the better part of the world has been slow to receive it.

Before proceeding, we may make a few admissions which will narrow the field
of dispute; and we may as well leave behind a few prejudices, which
intelligent opponents of Utilitarianism have by this time 'agreed to
discard'. We admit that Utility is coextensive with right, and that no
action can be right which does not tend to the happiness of mankind; we
acknowledge that a large class of actions are made right or wrong by their
consequences only; we say further that mankind are not too mindful, but
that they are far too regardless of consequences, and that they need to
have the doctrine of utility habitually inculcated on them. We recognize
the value of a principle which can supply a connecting link between Ethics
and Politics, and under which all human actions are or may be included.
The desire to promote happiness is no mean preference of expediency to
right, but one of the highest and noblest motives by which human nature can
be animated. Neither in referring actions to the test of utility have we
to make a laborious calculation, any more than in trying them by other
standards of morals. For long ago they have been classified sufficiently
for all practical purposes by the thinker, by the legislator, by the
opinion of the world. Whatever may be the hypothesis on which they are
explained, or which in doubtful cases may be applied to the regulation of
them, we are very rarely, if ever, called upon at the moment of performing
them to determine their effect upon the happiness of mankind.

There is a theory which has been contrasted with Utility by Paley and
others--the theory of a moral sense: Are our ideas of right and wrong
innate or derived from experience? This, perhaps, is another of those
speculations which intelligent men might 'agree to discard.' For it has
been worn threadbare; and either alternative is equally consistent with a
transcendental or with an eudaemonistic system of ethics, with a greatest