Mr. Bentham, perhaps, over-rates the importance of his own theories. He
has been heard to say (without any appearance of pride or affectation)
that "he should like to live the remaining years of his life, a year at
a time at the end of the next six or eight centuries, to see the effect
which his writings would by that time have had upon the world." Alas!
his name will hardly live so long! Nor do we think, in point of fact,
that Mr. Bentham has given any new or decided impulse to the human mind.
He cannot be looked upon in the light of a discoverer in legislation
or morals. He has not struck out any great leading principle or
parent-truth, from which a number of others might be deduced; nor has he
enriched the common and established stock of intelligence with original
observations, like pearls thrown into wine. One truth discovered is
immortal, and entitles its author to be so: for, like a new substance
in nature, it cannot be destroyed. But Mr. Bentham's _forte_ is
arrangement; and the form of truth, though not its essence, varies with
time and circumstance. He has methodised, collated, and condensed all
the materials prepared to his hand on the subjects of which he treats,
in a masterly and scientific manner; but we should find a difficulty
in adducing from his different works (however elaborate or closely
reasoned) any new element of thought, or even a new fact or
illustration. His writings are, therefore, chiefly valuable as _books of
reference_, as bringing down the account of intellectual inquiry to the
present period, and disposing the results in a compendious, connected,
and tangible shape; but books of reference are chiefly serviceable for
facilitating the acquisition of knowledge, and are constantly liable
to be superseded and to grow out of fashion with its progress, as the
scaffolding is thrown down as soon as the building is completed. Mr.
Bentham is not the first writer (by a great many) who has assumed the
principle of UTILITY as the foundation of just laws, and of all moral
and political reasoning:--his merit is, that he has applied this