lay themselves out for it; and he did this in no ordinary degree. He
loved to strike, and even to startle. He knew that decision is the
greatest element of effect, and he uttered his opinions with all the
decision he could throw into them, never so well pleased as when he
astonished anyone by their audacity. Very unlike his brother, who made
war against the narrower interpretations and applications of the
principles they both professed, he, on the contrary, presented the
Benthamic doctrines in the most startling form of which they were
susceptible, exaggerating everything in them which tended to
consequences offensive to anyone's preconceived feelings. All which,
he defended with such verve and vivacity, and carried off by a manner
so agreeable as well as forcible, that he always either came off
victor, or divided the honours of the field. It is my belief that much
of the notion popularly entertained of the tenets and sentiments of
what are called Benthamites or Utilitarians had its origin in paradoxes
thrown out by Charles Austin. It must be said, however, that his example
was followed, _haud passibus aequis_, by younger proselytes, and that to
_outrer_ whatever was by anybody considered offensive in the doctrines
and maxims of Benthamism, became at one time the badge of a small coterie
of youths. All of these who had anything in them, myself among others,
quickly outgrew this boyish vanity; and those who had not, became tired
of differing from other people, and gave up both the good and the bad part
of the heterodox opinions they had for some time professed.

It was in the winter of 1822-3 that I formed the plan of a little
society, to be composed of young men agreeing in fundamental
principles--acknowledging Utility as their standard in ethics and
politics, and a certain number of the principal corollaries drawn from
it in the philosophy I had accepted--and meeting once a fortnight to
read essays and discuss questions conformably to the premises thus