Indeed, there is much of the sturdy commonsense of the Scottish school about him, particularly perhaps in that interweaving of ethics, politics and economics, which is characteristic of the school from Hutcheson in the middle seventeenth century, to the able, if neglected, Lorimer in the nineteenth.[17] He is entitled to be considered the real founder of utilitarianism.

He first showed how difficult it is in politics to draw a distinction between ethical right and men's opinion of what ought to be.

He brings to an end what Coleridge happily called the "metapolitical school." After him we are done with the abuse of history to bolster up Divine Right and social contract; for there is clearly present in his use of facts a true sense of historical method.

He put an end also to the confusion which resulted from the effort of thinkers to erect standards of right and wrong independent of all positive law.

He took the facts as phenomena to be explained rather than as illustrations of some favorite thesis to be maintained in part defiance of them.