id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
en-wikipedia-org-6872		Jeremy Bentham - Wikipedia			.html	text/html	14992	2512	67	He advocated individual and economic freedoms, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and (in an unpublished essay) the decriminalising of homosexual acts.[8][9] He called for the abolition of slavery, capital punishment and physical punishment, including that of children.[10] He has also become known as an early advocate of animal rights.[11][12][13][14] Though strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights (both of which are considered "divine" or "God-given" in origin), calling them "nonsense upon stilts."[4][15] Bentham was also a sharp critic of legal fictions. He became deeply frustrated with the complexity of English law, which he termed the "Demon of Chicane".[21] When the American colonies published their Declaration of Independence in July 1776, the British government did not issue any official response but instead secretly commissioned London lawyer and pamphleteer John Lind to publish a rebuttal.[22] His 130-page tract was distributed in the colonies and contained an essay titled "Short Review of the Declaration" written by Bentham, a friend of Lind, which attacked and mocked the Americans' political philosophy.[23][24]	./cache/en-wikipedia-org-6872.html	./txt/en-wikipedia-org-6872.txt