And, though quibbling about self-interest and motives, and objects of desire, and the greatest happiness of the greatest number, is but a poor employment for a grown man, it certainly hurts the health less than hard drinking and the fortune less than high play; it is not much more laughable than phrenology, and is immeasurably more humane than cock-fighting." Macaulay inserted in the Edinburgh Review of March, 1829, an article upon Mr Mill's Essay.

He attacked the method with much vehemence; and, to the end of his life, he never saw any ground for believing that in this he had gone too far.

But before long he felt that he had not spoken of the author of the Essay with the respect due to so eminent a man.

In 1833, he described Mr mill, during the debate on the India Bill of that year, as a "gentleman extremely well acquainted with the affairs of our Eastern Empire, a most valuable servant of the Company, and the author of a history of India, which, though certainly not free from faults, is, I think, on the whole, the greatest historical work which has appeared in our language since that of Gibbon." Almost immediately upon the appearance of the article in the Edinburgh Review, an answer was published in the Westminster Review.

It was untruly attributed, in the newspapers of the day, to Mr Bentham himself.
Macaulay's answer to this appeared in the Edinburgh Review, June, 1829.
He wrote the answer under the belief that he was answering Mr Bentham, and was undeceived in time only to add the postscript.