Clearly this would not do. Mandeville stank in pious nostrils. A new model of humanity was required to people a new model of politics. The great men of the Scottish Enlightenment claimed that we possessed an innate moral sense, a natural tendency to virtue and to sympathy. The founding fathers of the American republic adopted the Scottish model and scorned dissimulation. Some quite genuinely so, like Benjamin Franklin when he was minister to France. He left papers lying around, did not care who opened his letters, gossiped and flirted quite indiscriminately, to such an extent that the French assumed his openness must conceal a cunning plan. Others, like Thomas Jefferson, preached honesty and sincerity while showing a sharp eye for the main chance.

Jefferson, like William Gladstone, was a master at finding the ace up his sleeve and pretending - no, believing - that God had put it there; though Jefferson's God was a pallid ghost compared to Gladstone's. Who then was the greater hypocrite: Benjamin Disraeli, who openly schemed and dodged from one position to another, scarcely bothering to conceal that ambition was his only driving force; or Gladstone, who, after much conspicuous agonising, performed the lowest U-turns from the highest motives? Anthony Trollope, in his thinly disguised portraits of Mr Daubeny and Mr Gresham, seems to tell us that Gresham/Gladstone is worse because he does have principles, which he is prepared to subvert in the interests of his own self-advancement.Modern-minded people hope to escape from having to choose between the two. Surely there must exist some impartial, objective way of running things that does not require such devious chancers and humbugs to secure the greater happiness of the greatest number. If we demystify politics, as Jeremy Bentham and the Utilitarians intended, then we shall recognise the hypocrites for what they are.

Unfortunately, the Victorians found this no easier than had their ancestors. In fact, they introduced new forms of hypocrisy themselves. The philosopher Henry Sidgwick recommended keeping silence on ticklish questions of faith like immortality, on the grounds that "the general loss of such a hope, from the minds of average human beings as now constituted, would be an evil of which I cannot pretend to measure the extent". Philosophers ought to shroud some question of morality in expedient secrecy for the public good and keep this secrecy secret. This has been called "government house utilitarianism". One can think of a ruder name. Sidgwick wanted better--educated people to stay out of party politics altogether and confine themselves to the purer realms of foreign policy. John Morley, as Asquith's secretary of state for India, tried to follow Sidgwick's advice and suffered agonies of conscience as a result. He liked to pretend that he was simply an "official", had nothing to do with government and party and steered clear of the House of Commons.