This issue of differing “capacities for happiness” was discussed by the classical utilitarian Francis Edgeworth in his 1881 Mathematical Psychics (pp 57-58, and especially 130-131). He doesn’t go into much detail at all, but this is the earliest discussion of which I am aware. Well, there’s also the Bentham-Mill debate about higher and lower pleasures (“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied”), but I think that may be a slightly different issue.
Interesting historical footnote from Louis Francini: