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OBJECTIVE UTILITARIANISM 349
and Cobden, provided an admirable theoretical back-
ground for the workings of Victorian Capitalism. It proclaimed
that, since a man would always do what paid
him best, and since he was the best judge of what would
pay him best, he could plan and manage much better for
himself than any person or body could plan and manage
for him. Therefore the best economic arrangement must
inevitably be that which actually obtained, since this,
being brought about by the play of the competing
economic motives of free competitive individuals, must be
the collective expression of what each man individually
thought best for himself. Now this theory had its ethical
side. It was coupled with, and indeed entailed, a mixture
of Psychological Hedonism a man will always do what
he thinks will give him most pleasure and Universalistic
Utilitarianism the State and the individual ought to
promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number
which were the distinctive, albeit the inconsistent, tenets
of the objective utilitarians. Thus the distinctively utili-
tarian view ofhuman nature and the distinctively utilitarian
theory of ethics contributed, throughout the nineteenth
century, to effect a separation between politics and
economics, which enabled politicians to justify their natural
inclination to leave economic affairs to look after them-
selves. For if every man always did what was best for
be what was
himself, the total effect must, it was thought,
best for everybody, the doctrine ofeach for himselfworking
into each for all. But
out by a pre-arranged harmony
as James Martineau remarked, "from each for self to each
for all there is no road ", and the misery of the masses
during the nineteenth century presently forced statesmen
to concern themselves with economics. Towards the end
of his life John Stuart Mill was endeavouring to heal the
split between politics and economics which the early
nineteenth century economists had made, and was rapidly
moving in the direction of some form of socialist theory. 1
But his departure from laissczfairt was only achieved at
1 See Chapter XVII, p. 723.