More on utilitarian 'happiness'

More on utilitarian ‘happiness'?: ‘Happiness' was difficult to define in this context:

• it did not mean a temporary personal emotion but people's well-being or advantage
• it was argued that obeying laws brought happiness, and therefore to obey laws welcomed by a large number of people was to multiply happiness
• the utilitarian principle still underlies all democratic law to some extent, insofar as laws reflect the will of Parliament, which represents the people and therefore can claim to enact laws that promote the greatest happiness of the greatest possible number
• this idea (and its development later in Mill's book Utilitarianism, 1863) was a relatively new way of deciding what was right politically.

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