 On the Constitution of the Church and State (1830) traced the underlying idea of the English state back to King Alfred. Coleridge asked whether institutions were “founded either in the nature of things or in the necessities of our nature”; ideals “can be profitably studied only as they are reflected in the particular institutions of a living political organism” (Coleridge 1829: 276). J.S. Mill ranked Coleridge’s influence on political thought as equal to Bentham’s, calling them “the two great seminal minds of England in their age”. Bentham wished to reform or replace venerable institutions which lacked utility, while Coleridge’s work was a necessary counterweight to Benthamite utilitarian liberalism, as