of her resistless appeals to the conscience and the understandings of men-it is because of her strength and sufficiency in these that I would disclaim the aids of the statute-book, and own no dependence or obligation whatever on the system of intolerance. These were enough for her in the days of her suffering, and should be more than enough for her in the days of her comparative safety. It is not by our fears and our false alarms that we do honour to Protestantism. A far more befitting honour to the great cause is the homage of our confidence; for what Sheridan said of the liberty of the press, admits of most emphatic application to this religion of truth and liberty. Give,' says that great orator-'give to ministers a corrupt House of Commons; give them a pliant and a servile House of Lords; give them the keys of the treasury and the patronage of the crown; and give me the liberty of the press, and with this mighty engine I will overthrow the fabric of corruption, and establish upon its ruins the rights and privileges of the people.' In like manner, give the Catholics of Ireland their emancipation; give them a seat in the parliament of their country; give them a free and equal participation in the politics of the realm; give them a place at the right ear of Majesty, and a voice in his counsels; and give me the circulation of the Bible, and with this mighty engine I will overthrow the tyranny of Antichrist, and establish the fair and original form of Christianity on its ruins.* DUGALD STEWART. We have no profound original metaphysician in this period, but some rich and elegant commentators. PROFESSOR DUGALD STEWART expounded and illustrated the views of his distinguished teacher, Dr Reid; and by his essays and treatises, no less than by his lectures, gave additional grace and popularity to the system. Mr Stewart was the son of Dr Matthew Stewart, Professor of Mathematics in the university of Edinburgh, and was born in the college buildings, November 22, 1753. At the early age of nineteen he undertook to teach his father's mathematical classes, and in two years was appointed his assistant and successor. A more congenial opening occurred for him in 1780, when Dr Adam Ferguson retired from the Moral Philosophy chair. Mr Stewart was appointed his successor, and continued to discharge the duties of the office till 1810, when Dr Thomas Brown was conjoined with him as colleague. The latter years of his life were spent in literary retirement at Kinneil House, on the banks of the Firth of Forth, about twenty miles from Edinburgh. His political friends, when in office in 1806, created for him the sinecure office of Gazette writer for Scotland, with a salary of £600 per annum. Mr Stewart died in Edinburgh on the 11th of June 1828. No lecturer was ever more popular than Dugald Stewart-his taste, dignity, and eloquence rendered him both fascinating and impressive. His writings are marked by the same characteristics, and can be read with pleasure even by those who have no great partiality for the metaphysical studies in *The above forms part of a speech delivered at a public meeting in Edinburgh, in March 1829, in favour of removing the Roman Catholic disabilities. The effect of Dr Chalmers's address is described as prodigious, the audience rising to their feet and cheering vociferously. which he excelled. They consist of Philosophy of the Human Mind, one volume of which was published in 1792, a second in 1813, and a third in 1827; also Philosophical Essays, 1810; a Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical and Ethical Philosophy, written in 1815, to which a second part was added in 1821; and a View of the Active and Moral Powers of Man, published only a few weeks before his death. Mr Stewart also published Outlines of Moral Philosophy, and wrote Memoirs of Robertson the historian, and Dr Reid. All the years I remained about Edinburgh,' says Mr James Mill, himself an able metaphysician, 'I used, as often as I could, to steal into Mr Stewart's class to hear a lecture, which was always a high treat. I have heard Pitt and Fox deliver some of their most admired speeches, but I never heard anything nearly so eloquent as some of the lectures of Professor Stewart. The taste for the studies which have formed my favourite pursuits, and which will be so to the end of my life, I owe to him.' A handsome edition of the collected Works of Dugald Stewart, edited by Sir William Hamilton, with a Memoir by Professor Veitch, was published in Edinburgh, in eleven volumes. On Memory. It is generally supposed, that of all our faculties, memory is that which nature has bestowed in the most unequal degrees on different individuals; and it is far from being impossible that this opinion may be well founded. If, however, we consider that there is scarcely any man who has not memory sufficient to learn the use of language, and to learn to recognise, at the first glance, the appearances of an infinite number of familiar objects; besides acquiring such an acquaintance with the laws of nature, and the ordinary course of human affairs, as is necessary for directing his conduct in life, we shall be satisfied that the original disparities among men, in this respect, are by no means so immense as they seem to be at first view; and that much is to be ascribed to different habits of attention, and to a difference of selection among the various events presented to their curiosity. It is worthy of remark, also, that those individuals who possess unusual powers of memory with respect to any one class of objects, are commonly as remarkably deficient in some of the other applications of that faculty. I knew a person who, though completely ignorant of Latin, was able to repeat over thirty or forty lines of Virgil, after having heard them once read to him—not, of resemblance as (all circumstances considered) was indeed, with perfect exactness, but with such a degree truly astonishing; yet this person (who was in the condition of a servant) was singularly deficient in memory in all cases in which that faculty is of real practical utility. He was noted in every family in which he had been employed for habits of forgetfulness, and could scarcely deliver an ordinary message without committing some blunder. A similar observation, I can almost venture to say, will be found to apply to by far the greater number of those in whom this faculty seems to exhibit a preternatural or anomalous degree of force. The varieties of memory are indeed wonderful, but they ought not to be confounded with inequalities of memory. One man is distinguished by a power of recollecting names, and dates, and genealogies; a second, by the multiplicity of speculations and of general conclusions treasured up in his intellect; a third, by the facility with which words and combinations of words (the very words of a speaker or of an author) seem to lay hold of his mind; a fourth, by the quickness with which he seizes and appropriates the sense and meaning of an author, while the phraseology and style seem altogether to escape his notice; a fifth, by his memory for poetry; a sixth, by DR THOMAS BROWN. DR THOMAS BROWN (1778-1820), the successor of Stewart in the Moral Philosophy chair of Edinburgh, was son of the Rev. Samuel Brown, minister of Kirkmabreck, in Galloway. His taste for metaphysics was excited by the perusal of Professor Stewart's first volume, a copy of which had been lent him by Dr Currie of Liverpool. He appeared as an author before his twentieth year, his first work being a review of Dr Darwin's Zoonomia. On the establishment of the Edinburgh Review, he became one of the philosophical contributors; and when a controversy arose in regard to Mr Leslie, who had, in his Essay on Heat, stated his approbation of Hume's theory of causation, Dr Brown warmly espoused the cause of the philosopher, and vindicated his opinions in an Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect. At this time Dr Brown practised as a physician, Part of but without any predilection for his profession. His appointment to the chair of Moral Philosophy seems to have fulfilled his destiny, and he continued to discharge its duties amidst universal approbation and respect till his death. his leisure was devoted to the cultivation of a talent, or rather taste for poetry, which he early entertained; and he published The Paradise of Coquettes, 1814; The Wanderer of Norway, 1815; and The Bower of Spring, 1816. Though correct and elegant, with occasionally fine thoughts and images, the poetry of Dr Brown wants force and passion, and is now utterly forgotten. As a philosopher he was acute and searching, and a master of the power of analysis. His style wants the rich redundancy of that of Dugald Stewart, but is also enlivened with many eloquent passages, in which there is often a large infusion of the tenderest feeling. Dr Brown quoted largely from the poets, especially Akenside; and was sometimes too flowery in his illustrations. His Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind are highly popular, and form a class-book in the university. In some of his views Dr Brown differed from Reid and Stewart. His distinctions have been pronounced somewhat hypercritical; but Mackintosh considers that he rendered a new and important service to mental science by what he calls secondary laws of suggestion or association-circumstances which modify the action of the general law, and must be distinctly considered, in order to explain its connection with the phenomena.' Desire of the Happiness of Others. It is this desire of the happiness of those whom we love, which gives to the emotion of love itself its principal delight, by affording to us constant means of gratification. He who truly wishes the happiness of any one, cannot be long without discovering some mode of contributing to it. Reason itself, with all its light, is not so rapid in discoveries of this sort as simple affection, which sees means of happiness, and of important happiness, where reason scarcely could think that any happiness was to be found, and has already by many kind offices produced the happiness of hours before reason could have suspected that means so slight could have given even a moment's pleasure. It is this, indeed, which contributes in no inconsiderable degree to the perpetuity of affection. Love, the mere feeling of tender admiration, would in many cases have soon lost its power over the fickle heart, and in many other cases would have had its power greatly lessened, if the desire of giving happiness, and the innumerable little courtesies and cares to which this desire gives birth, had not thus in a great measure diffused over a single passion the variety of many emotions. The love itself seems new new wish of love that admits of being gratified; or moment, because there is every moment some rather, it is at once, by the most delightful of all combinations, new, in the tender wishes and cares with which it occupies us, and familiar to us, and endeared the more by the remembrance of hours and years of well-known happiness. at every The desire of the happiness of others, though a desire always attendant on love, does not, however, necessarily suppose the previous existence of some one of those emotions which may strictly be termed love. regard for the sufferer, that it is impossible for us not This feeling is so far from arising necessarily from to feel it when the suffering is extreme, and before our very eyes, though we may at the same time have the utmost abhorrence of him who is agonising in our sight, and whose very look, even in its agony, still seems to speak only that atrocious spirit which could again gladly is evident that our benevolence might be more usefully directed to one who is absolutely unknown, than to many who are better known by us, that live in our very neighbourhood, in the enjoyment of domestic loves and friendships of their own. Accordingly we find, that by a provision which might be termed singular-if we did not think of the universal bounty and wisdom of God— a modification of our general regard has been prepared in the sympathetic tendencies of our nature for this case also. There is a species of affection to which the stranger gives birth merely as being a stranger. He is received and sheltered by our hospitality almost with the zeal with which our friendship delights to receive one with whom we have lived in cordial union, whose virtues we know and revere, and whose kindness has been to us no small part of the happiness of our life. perpetrate the very horrors for which public indignation as much as public justice had doomed it to its dreadful fate. It is sufficient that extreme anguish is before us; we wish it relief before we have paused to love, or without reflecting on our causes of hatred; the wish is the direct and instant emotion of our soul in these circumstances an emotion which, in such peculiar circumstances, it is impossible for hatred to suppress, and which love may strengthen indeed, but is not necessary for producing. It is the same with our general desire of happiness to others. We desire, in a particular degree, the happiness of those whom we love, because we cannot think of them without tender admiration. But though we had known them for the first time simply as human beings, we should still have desired their happiness ; that is to say, if no opposite interests had arisen, we should have wished them to be happy rather than to have any distress; yet there is nothing in this case which corresponds with the tender esteem that is felt in love. There is the mere wish of happiness to them -a wish which itself, indeed, is usually denominated love, and which may without any inconvenience be so denominated in that general humanity which we call a love of mankind, but which we must always remember does not afford, on analysis, the same results as other affections of more cordial regard to which we give the same name. To love a friend is to wish his happiness indeed, but it is to have other emotions at the same instant, emotions without which this mere wish would be poor to constant friendship. To love the natives of SIR J. MACKINTOSH—J. MILL-DR ABERCROMBIE Asia or Africa, of whose individual virtues or vices, talents or imbecility, wisdom or ignorance, we know nothing, is to wish their happiness; but this wish is all which constitutes the faint and feeble love. It is a Is it possible to perceive this general proportion of our desire of giving happiness, in its various degrees, to the means which we possess, in various circumstances, of affording it, without admiration of an arrangement so simple in the principles from which it flows, and at the same time so effectual-an arrangement which exhibits proofs of goodness in our very wants, of wisdom in our very weaknesses, by the adaptation of these to each other, and by the ready resources which want and weakness find in these affections which everywhere surround them, like the presence and protection of God himself! -GEORGE COMBE. alluded to) by SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, and his The Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy (already wish, however, which, unless when the heart is abso- review of Madame de Staël's Germany in the lutely corrupted, renders it impossible for man to be Edinburgh Review, unfold some interesting specuwholly indifferent to man; and this great object is that lations on moral science. He agrees with Butler, which nature had in view. She has by a provident Stewart, and the most eminent preceding moralarrangement, which we cannot but admire the more, ists, in admitting the supremacy of the moral the more attentively we examine it, accommodated our sentiments; but he proceeds a step farther in the emotions to our means, making our love most ardent analysis of them. He attempts to explain the where our wish of giving happiness might be most origin and growth of the moral faculty, or prineffectual, and less gradually and less in proportion to ciple, derived from Hartley's Theory of Associaour diminished means. From the affection of the mother for her new-born infant, which has been rendered tion, and insists repeatedly on the value of utility, or beneficial tendency, as the great test or crithe strongest of all affections, because it was to arise in circumstances where affection would be most needed, terion of moral action. Some of the positions in to that general philanthropy which extends itself to the Mackintosh's Dissertation were combated with unremotest stranger on spots of the earth which we never necessary and unphilosophical asperity by JAMES are to visit, and which we as little think of ever visiting MILL, the author of an able Analysis of the as of exploring any of the distant planets of our system, Phenomena of the Human Mind, 1829, in an there is a scale of benevolent desire which corresponds anonymous Fragment on Mackintosh. Mill (alwith the necessities to be relieved, and our power of ready noticed as the historian of India) contributed relieving them, or with the happiness to be afforded, a series of valuable articles on Law, Jurisprudence, and our power of affording happiness. How many Colonisation, &c. to the Encyclopædia Britannica. opportunities have we of giving delight to those who-In 1830 DR JOHN ABERCROMBIE (1781-1844) live in our domestic circle, which would be lost before we could diffuse it to those who are distant from us! Our love, therefore, our desire of giving happiness, our pleasure in having given it, are stronger within the limits of this sphere of daily and hourly intercourse than beyond it. Of those who are beyond this sphere, the individuals most familiar to us are those whose happiness we must always know better how to promote than the happiness of strangers, with whose particular habits and inclinations we are little if at all acquainted. Our love, and the desire of general happiness which attends it, are therefore, by the concurrence of many constitutional tendencies of our nature in fostering the generous wish, stronger as felt for an intimate friend than for one who is scarcely known to us. If there be an exception to this gradual scale of importance according to intimacy, it must be in the case of one who is absolutely a stranger-a foreigner who comes among a people with whose general manners he is perhaps unacquainted, and who has no friend to whose attention he can lay claim from any prior intimacy. In this case, indeed, it Powers and the Investigation of Truth—a popular published Inquiries concerning the Intellectual metaphysical work, directed chiefly against materialism. The same author published The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings, 1833, and some medical treatises. None of these writers viewed mind in connection with organisation, but this mode of inquiry has been pursued by Dr Gall and his followers. The leading doctrines of Gall are—that the brain is the organ of the mind, that various portions of the encephalon are the organs of various faculties of the mind, and that volume or size of the whole brain and its various parts is, other circumstances being equal, the measure of the powers of the mind and its various faculties in individuals. This system is founded upon observation-that is to say, it was observed that large brains, unless when of inferior quality, or in an abnormal condition, were accompanied by superior intellect and force of character; also that, in a vast number of instances which were accurately noticed, a large development of a special part of the brain was accompanied by an unusual demonstration of a certain mental character, and never by the opposite. From these demonstrations the fundamental character of the various faculties was sought to be eliminated. The system is well known under the name of Phrenology; and it has been expounded and enforced, in clear and admirable English, by the late MR GEORGE COMBE (1788-1858). Mr Combe was a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, but strongly attached to literary and philosophical pursuits. He was much respected by his fellow-citizens, and was known over all Europe and America for his speculations on mental science, the criminal law, the currency, &c. The principal works of Mr Combe are Essays on Phrenology, 1819; The Constitution of Man, 1828; System of Phrenology, 1836; Notes on the United States of America, three volumes, 1841; Phrenology applied to Painting and Sculpture; and pamphlets on the Relation between Science and Religion, on Capital Punishments, on National Education, the Currency Question, &c. Distinction between Power and Activity. From the System of Phrenology. As commonly employed, the word power is synonymous with strength, or much power, instead of denoting mere capacity, whether much or little, to act; while by activity is usually understood much quickness of action, and great proneness to act. As it is desirable, however, to avoid every chance of ambiguity, I shall employ the words power and activity in the sense first before explained; and to high degrees of power I shall apply the terms energy, intensity, strength, or vigour; while to great activity I shall apply the terms vivacity, agility, rapidity, or quickness. In physics, strength is quite distinguishable from quickness. The balance-wheel of a watch moves with much rapidity, but so slight is its impetus, that a hair would suffice to stop it; the beam of a steam-engine progresses slowly and massively through space, but its energy is prodigiously great. In muscular action these qualities are recognised with equal facility as different. The greyhound bounds over hill and dale with animated agility; but a slight obstacle would counterbalance his momentum, and arrest his progress. The elephant, on the other hand, rolls slowly and heavily along; but the impetus of his motion would sweep away an impediment sufficient to resist fifty greyhounds at the summit of their speed. In mental manifestations-considered apart from organisation-the distinction between energy and vivacity is equally palpable. On the stage, Mrs Siddons and Mr John Kemble were remarkable for the solemn deliberation of their manner, both in declamation and in action, and yet they were splendidly gifted with energy. They carried captive at once the sympathies and the understanding of the audience, and made every man feel his faculties expanding, and his whole mind becoming greater under the influence of their power. Other performers, again, are remarkable for agility of action and elocution, who, nevertheless, are felt to be feeble and ineffective in rousing an audience to emotion. Vivacity is their distinguishing attribute, with an absence of vigour. At the bar, in the pulpit, and in the senate, the same distinction prevails. Many members of the learned professions display great fluency of elocution and felicity of illustration, surprising us with the quickness of their parts, who, nevertheless, are felt to be neither impressive nor profound. They exhibit acuteness without depth, and ingenuity without comprehensiveness of understanding. This also proceeds from vivacity with little energy. There are other public speakers, again, who open heavily in debate-their faculties acting slowly but words fall like minute-guns upon the ear, and to the deeply, like the first heave of a mountain wave. Their begun their efforts. But even their first accent is one superficial they appear about to terminate ere they have of power; it rouses and arrests attention; their very pauses are expressive, and indicate gathering energy to be embodied in the sentence that is to come. When fairly animated, they are impetuous as the torrent, brilliant as the lightning's beam, and overwhelm and take possession of feebler minds, impressing them irresistibly with a feeling of gigantic power. As a general rule, the largest organs in each head tendency to act, and to perform their functions with have naturally the greatest, and the smallest the least, rapidity. The temperaments also indicate the amount of this tendency. The nervous is the most vivacious, next the sanguine, then the bilious, while the lymphatic is characterised by proneness to inaction. In a lymphatic brain, great size may be present and few manifestations occur through sluggishness; but if a strong external stimulus be presented, energy often appears. brain be very small, no degree of stimulus, either external or internal, will cause great power to be manifested. If the A certain combination of organs-namely, Combativeness, Destructiveness, Hope, Firmness, Acquisitiveness, and Love of Approbation, all large-is favourable to general vivacity of mind; and another combinationnamely, Combativeness, Destructiveness, Hope, Firmness, and Acquisitiveness, small or moderate, with Veneration and Benevolence large-is frequently attended with sluggishness of the mental character; but the activity of the whole brain is constitutionally greater in some individuals than in others, as already explained. It may even happen that, in the same individual, one organ is naturally more active than another, without reference to size, just as the optic nerve is sometimes more irritable than the auditory; but this is by no means a common occurrence. Exercise greatly increases activity as well as power, and hence arise the benefits of education. Dr Spurzheim thinks that long fibres produce more activity, and thick fibres more intensity.' The doctrine, that size is a measure of power, is not to be held as implying that much power is the only or even the most valuable quality which a mind in all circumstances can possess. To drag artillery over a mountain, or a ponderous wagon through the streets of London, we would prefer an elephant or a horse of great size and muscular power; while, for graceful motion, agility, and nimbleness, we would select an Arabian palfrey. In like manner, to lead men in gigantic and difficult enterprises-to command by native greatness, in perilous times, when law is trampled under foot-to call forth the energies of a people, and direct them against a tyrant at home, or an alliance of tyrants abroad-to stamp the impress of a single mind upon a nation-to infuse strength into thoughts, and depth into feelings, which shall command the homage of enlightened men in every age-in short, to be a Bruce, Bonaparte, Luther, Knox, Demosthenes, Shakspeare, Milton, or Cromwell-a large brain is indispensably requisite. But to display skill, enterprise, and fidelity in the various professions of civil life-to cultivate with success the less arduous branches of philosophy-to excel in acuteness, taste, and felicity of expression-to acquire extensive erudition and refined manners-a brain of a moderate size is perhaps more suitable than one that is very large; for wherever the energy is intense, it is rare that delicacy, refinement, and taste are present in an equal degree. Individuals possessing moderatesized brains easily find their proper sphere, and enjoy in it scope for all their energy. In ordinary circumstances they distinguish themselves, but they sink when difficulties accumulate around them. Persons with large brains, on the other hand, do not readily attain their appropriate place; common occurrences do not rouse or call them forth, and, while unknown, they are not trusted with great undertakings. Often, therefore, such men pine and die in obscurity. When, however, they attain their proper element, they are conscious of greatness, and glory in the expansion of their powers. Their mental energies rise in proportion to the obstacles to be surmounted, and blaze forth in all the magnificence of self-sustaining energetic genius, on occasions when feebler minds would sink in despair. POLITICAL ECONOMISTS. There were in this period several writers on the science of political economy, 'treating of the formation, the distribution, and the consumption of wealth; the causes which promote or prevent its increase, and their influence on the happiness or misery of society.' Adam Smith laid the foundations of this science; and as our population and commerce went on increasing, thereby augmenting the power of the democratical part of our constitution, and the number of those who take an interest in the affairs of government, political economy became a more important and popular study. It now forms one of the subjects for lectures in the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. BENTHAM-MALTHUS-RICARDO-SADLER, ETC. A singular but eminent writer in this department, and in the kindred studies of jurisprudence and morals, JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832), was for more than half a century distinguished as an author and utilitarian philosopher. He lived in intercourse with the leading men of several generations and of various countries, and was unceasingly active in the propagation of his opinions. Bentham was the son of a wealthy London solicitor, and was educated at Westminster School and Queen's College, Oxford. He was only thirteen when he entered college, but even then he was known by the name of 'the philosopher.' He took his degree of B.A. in 1763, and afterwards studying the law in Lincoln's Inn, was called to the bar. He had a strong dislike to the legal profession, and never pleaded in public. His first literary performance was an examination of a passage in Blackstone's Commentaries, and was entitled, A Fragment on Government, 1776. The work was prompted, as he afterwards stated, by a passion for improvement in those shapes in which the lot of mankind is meliorated by it.' His zeal was increased by a pamphlet which had been issued by Priestley. In the phrase, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," I then saw delineated,' says Bentham, 'for the first time, a plain as well as a true standard for whatever is right or wrong, useful, useless, or mischievous in human conduct, whether in the field of morals or of politics.' The phrase is a good one, whether invented by Priestley or Bentham; but it still leaves the means by which happiness is to be extended as undecided as ever, to be determined by the judgment and opinions of men. To insure it, Bentham considered it necessary to reconstruct the laws and govern ment—to have annual parliaments and universal suffrage, secret voting, and a return to the ancient practice of paying wages to parliamentary representatives. In all his political writings this doctrine of utility, so understood, is the leading and pervading principle. In 1778 he published a pamphlet on The Hard Labour Bill, recommending an improvement in the mode of criminal punishment; Letters on Usury, 1787; Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Politics, 1789; Discourses on Civil and Penal Legislation, 1802; A Theory of Punishments and Rewards, 1811; A Treatise on Judicial Evidence, 1813; Paper relative to Codification and Public Instruction, 1817; The Book of Fallacies, 1824, &c. By the death of his father in 1792, Bentham succeeded to property in London and to farms in Essex yielding from £500 to £600 a year. He lived frugally, but with elegance, in one of his London houses-kept young men as secretaries—corresponded and wrote daily-and by a life of temperance and industry, with great self-complacency, and the society of a few devoted friends, the eccentric philosopher attained to the age of eightyfour. His various productions were collected and edited by Dr (afterwards Sir) John Bowring and Mr John Hill Burton, advocate, and published in eleven volumes. In his latter works Bentham adopted a peculiar uncouth style or nomenclature, which deters ordinary readers, and indeed has rendered his works almost a dead-letter. Fortunately, however, part of them was arranged and translated into French by M. Dumont. Another disciple, Mr James Mill, made known his principles at home; Sir Samuel Romilly criticised them in the Edinburgh Review, and Sir James Mackintosh in the Ethical Dissertation which he wrote for the Encyclopædia Britannica. In the science of legislation, Bentham evinced a profound capacity and extensive knowledge: the error imputed to his speculations is that of not sufficiently weighing the various circumstances which require his rules to be modified in different countries and times, in order to render them either more useful, more easily introduced, more generally respected, or more certainly executed.' As an ethical philosopher, he carried his doctrine of utility to an extent which would be practically dangerous, if it were possible to make the bulk of mankind act upon a speculative theory. One of the most celebrated of the political economists was the REV. T. R. MALTHUS, an English clergyman, and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. Mr Malthus was born of a good family in 1766, at his father's estate in Surrey. In 1798 appeared his celebrated work, an Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the Future Improvement of Society. The principle here laid down is, that population has a tendency to increase faster than the means of subsistence. 'Population not only rises to the level of the present supply of food, but if you go on every year increasing the quantity of food, population goes on increasing at the same time, and so fast, that the food is commonly still too small for the people.' After the publication of this work, Mr Malthus went abroad with Dr Clarke and some other friends; and in the course of a tour through Sweden, Norway, Finland, and part of Russia, he collected facts in illustration of his theory. These he embodied in a second and greatly improved |