from its recognition merely as an abstract scientific
truth? By no means; however great their respect
for Adam Smith and Ricardo may have been, neither
Sir Robert Peel nor Lord John Russellwere endowed
with so large a measure of philosophic faith; a faith
far otherwise armed and far more imperious -- the
recognition of the greatest happiness of the greatest
number of human beings as the supreme object of
society and of government -- was the superior power of
which Sir Robert Peel had made himself the minister,
and which swayed all his opponents; some of them
governed like himself, others intimidated or paralyzed,
by this great idea, which was clearly or dimly present
to their minds, either as an incontestable right, or as
an irresistible fact. This idea is in our days the
democratic dogma, par excellence; and it will be the
glory, as it was the strength of Sir Robert Peel, that
he was its most sensible, its most honest, and (for a
well-regulated society) its boldest representative.

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