we may be able to eftimate the value of any particular pleafure; or pain to an individual, with fufficient exactnefs, to judge of, the comparative magnitude of crimes, and of the proportionate, amount of pains and compenfations.

He now comes a little clofer to his fubject, and enters into an examination of the nature of thofe evils which it is the business of the legiflator to prevent or alleviate. Evils are then arranged, with Mr Bentham's usual partiality for claffification, under a great variety of divifions. Evils of the first order, are thofe which fall immediately upon one or a few specific individuals; evils of the fe cand order, are those that fall upon entire claffes of men under fome particular defcription; and evils of the third order, are those that affect the condition of the whole community where they occur. Murder or theft is an inftance of the firit; perfecution or cruelty to heretics, priests, rich men, parents, &c. &c. of the fecond and all forts of diforder and mifmanagement, by which the fecurity of the whole community is endangered, are inftances of the third. Evils of the first order may be analyfed into the primitives or direct evil to the fufferer himself; and the derivative, or confe quential evil that refults to thofe connected with him, from the effects of his fuffering. Evils of the fecond order confift, again, chiefly either in the alarm which is neceffarily felt by all that defcription of perfons upon whom it threatens to fall, or the danger which may actually exist in a degree either greater or fmaller than the alarm. Evils of the third order are produced altogether by the alarm and apprehenfion of danger, which relaxes the exertions of industry, and gives a check to every fort of profperity or improvement. Evils are alfo diftinguished by Mr Bentham into fuch as are either immediate or confequentialextenfive or divisible-permanent or evanefcent, &c.; but we do not obferve that thefe diftinctions, which indeed are capable of being multiplied to infinity, are made the bafis of any part of his fyftem.

Mr Bentham is now arrived at the proper object of his reafoning. Certain actions fhould be prevented, because they give rife to pains or evils; and to those under the name of crimes, the interefts of fociety require certain punishments to be applied, in order to repress and prevent them effectually. But no action is deliberately performed by any reasonable creature, without the expectation of confequential good or pleasure to himself; and this pleasure is to be taken into account in fixing the measure of punishment, or bestowing the appellation of guilt. The construc tion of the criminal code comes then entirely to a matter of calculation. The gratification of the delinquent individual is to

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be taken into account on the one hand, and the fuffering of the offended party on the other; and it is only where the latter evidently preponderates, that the act fhould be denominated a crime. In this comparison it will generally be found, that actions. have been ftigmatifed as criminal, much more on account of the evil of the fecond order they produce, by the alarm and danger which they occafion to every one in a fimilar fituation with the fufferer, than on account of the direct detriment that is sustained by the fufferer individually. In the cafe of offences against property, for inftance, it may frequently happen that the gratification of the robber is fully greater than the mortification of the person whom he plunders; but the alarm and danger that would refult from the impunity of fuch actions makes the whole mafs of evil incomparably greater than that of good, and juftifies the fevere fanctions by which law has generally endeavoured to reprefs fuch acts of depredation.

In thefe particulars, Mr Bentham thinks that the principles of legiflation and morality exactly coincide: the object of both is the fame-the multiplication of human pleasures, and the diminution of pains. What then is the difference between the two codes, and how are their mutual limits to be afcertained? Legigiflation, Mr Bentham conceives, is merely morality invested with power; but this power it cannot exercife up to the very limits to which morality would carry its fanction of difapprobation. The reafons why law muft always fall fhort of perfect juftice, are, 1. Because law muft operate chiefly by punishments which are evils in themselves; and that, to enact pofitive punishments for many noxious actions which are either eafily concealed or of flight importance, would be to create a greater evil for the purpose of repreffing a fmaller one: and 2. Becaufe many offences confifting in degree and continuance, fuch as unkindnefs, ingratitude, &c. are really incapable of being defined or established with precision, fo that any law against them would either be ineffectual, or would produce more uneafinefs by the general dread of profecution, than it could cure by the example. Mr Bentham then goes on to fhew, that moral duties may be divided into prudence, probity, and benevolence. The first requires no fanction on the part of the legiflature; the fecond is the proper fphere of law; and the third, though it may in general be left to the wisdom and the feeling of every individual, may yet be enforced by law in a greater number of cafes than lawgivers have hitherto provided for. Inftances of barbarous unkindnefs, and acts of cruelty to animals, ought, according to Mr Bentham, to be claffed among offences cognisable by the law.

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This properly completes Mr Bentham's general view of the principles of legiflation. But in order to imprefs his readers more ftrongly with a fenfe of their importance and novelty, he proceeds, in a very long and a very able chapter, to exemplify and expofe the various errors into which legiflators have been led, by taking for their guide fome other principle than that of utility. This chapter is divided into ten fections, under each of which he gives an instance of fome falfe principle that has occafionally been permitted to interfere with thofe ftrict notions of utility by which the legislature ought to have been uniformly directed. Thus he fays, 1. The antiquity of a law is no reason for adhering to it: 2. The pretended authority of religion is no fufficient ground for legiflation: 3. The dread of innovation is no ground for withholding improvements: 4. An arbitrary definition can never be received as a reafon for the authority of law: When Montefquieu defined the laws to be eternal relations,' and when Rouffeau called them the expreffion of the general will,' they both endeavoured to found, upon arbitrary affumptions, that authority which is only due to their acknowledged utility. 5. A metaphor is no reafon for a law. In Mr Bentham's opinion, however, the proceedings of many wife legiflatures have been governed by fuch flight analogies. In England a man's houfe is his caftle, and therefore it is to protect him even against the officers of the law. In Italy a church is the houfe of God, in which criminals may therefore defy the juftice of men. The ideas unluckily affociated with fuch phrafes as the balance of trade, '-' mother country,' &c. have given rife, according to Mr Bentham, to a great number of abfurd regulations. 6. A law fhould never be fupported by fictions: corruption of blood, the fovereign's ubiquity, immortality, &c. and the imaginary contracts upon which many writers have founded the whole fabric of fociety, are bad fynonymes, or worse substitutes for utility. 7. A fantaftic reafon is no reafon for a law, Why fhould a father have authority over his children, because they are born in his houfe, or because they are formed of his fubftance? The true reafon is the utility. 8. Antipathies, or fympathies, are no reafons for an enactment: if they are founded in experience of utility, it is more fatisfactory to go at once to the foundation: if they cannot be justified on that ground, they fhould have no authority whatfoever. 9. Aflumption of the points in difpute, is no reafon for a law. If luxury be defined a vicious or exceffive indulgence in pleasure, then it certainly ought to be repreffed; but before any law is made to reprefs it, it should be proved that it is really vicious; that is, that it is productive of Evil. Lafly, A real law can never be juftified by appealing to

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the authority of an imaginary one. It is faying nothing, to fay that the law of nature, or the rule of right, requires fuch and fuch an enactment. Thefe high-founding words mean nothing more than the private opinion or inclination of the individual who ufes them. Every reafon, in fhort, that can be given for any enactment or inftitution, muft either refolve itself into the affertion of its utility, or be rejected as pernicious. The legiflator has but one fimple maxim to obferve-to reprefs all thofe actions which tend to produce more pain than pleasure, and to promote all those which produce more pleafure than pain.

Having thus endeavoured to lay before our readers a very concife, but, we hope, a tolerably full and diftinct account of Mr Bentham's principles of legiflation, we fhall now take the liberty of making a few of thofe obfervations, which could not have been ftated before, without breaking the connexion of the fubject, and obfcuring the evidence upon which the fyftem is founded. The first remark that fuggefts itfelf is, that if there is little that is falfe or pernicious in this fyftem, there is little that is either new or important. That laws were made to promote the general welfare of fociety, and that nothing fhould be enacted which has a different tendency, are truths that can fcarcely claim the merit of novelty, or mark an epoch by the date of their promulgation. The technical apparatus which Mr Bentham has employed to enforce these tenets upon his readers, appears to us to have been altogether unneceffary; and we have not yet been able to difcover that it can be of any fervice in improving their practical application. There are many things, indeed, that feem to be very in accurately laid down in the detail of thefe principles, and a still greater number that are affumed with too little limitation.

The bafis of the whole fyftem is the undivided fovereignty of the principle of utility, and the neceflity which there is for recurring ftrictly to it in every queftion of legiflation. Moral feelings, it is admitted, will frequently be found to coincide with it; but they are on no account to be trusted to, till this coincidence has been verified; they are no better than fympathies and antipa thies, mere private and unaccountable feelings, that may vary in the cafe of every individual; and therefore can afford no fixed ftandard for general approbation or enjoyment. We cannot help thinking, that this fundamental propofition is very defective, both in logical confiftency, and in fubstantial truth. In the first place, it feems very obvious to remark, that the principle of utility is liable to the fame objections, on the force of which the authority of moral impreffions has been fo pofitively denied. How fhall utility itself be recognised, but by a feeling limilar to that which

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is ftigmatifed as capricious and unaccountable? How are pleafures and pains, and the degrees and relative magnitude of pleafures and pains to be diftinguifhed, but by the feeling and experience of every individual? And what greater certainty can there be in the accuracy of fuch determinations, than in the refults of other feelings no lefs general and distinguishable? If right and wrong be not precifely the fame to every individual, neither are pleasure and pain; and if there be defpotifm and abfurdity in im poling upon another, one's own impreffions of wifdom and prepriety, it cannot be juft and reafonable to erect a standard of en joyment, and a rule of conduct, upon the narrow basis of our own measure of fenfibility. It is evident, therefore, that by alfuming the principle of utility, we do not get rid of the risk of variable feeling; and that we are ftill liable to all the uncertainty that may be produced by this caufe, under the influence of any other principle.

The truth is, however, that this uncertainty is in all cafes of a very limited nature, and that the common imprethons of mora fity, the vulgar diftinctions of right and wrong, virtue and vice, are perfectly fufficient to direct the conduct of the individual, and the judgement of the legiflator, without any reference to the nature or origin of thofe diftinctions. In many refpects, indeed, we conceive them to be fitter for this purpose than Mr Bentham's oracles of utility. In the first place, it is neceffary to observey that it is a very grofs and unpardonable mistake to reprefent thofe notions of right and wrong as depending altogether upon the pri vate and capricious feelings of an individual. Certainly no man was ever so arrogant or fo foolish, as to infift upon establishing his own individual perfuafion as an infallible teft of duty and wifdom to all the rest of the world. The moral feelings, of which Mr Bentham would make so small account, are the feelings which obfervation teaches us to impute to all men; thofe in which, under every variety of circumitances, they are found pretty conftantly to agree, and as to which their uniformity may be reafoned and reckoned upon with almost as much fecurity as in the case of their external perceptions. The existence of such feelings, and the uniformity with which they are excited in all men by the fame occafions, are facts that admit of no difpute; and, in point of certainty and precifion, we have feen already, that they are exactly on a footing with thofe perceptions of utility that can only be relied on after they have been verified by a fimilar process of obfervation. Now, we are inclined to think, in oppofition to Mr Bentham, that a legiflator will proceed more fafely by following the indications of thofe moral diftinctions as

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