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WA^^^'M^Mi^ ■:: : >;:■;: ^;:-^5•iilii|M:S;^;;;;;i^;;: )f California i Regional 1 Facility J ^:;;:;;^||^;|S^^:;■;:^ W^Mw^'''^ : ^^Sa?V/j— Review in Edinburgh— ^'HtcX of Bentham's writings in Russia, Spain, etc.— Death of Lord Lansdowne— Scotch Law Reform —Bentham's influence on Romilly— Acquaintance with James Mill — Residence at Barrow Green . . • • 126-155 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER VII BENTHAM BECOMES A POLITICIAN (1S08-1S) Influence of James Mill— Elements of the Art of Packing Juries- Catechism of Parliamentary Reform — William Cobbett — Major Cart- wright — Tenancy of Ford Abbey — Relations between Bentham and James Mill — Writings on Political Economy — Chrestomathia — Swear not at all — Plan of Reform by Bentham and Burdett — Burdett's motion in Parliament — Westminster election — Death of Romilly ..... fages 156-179 CHAPTER VIII BENTHAM IN OLD AGE (1819-32) Life at "The Hermitage "—Lord Brougham— ^^7(7.4 of Fallacies — Guests at "The Hermitage" — Sir John Bowring — The IVestminster Review — Official Aptitude Maxifnised : Expense Minimised — Lord Eldon — Radical Reform Bill — Free Trade — Bentham's politics — Daniel O'Connell — Codification — Codification Proposal — Petitions for Codification z.nd Justice — Duke of Wellington — The Constitutional Code — Visit to Paris — Prince Talleyrand — Death of Bentham — Characteristics — Theological views . . . 180-21 1 CHAPTER IX bentham's creed AND AIMS The "Benthamites" — Axiom of "utility" — Application of "Greatest Happiness" principle : its nature and limitations — Table of Springs of Action — Bentham's disqualifications as a writer — Operation of the "Sanctions" — Exposure of Legal Abuses — Suggestions for legisla- tion — Rationale of Evidence — Necessity for legal reform — Reform of Criminal Procedure — The evidence of accused persons — Wrong- ful convictions — Bankruptcy, insolvency, and imprisonment for debt — Bentham's theory of government . . . 212-237 Index . . . . ... 239 PREFACE SIR JOHN BOWRING'S valuable but incomplete edition of Bentham's works contains some five thousand five hundred pages, closely printed in double columns. The dilTuse Memoirs collected in the tenth and eleventh volumes cover, in addition, nearly eight hundred pages. By the reforms of the last seventy years several treatises have been deprived of the interest originally attached to them, while others are written in the involved and difficult style affected by Bentham in the later years of his life. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the volumes so laboriously compiled by Bowring are rarely taken down from the shelves of our public libraries. Yet a great part of the collection is of deep and lasting interest ; and throughout every volume there are scattered countless passages which admirers of Ben- tham's genius would not willingly let die. This sketch of his life and work has been published in the hope that it may induce some readers to seek a closer acquaintance with his writings. The sources to which the writer is indebted for the materials of this book are acknowledged by references xii PREFACE in the footnotes ; and it will be seen that he is under special obligation to the works of M. Elie Halevy, Sir Leslie Stephen, Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice and Mr. Graham Wallas. In the case of some brief citations from Bowring's Memoirs it has not been thought necessary to indicate the precise reference. C. M. A. JEREMY BENTHAM CHAPTER I BOYHOOD AND EARLY YEARS BENTHAM'S ancestors had been, for three genera- tions at any rate, substantial London citizens of credit and renown. The great-grandfather was a pros- perous pawnbroker of the time of Charles IL; the grandfather, a flourishing attorney in the early years of the eighteenth century — " neither better nor worse," as his grandson said, " than the average rate of at- torneys," who in those days were but "little thought of." Jeremiah Bentham, the father, clerk to the Wor- shipful Company of Scriveners, and himself a scrivener, had, by the acquisition of freehold land and leases, added largely to an already considerable patrimony. Bentham, in after years, was fond of narrating how his father used to take him, when a boy at Westminster School, to the Rainbow coffee-house, where " the quality of the Scriveners' Company mustered." More than once the child was allowed to be present on the occasion of the great annual festival, which was, it seems, usually preceded by a small but choice banquet for the enter- tainment of a select coterie : " Under the plea of B 2 JEREMY BENTHAM catering for the many at the great dinner, the privileged few, among whom my father was, always managed to get for themselves an initiatory — a little dinner; and the Scriveners' Company paid for both. I remember when they got to turtle dinners ; and the next step was to send home turtle to their wives." Bentham's grandparents had resolved that their son should marry a young lady of their acquaintance with the comfortable jointure of some ;^io,ooo; but, much to their chagrin, the young man, at the age of thirty, fell deeply in love with one Alicia Grove, whom he had met accidentally at Buckholt Acres, a place of enter- tainment in or near Epping Forest. Miss Grove's father was a prosperous tradesman of Andover, and appears to have been a man of gentle birth. On his death, his widow sold the business and withdrew, with the rest of the family, to a pleasant country residence near Reading, known as Browning Hill. The Benthams, however, persisted in regarding the connection as a mesalliance, and Jeremy's paternal grandmother always spoke to him of his parents' marriage as a sad mistake. The marriage took place in the autumn of 1744, and, on the 15th of February, 1748 (new style), a son was born in Red Lion Street, Houndsditch, a quarter of the town at that time still frequented by the professional classes. The boy was called Jeremy after the name of his father, though in a slightly curtailed form, on the double ground that it was shorter and, moreover, manifested a preference for the nomenclature of the New Testament over that of the Old. A second son, Samuel, who afterwards became a prominent official in the Russian service, was born some BOYHOOD AND EARLY DAYS 3 nine years later. Recognised as an able and ingenious man, Samuel acquired considerable distinction in this country as a naval architect and inventor of mechanical contrivances. He was knighted and died in 1831, the year before the death of his elder brother.^ The father of these boys was an active, kindly man, capable in the conduct of affairs, and in many respects a thoughtful and affectionate parent. But, being vain and inordinately ambitious, Jeremiah Bentham utterly failed to comprehend the sensitive, retiring character of his son Jeremy, who valued intellectual treasures only. " Never," says Dr., afterwards Sir John, Bowring,^ "were two natures more unlike. The consequence was that Bentham never opened his heart to his father. He could not even communicate to him his sorrows." In old age the son, naturally of a happy, gay, and even jovial disposition, was wont to declare that this want of sympathy had resulted in the memories of his boy- hood being overshadowed by many a gloomy thought and painful association. Intensely proud of the child's mental powers, which were conspicuous from earliest infancy, the elder Ben- tham was for ever urging Jeremy to press towards the goal of worldly fame. He entirely failed to perceive that his son was born to be something better and nobler than a successful schemer for preferment in Church or State. " While my father lived, from my birth to his death, ^ Sir Samuel's son, George Bentham (1800-1884), was a botanist of repute ; he published at Paris, in 1823, French translations of some of his uncle's works, and, also, wrote a notable book on Logic. - Bentham's biographer (1792-1872); knighted 1854. 4 JEREMY BENTHAM I never gave him any ground to complain of me. Often and often have I heard from him spontaneous and heartfelt assurances of the contrary. My conduct may, indeed, have sometimes been a cause of regret and dissatisfaction to him ; but on what ground ? My 'weakness and imprudence' in keeping wrapt up in a napkin the talents which it had pleased God to confer on me — in rendering useless, as he averred, my powers of raising myself to the pinnacle of prosperity. The seals were mine, would I but muster up confidence and resolution enough to seize them. He was continually telling me that everything was to be done by ' pushing ' ; but all his arguments failed to prevail on me to assume the requisite energy. 'Pushing,' would he repeat — 'pushing' was the one thing needful; but 'pushing' was not congenial to my character." Another counsellor (whose name is not recorded) urged him to the like effect, though, happily, with no greater success : " If you mean to rise, catch hold of the skirts of those who are above you, and care nothing for those who are beneath you." Bentham at all times turned a deaf ear to the plausible doctrine of "push," and would have none of this advice ; but the friend who gave it, says Dr. Bowring, caught hold of the skirts of an archbishop and became a judge. "O God, my God!" cried St. Augustine, " what misery did I then endure, what deception ! For it was held up to me, as the whole duty of a boy, to obey those who exhorted me to get on in the world, and make a name in wordy arts, which minister to the glory of man and deceitful riches." ^ i Confessions, Dr. Bigg's edition, at p. 45. BOYHOOD AND EARLY YEARS 5 It was a saying of Bentham's that his family had been distinguished by virtues on the female side ; and certainly all that we know of Alicia Grove — the cause of Jeremiah Bentham's matrimonial " mistake " — reveals her as a most loving, gentle creature, and devoted mother. Her husband, in his own phrase, lived with her "in a constant and uninterrupted state of nuptial happiness," while her sons entertained for her an abounding affection. Let her speak for herself. In August, 1749, when "Jerry" was eighteen months old, she writes home from Andover, whither she had gone on a visit : — " I try to divest myself of all uneasy cares, and think of nothing at home but the joys I left behind — my sweet little boy and his still dearer papa ; though there are little anxious fears about death and fever, and too great a hurry and perhaps vexations in business, which may overpower the spirits, and I not present to bear my part, and soothe those cares ; which I flatter myself would be in my power, were it only from my desire of doing it. Shall you see the dear little creature again ? I dreamed he had been like to have been choked with a plum-stone. Surely nurse will not trust him with dam- sons. God preserve him from all evil accidents ! " To the tender care of this good woman who, unhap- pily, died just before he reached the age of eleven years, Bentham owed much, and he was ever ready to make grateful acknowledgment of the debt. Sorely did the child stand in need of a mother's fostering care. Slight and delicate of frame, he was, in stature, almost a dwarf, and so remained until, at sixteen years of age, he grew 6 JEREMY BENTHAM ahead. He afterwards described himself as having been "the feeblest of all feeble boys"; and used to relate how, when, as a tiny creature of seven, an attempt was made to teach him to dance, he proved to be so weak that he could not support himself upon tiptoes. " One Mr. Harris, a Quaker, offended me not a little by asking me whither my calves were gone a-grazing." At the age of seventy-eight he pronounced himself to be stronger than he had ever been at any previous period of his life. Even in his Oxford days, a certain Goodyear St. John, " a drunken fellow who became a parson," by way of providing diversion for the company, would hold him up by the heels. " He used to take me by the heels and hold me, my head downwards ; and I remember," the narrator characteristically added, " losing half a guinea in consequence, which fell out of my pocket." The child did not suffer merely from physical weak- ness : he was nervous and sensitive to a painful degree. As an evidence of the acuteness of his sensibilities, he would often, when an old man, recall the fact that his earliest recollection was the pain of sympathy. It was on the occasion of some unusual feasting in the family house at Barking ; he was still a mere baby unable to walk alone, and had been supplied by his nurse to satiety. Afterwards his grandfather came in and offered some- thing more, of which the child partook: "thereupon came my mother smiling ; she came with her natural claims upon my affections — but it was out of my power to accept her intended kindness ; and I burst into tears, seeing the chagrin and disappointment which it cost her ! " BOYHOOD AND EARLY YEARS 7 The subject of ghosts, he declared, had always been among the torments of his life. In his boyhood it was a permanent source of amusement for the servants to ply him with horrible phantasms : every spot that could be made to answer the purpose was the abode of some spectre or another ; and, seventy years afterwards, he still retained impressions created by the tricks then played upon a nervous susceptibility. " Though my judgment is wholly free," the old man would say of his ghostly fears, " my imagination is not wholly so." Nothing gave the boy so much pleasure as the country delights of Browning Hill and Barking, where he spent a great deal of time with his two grandmothers. " At Browning Hill everybody and everything had a charm. . . . We had a garden and an orchard, bountifully pro- ductive ; a large extent of stabling and out-houses ; venerable elms scattered here and there offered ornament and shade ; the access to the estate was over a pleasant green studded with cottages." Hazlitt asserted that Bentham had " a great contempt for out-of-door prospects, for green fields and trees " — a curiously inaccurate statement. M. Halevy suggests that Hazlitt, in this respect, confused Bentham with James Mill ; and, indeed, Bentham's sense of enjoyment of country scenes was always most acute. To use his own phrase, he was ever " passionately fond " of flowers. " So long as I retained my sense of smell," he exclaimed shortly before his death, " a wallflower was a memento of Barking, and brought youth to my mind." For boyish amusements of the ordinary type he was entirely unfitted, alike by physical infirmity and natural 8 JEREMY BENTHAM disinclination ; companions of his own age he had none. Referring to a later period, presumably his life at Ox- ford, he said, " I was a member of a cricket club, of which Historian Mitford was the hero. I was a dwarf, and too weak to enjoy it." ^ Fishing he declared to be an abominable sport, waste of time associated with cruelty : " yet I fished ; I wanted new ideas and new- excitements." He had, however, neither the skill nor the strength to practise fly-fishing ; and, as for shooting, although he went out once or twice with the ostensible object of destroying partridges, he disliked the pursuit, complained that the flash of the gunpowder hurt his eyes, and, thereafter, excused himself from joining in the sport, which probably had, on other grounds, be- come distasteful to him, for he ever shrank from the sight of animal suffering. " To my apprehension," wrote he, "every act by which, without prospect of preponderant good, pain is knowingly and willingly produced in any being whatsoever, is an act of cruelty ; and like other bad habits, the more the correspondent habit is indulged in, the stronger it grows, and the more frequently productive of bad fruits." ^ The rapid and remarkable growth of the boy's mental powers afforded a striking contrast to his tardy physical development. His father was for ever "bragging" of Bentham's accomplishments : " He was always talking to me and to others of my powers." His father's friends used to call the child " Philosopher " when he ^ William Mitford (i 744-1827), brother of the first Baron Redesdale, and a contemporary of Bentham at Queen's College, Oxford. His History of Greece began to appear in 1784. - Letter to Morning Chronicle, 4th March, 1825 ; Bowring, x. p. 550. BOYHOOD AND EARLY YEARS 9 was only five years of age ; and no biographical notice of Jeremy omits the story of his escaping one day from the company of his elders to scamper home and call for a huge folio of Rapin's History of England. " This," he said, " occurred before I was breeched, and I was breeched at three years and a quarter old. . . . The tale was often told in my presence of the boy in petti- coats, who had come in and rung the bell, and given orders to the footman to mount the desk upon the table, place the folio upon the desk, and provide candles without delay." Bowring does not identify the passages selected for perusal by the student, but we have Bentham's own avowal that, whatever benefits he may have derived from the history in other respects, it was certainly of little advantage to him from a moral point of view. Rapin, he tells us, was a soldier by trade, and his history a history of throat-cutting on the largest scale for the sake of plunder ; this throat- cutting and plundering being placed by him at the summit of virtue. Such written evidence as is accessible undoubtedly supports the oral tradition as to Bentham's precocity. We may refer, for example, to certain confirmatory entries in his father's account books. Thus, in 175 1, when the boy was in his fourth year, we find, " Ward's Grammar, \s. 6d. ; Fani Colloquendi FormulcE, 6d. ; and Nomenclator Classicus Trilinguis, Sd. : being 2s. 8d. for Jeremy, Junior " ; while among other memoranda of the elder Bentham is treasured a line of Latin, neatly written in a child's hand, and labelled " Mem : The line pasted hereon was written by my son, Jeremy Bentham, lo JEREMY BENTHAM the 4th of December, 1753, at the age of five years, nine months, and nineteen days. One of his father's many embarrassing attempts to exhibit the boy's talents bore memorable fruit. Jeremy was dining with his father at the house of Dr. Markham, at that time headmaster of Westminster School, and afterwards Archbishop of York ; a discussion took place as to what was meant by " genius," and the child, then six years of age, was required to give his ideas as to the meaning of the term. Bentham assured Dr. Bowring that, though he looked foolish and humbled, making no answer, the question haunted him for many a long day. Thirteen or fourteen years later, it occurred to him that genius was derived from gigno, and meant invention or production. " Have I a genius for anything ? " he asked himself. And then, " What of all earthly pursuits is the most important ? " " Legislation," was the answer given by Helvetius, whose De I'Esprit he had just been read- ing. " And have I a genius for legislation ? " he inquired again and again. At last the answer came, fearfully and tremblingly, " Yes." Latin grammar and the Greek alphabet Bentham learned on his father's knee. One Thomas Mendham, a clerk, was brought in from the scrivener's office to instruct him in the rudiments of writing, and in music, an art associated with his earliest pleasures, and one which furnished him with the keenest enjoyment to the end of his days. Very soon he found himself " in pos- session of a fiddle in miniature, and able to scrape Foote's minuet " ; whereupon, to improve his practice, a regular music master was introduced, to whom a BOYHOOD AND EARLY YEARS ii guinea was paid for eight lessons — a course of instruc- tion pursued until the boy was sent to school. " Mr. Bentham," wrote Hazlitt in the Spirit of the Age," xqWqvqs his mind sometimes after the fatigue of study by playing a fine old organ, and has a relish for Hogarth's prints." At the age of seven, or thereabouts, Bentham was provided by his father with a French tutor named La Combe, who, for the sake of distinction, dubbed himself La Combe d' Avignon. "Z^ pere de Jereniie Bentham',^ says M. Halevy, " riest qiiun riche bourgeois, mais il sait et aime le francais, et redige son journal quotidien dans une sorte de franqais bizarre, mile de mots anglais et d anglicistnesy From La Combe's residence in the household the boy derived much profit and no small degree of pleasure. He soon acquired a considerable familiarity with the French language, and accustomed himself to write in that tongue ; indeed, he was wont to declare in later years that, as a youth, he wrote with greater facility in French than in English, for, with a limited choice of words, he scribbled boldly on, not pausing to pick or weigh the value of his phrases. Under the strict regime of his parents, Bentham had been debarred from access to any book " by which amusement in any shape might be administered," and, though he read with avidity every work on which he could lay his hands, the restriction had been rarely relaxed until the arrival of M. La Combe, who at once introduced him to a collection of fairy tales. From these stories the child passed on to the delights of Fenelon's Telemachus. "That romance may be re- garded as the foundation-stone of my whole character ; 12 JEREMY BENTHAM the starting-post from whence my career of life com- menced," he said one day to Bowring : " the first dawning in my mind of the principles of utility may, I think, be traced to it." Telemachus was followed by Voltaire's Life of Charles XII., General History, and Candide, together with certain other examples of French literature which, it is hardly surprising to learn, some- what startled the elder Bentham. Ill 1755 Jeremy was sent to board at Westminster. He was the smallest boy in the school but one, and stood in prodigious awe of Dr. Markham, who was (he says) "an object of adoration." In later years he described the doctor as a tall, portly man, but a shallow fellow withal, satisfied with Latin and Greek. '* His business was rather in courting the great than in attend- ing to the school. Any excuse served his purpose for deserting his post. He had a great deal of pomp, especially when he lifted his hand, waved it, and repeated Latin verses. If the boys performed their task well, it was well ; if ill, it was not the less well." Westminster, according to Bentham, was at that time a wretched place for instruction. Some of the masters did little or nothing, and the boys were taught few useful and many useless things. The "horrid despotism" known as the " fagging " system was then in full force, though Bentham asserted that he himself never felt the touch of the rod at school nor knew what the pain of being punished was.^ Among the few agreeable ^ "That Westminster in those days must have been a scene not merely of hardship, but of cruel suffering and degradation to the younger and weaker boys, has been proved by the researches of the Public Schools Commission." — Goldwin Smith's Cowper (English Men of Letters Series). BOYHOOD AND EARLY YEARS 13 memories that he retained of Westminster was his recollection of the stories told him, at night time, by his bedfellow, an amiable boy named Mitford, who in after life was able to afford him some assistance in the famous Panopticon project. In these stories, the product of Mitford's fancy, the heroes and heroines were models of kindness and beneficence, exhibiting the quality which Bentham afterwards styled " effective benevolence." " I remember," said he, " forming solemn resolutions, that, if ever I possessed the means, I would be an example of that excellence which appeared so attractive to me." Before he was eleven he was able to write letters in Greek and Latin to Dr. Bentham, the sub-Dean of Christ Church,^ and, on the 27th June, 1760, rather more than a year after the death of his mother, he set out with his father for Oxford, being, at the age of twelve years, entered a commoner of Queen's College in that University. The boy returned to Westminster until the following October, and then went into residence at Oxford, where he inhabited gloomy rooms looking into the churchyard of St. Peter's-in-the-East, and covered with lugubrious hangings: "upon the two -pair -of- stairs' floor, in the further corner of the inner quadrangle, on the right hand as you enter into it from the outer door." These dismal surroundings revived Bentham's fears of ghosts, and he was made additionally miserable by the morose disposition of his tutor, one Jacob Jefferson — " a sort of Protestant monk " — whose chief care was to prevent ^ Edward Bentham (1707-76) ; Canon of Christ Church, 1754 ; Regius Professor of Divinity, 1763. 14 JEREMY BENTHAM his pupil from having any enjoyment whatsoever. He prohibited even the mild amusement known as battle- dore and shuttlecock. The dons generally made a very unpleasant impression on the boy's mind ; some were profligate, others morose, the greatest part insipid. Their mornings were spent in " useless routine," their evenings in playing cards. " We just went," he said, " to the foolish lectures of our tutors to be taught some- thing of logical jargon." Gibbon, too, describes the fellows " or monks " of this time as supinely enjoying the gifts of the founders : " From the toil of reading, writing, or thinking, they had absolved their consciences." The solitude and gloom of his rooms led Bentham to secure, in exchange, another set with somewhat more cheerful surroundings " on the ground floor, on the right- hand side of the staircase, next on the left [?] hand, as you go from the outer quadrangle to the staircase that leads to the former ones." The migration, " in consideration of the two guineas that accompanied it," was concealed from his father as though it had been a crime ; he had, it seems, got two guineas " for his thirdings on account of his better furniture." Once, at least, he found him- self in debt and was driven to seek the good ofiflces of Dr. Bentham, whose intervention resulted in ten pounds being sent from home to eke out his narrow allowances. Bentham found little delight in the society of those whom he met at Oxford. Neither at school nor at college did his father supply him with means for enter- taining friends or indulging in extravagant pleasures ; indeed, the son complained that he could never get money from his father but to play cards at an aristocrat's BOYHOOD AND EARLY YEARS 15 house. This was, presumably, part of the disastrously unsuccessful policy of " push." He often dined at the table of the Duke of Leeds (father of two school- fellows) and was generally "tipped" a guinea, but it was always taken from him at home. " Only when I won money," he said to Dr. Bowring, "was I allowed to keep it ; so that a passion for play was likely to be excited in me. But I was cured at Oxford, where they always forced me to pay when I lost ; and, as I could never get the money when I won, I gave up the habit." As late as 31st December, 1765, there is an entry in his father's memoranda : " Lent Jerry sixpence to pay for his losses at cards." A letter written on 30th June, 1761, throws some light on the University life of this boy of thirteen : — " Dear Papa, — I have sent you a declamation I spoke last Saturday, with the approbation of all my acquaintances. . . . Even a bachelor of my acquaint- ance went so far as to say that he never heard but one speak a declamation better all the time he has been in college ; which, indeed, is not much to say, as, perhaps, you imagine, for sure nobody can speak worse than we do here ; for in short, it is like repeating so many lines out oidiPropria quae maribus. I have disputed, too, in the Hall once, and am going in again to-morrow. There also I came off with honour, having fairly beat off, not only my proper antagonist, but the moderator himself; for he was forced to supply my antagonist with arguments, the invalidity of which I clearly demonstrated. ... I wish you would let me come i6 JEREMY BENTHAM home very soon, for my clothes are dropping off my back. Pray give my duty to grand-mamma and love to dear Sammy, and represent the woful condition of one who is, nevertheless, your dutiful and affectionate son." While at Oxford, Bentham was sent for to see the coronation of George III., to " take a gape at the raree- show," as he afterwards expressed it ; and, in those days, " loyalty and virtue " were to him " synonymous terms." It is true that he came of a Jacobite stock ; indeed, his grandfather attributed a failure to secure the clerkship of the Cordwainers' Company to his known devotion to the House of Stuart, while Jeremy himself was taught to call King Charles a martyr, and his infant affections were " 'listed on the side of despotism." "But," said he, " my father subsequently, without much cost in conveyancing, transferred his adherence from the Stuarts to the Guelphs." On the occasion of the death of George II., the boy had, it seems, written a copy of verses, which are still preserved. " Thirteen years had not been numbered by me when the second of the Guelphs was gathered to his fathers. Waste of time had been commenced by me at Queen's College, Oxford.^ Tears were demanded by the occasion and tears were actually paid accordingly." These verses were pronounced by Dr. Johnson (whose judgment may not have been unaffected by political ^ Francis Jeffrey, who entered at Queen's thirty years later, wrote below his certificate of admission : " Hanc universitatem, taedio miser- rime affectus, tandem hilaris reliqui, Ter : Kal : Jul : 1792 ; meque hisce obligationibus privilegiisque subduxi." (Lord Cockburn's Life of Lord Jeffrey, vol. i. p. 38.) BOYHOOD AND EARLY YEARS 17 bias) to be "a very pretty performance of a young man"; but Bentham himself, in later years, contemptuously described them as a mediocre performance on a trumpery subject, written by a miserable child. In 1763 the boy undergraduate obtained his Bachelor's degree, and, in November of the same year, began to eat dinners at Lincoln's Inn, of which, after the lapse of more than fifty years, he became a bencher in 18 17. In the December following his entry at Lincoln's Inn, Bentham returned to Oxford to attend the lectures of Dr. Blackstone, to whose famous commentaries on the laws of England he was afterwards to devote so much critical attention.^ But neither the niilietix in which he moved nor the masters who taught him could incline him to their views. They seemed rather to arouse in him a spirit of antagonism.^ " I, too, heard the lectures, age sixteen," he wrote in 1822, " and even then no small part of them with rebel ears." According to the student's own account, he immediately detected the fallacy respecting natural rights, and thought the reasoning as to the gravitating downwards of hosreditas illogical and futile. The lecturer he describes as formal, precise, wary, and affected ; though the lectures, he admits, proved somewhat popular, attracting audiences varying from thirty to fifty. Bentham was present at Wilkes' trial in the Court of King's Bench, where his father had secured for him one of the students' seats, of which — until the usage was ^ These lectures were the product of the foundation of the Vinerian professorship in 1751. (Stephen's Utilitarians, i. p. 45.) - Halevy's La Formation du Radicalisme philosophique , i. p. 25. C i8 JEREMY BENTHAM abolished by Lord Kenyon — two were reserved on either side of the judge. These proceedings took place in February, 1764; and, four years later, Bentham chanced also to hear Wilkes' outlawry reversed in the same Court by Lord Mansfield, whose grace, eloquence, and fascinating tones greatly impressed him.^ Shortly after the trial, his father took him to Matlock Wells (" where everything was cheap : we paid a shilling for a handsome dinner"), and thence the pair journeyed to Buxton, Bath, and other places of interest in the Midlands and in the West of England. This expedition was followed by a trip to Paris, and a long visit to a fine estate known as Yewhurst, the property of a friend of the elder Bentham named Mackreth, who was afterwards knighted and became member for Ashburton.^ Mack- reth — an able and well-informed man, who had been, in turn, billiard-marker, waiter, and proprietor of White's club-house — had retired, while still young, with a con- siderable fortune and an inordinate ambition to be " con- sidered a gentleman and admitted among the quality." He had been fortunate in his marriage, having found favour in the sight of the daughter of the proprietor of the great neighbouring house, called Arthur's, She is described by Bentham as a woman whose face was beautiful, but her body deformed : — elegant in manners, "as if her father had been a duke." Mackreth was mightily proud of the hospitality he ^ William Murray (1705-1793) ; Lord Chief Justice, 1756. - Robert Mackreth (1726-1819); knighted 1795. Found guilty of taking advantage of a minor, 1 786; of assaulting John Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon), 1792. {Diet, of Nat. Biog., xxxv. p. 186.) I BOYHOOD AND EARLY YEARS 19 dispensed at Yewhurst, where he had a billiard-table, bowling-green, and other amusements. His guest was "kept in Elysium from day to day," greatly enjoyed the society of those who were staying with him in the house, and wandered gaily amidst all the attractions of the neighbourhood. Bentham, however, greatly offended Mackreth by in- dulging in an immoderate fit of laughter at the dinner- table, immediately after his host had pronounced the name of some French dish. This breach of decorum, so Bentham declared, was not occasioned by any im- propriety in his host's pronunciation, but was due entirely to his own unfortunate propensity to in- voluntary laughter, an infirmity which the youth had not the presence of mind to disclose — with the result that, much to his regret, he never received another in- vitation from Mackreth. " The fact was," said Bentham, " I had destroyed his purpose of ingratiating himself with two booby country gentlemen, who supposed I had detected him in some vulgarism." In 1766 Bentham, now eighteen, took his Master's degree, and strutted in his new gown " like a crow in a gutter." Fine colours were, he tells us, the order of the day : " I had a pea-green coat and green silk breeches, which were first exhibited on a walk with Chamberlain Clarke,^ from Oxford to Faringdon. The breeches were bitterly tight." When the parliamentary election took place shortly afterwards, the fact of his being ^ An old acquaintance of the Bentham family. He was an attorney, but ultimately became one of the new police magistrates, when Charles Abbot succeeded in passing a Bill for the creation of those functionaries. 20 JEREMY BENTHAM under age gave rise toaquestion (never definitely resolved) as to the validity of a vote which he then recorded. It was on the occasion of his visit for the purpose of this election that he obtained, at the circulating library attached to Harper's coffee-house, near Queen's College, Priestley's Essay on Government, which suggested to his mind the phrase, " the greatest happiness of the greatest number." This famous formula, so he afterwards de- clared, discovered to him the only true standard of right or wrong, and light was thereby added to the warmth of passion already kindled in his breast for improvement in government and the melioration of the lot of mankind. At the sight of it, said he, I cried out, like Archimedes, as it were in an inward ecstasy, Ei//3>//ca ! ^ According to Bowring, Bentham stated that he had seen the phrase in one of Priestley's pamphlets so early as the year 1764,2 but this would seem to be a mistake: the Essay \vd.s, first published in 1768, and, in the section on Political Liberty, its author observed that " the good and happiness of the members, that is the majority of the members, of any state, is the great standard by which everything relating to that state must finally be determined." This is probably the passage to which Bentham referred. In the following year he bade a final farewell to Oxford, and little further is known of his doings there, though he used to relate how a " talkative lady " of that city— wife of the aforesaid Dr. Bentham, " a little, in- 1 Montague's Fragment on GovernmDit, p. 34; Deontology, vol. i. p. 300: cf. post, pp. 30, 31, 36. 2 Bow., X. p. 46; Ibid., ii. p. 288. BOYHOOD AND EARLY YEARS 21 significant, industrious man who had got some reputa- tion for his spontaneous divinity lectures " — wanted him to marry her daughter ; and such was her importunity that on one occasion he was obliged to escape out of the window. Two years before his son took leave of the University the elder Bentham, much to Jeremy's vexation, had married a second time. The lady was Mrs. Abbot, widow of a Fellow of Balliol, who had, " in the spiritual routine of preferment," migrated to a college living at Colchester. Her stepson described her as a " smart and sprightly lady " ; she was the mother of two boys, the younger of whom, Charles Abbot (i 757-1 829), became Speaker of the House of Commons and the first Lord Colchester. Hill Burton asserts that it was a "deep mortification " to " old Bentham " that his stepson, Charles — in contrast to the " dreamy " Jeremy — " bend- ing the whole of his genius and industry to professional and political aggrandisement, rose step by step till he became Speaker of the House of Commons and was called to the House of Peers." ^ As to this assertion, it seems sufficient to observe that Jeremiah Bentham died ten years before Abbot became Speaker, and that, when the latter was made a peer, " old Bentham " had been in his grave nearly a quarter of a century. ^ Benthamiana, p. xiv. CHAPTER II LIFE IN LINCOLN'S INN THE record of Bentham's life during the ten years which followed his call to the Bar, though some- what meagre, is far from being devoid of interest. There were, he tells us, a cause or two at nurse for him, but his first thought was how to put them to death ; and as his endeavours "were not altogether without success," it will readily be surmised that he made no mark in the practice of the law. His father's friend. Chamberlain Clarke, briefed him in an equity suit involving about ;^50. Bentham advised that the suit should " be ended and the money that would be wasted in the contest saved." " I never pleaded in public," said he ; "I just opened a bill two or three times, saying a few words for form." Being set to read " old trash " of the seven- teenth century, he looked up to the huge mountain of law in despair : " I can now," he declared half a century afterwards, "look down upon it from the heights of utility." To a young man of vast energy and unusual mental activity such a condition of affairs soon became intoler- able. His father, disconsolate at this want of success, had begun to regard him in the light of a lost child : 22 LIFE IN LINCOLN'S INN 23 " despair had succeeded to the fond hopes which some- thing of prematurity in my progress had inspired. . . . I had contracted — oh ! horrible ! — that unnatural and, at that time, almost unexampled appetite — the love of innovation ! " But, eager for reform as he had become, Bentham never took any real interest in party politics until he was well past middle age. So far as he can be said to have professed any political faith at this period of his life, it was that of the Tories, though he declared that he did not even know what "sort of a thing" party was : he was hostile to the cause of the American colonists, owing (as he afterwards explained) to the inadequacy of its presentment by their friends in this country ; the fact that Wilkes opposed the King's wishes was sufficient to render him an object of " perfect abhorrence." " I was, however (he told Bowring many years later), a great reformist ; but never suspected that the people in power were against reform. I sup- posed they only wanted to know what was good in order to embrace it." He was already collecting materials for a treatise designed to assail the " lawless science of the law " under the title of Critical Elements of furisprudence; he also contemplated, in the form of A Comment on the Commentaries, a comprehensive attack upon the recently published treatise of Mr. Justice Blackstone, whose doctrines had aroused in him such keen antagonism while yet a boy at Oxford. Blackstone, he asserted in his commonplace book, carried the disingenuousness of the hireling advocate into the chair of the Professor : 24 JEREMY BENTHAM " He is the dupe of every prejudice and the abettor of every abuse. No sound principles can be expected from that writer whose first object is to defend a system." Pending the execution of these formidable under- takings, he avowed himself powerless to pursue the practice of his profession with any hope of profit or success — "like David," said he, "I can give no melody in my heaviness." The Daemon of Chicane had, we are told, already appeared in all his hideousness, and war had been declared against him. On the 14th of October, 1772, he writes to his father, " In the track I am in I march up with alacrity and hope ; in any other, I should crawl on with despondency and reluctance." Accordingly, after much entreaty, Jeremiah Bentham gave a grudging consent ; ^ the son abandoned all pretence of active practice at the Bar and bade farewell to the brawling courts and dusty purlieus of Westminster. He continued, however, to occupy residential chambers in Lincoln's Inn, engaged for the most part with his inquiries into the principles of legislation and in chemical research. In a fervent, flamboyant passage occurring in his commonplace book of 1774-5, Bentham proclaimed himself to be deaf to the calls of present interest and unmoved by the alluring prospects of a successful career ^ Jeremiah Bentham has been denounced as "authoritative, restless, aspiring, and shabby." {Edin. Review, vol. Ixxviii. p. 464.) Jeremy him- self referred to his " hectoring " and "self-ostentation." [HaLf i. p. 297.) But he was an affectionate and, in many respects, an excellent father. Sir Leslie Stephen asserts that "Bentham's dislike of his stepmother increased the distance between him and his father" (Util.y i. p. 174), though "dis- like " would seem, in the circumstances, somewhat too strong a term. LIFE IN LINCOLN'S INN 25 at the Bar. " Oh, Britain ! Oh, my country ! the object of my waking and my sleeping thoughts ! whose love is my first labour and greatest joy — passing the love of woman — thou shalt bear me witness against these mis- ruling men. I cannot buy, nor will I ever sell my countrymen. My pretensions to their favour are founded not on promises, but on past endeavours — not on having defended the popular side of a question for fat fees, but on the sacrifice of years of the prime of life — from the first dawnings of reflection to the present hour — to the neglect of the graces which adorn a private station ; deaf to the calls of present interest, and to all the temptations of a lucrative profession." The first eminence at the Bar, and the opulence which attends it, were at his command (wrote Sir Samuel Romilly in 18 17); and if he could have persuaded him- self to accommodate his political principles to the wishes of those in power, the most splendid station and the highest honours would have been infallibly within his reach. " From those brilliant prospects he voluntarily turned away. ... A citizen of the world in its purest sense, he has suffered no opportunity, which has presented itself, of benefiting his fellowmen in any portion of the globe, to pass away without endeavour- ing to improve it." ^ The young man's tastes were simple and his habits regular. " As soon as he had risen in the morning," wrote his friend and admirer, Brissot,- "he took a long ^ Edin. Review, vol. xxix. p. 218. 2 Brissot was guillotined in 1793 ; it was of him that Madame Roland said : " Under despotism he advocated freedom ; amidst tyranny he fought for humanity. " (Bow.,x. p. 191.) 26 JEREMY BENTHAM walk of two or three hours, when he returned to his soHtary breakfast ; he then applied himself to his favourite work until four in the afternoon, at which hour he always went to dine with his father." The father's income was large, but Bentham himself lived in a very economical manner ; and indeed, although his passion for reading involved him in considerable expenditure on books, his means did not admit of much extravagance. On the occasion of his second marriage, Jeremiah Bentham had settled on Jeremy a small farm in Essex, producing (after payment of an excessive land tax) something under ;^5o a year, together with a malt-house at Barking, which, when tenanted, yielded another ;^40. " And for these allowances," he used to say, " I was to appear as a gentleman, with lace and embroidery on occasion. I had four guineas to pay my laundress, four guineas to my barber, and two to my shoeblack." He seems, however, to have received in addition to these allowances, two or three trifling legacies, and he managed somehow, every long vacation, to defray the expenses of a visit to the country in company with his friend George Wilson. The first composition actually published by Bentham was in the form of letters addressed to the Gazetteer signed Irenaeus. They were written about 1770, to repel an attack upon Lord Mansfield, whom, at that time, he greatly admired : " I was deluded," said he to Bowring, " by his eloquence, and fascinated by his courtesy of character." In those days composition was "inconceivably difficult" to him — he began sentences which he could not complete ; he wrote on blotting-paper LIFE IN LINCOLN'S INN 27 scattered fragments which he kept to be filled up when in happier vein ; he put scraps away in drawers so that he could tumble them over and over ; he was at pains to turn and polish his phrases, and in one of his earlier commonplace books is inserted the following caution : — " Having found some word, however improper, to fix the idea (upon the paper), you may then turn it about and play round it at your leisure. Like a block of wood, which, when you have fixed in a vice, you may plane and polish at your leisure ; but, if you think to keep it in your hands all the time, it may slip through your fingers." By hard labour, as he explained fifty years later, he subjugated the difficulties that beset him, and his ex- ample will serve to show what hard labour can accom- plish ; indeed, the style of his earlier writings is marked by singular care, precision and polish.^ " I had not then," said he, " invented any part of my new lingo." In after life he sacrificed everythi?ig to precision, telling Bowring that the first duty of a writer was to leave no doubt of his meaning — he, accordingly, invented words, some of them admirable ones, whenever he found none existing in the language which exactly represented the idea he wished to convey ; such as maximise, minimise, international, forthcomingness, codification. Cursory readers complain that Bentham's later works, and, indeed, some of the earlier ones, abound in tedious reiterations and embarrassing intricacies ; but (as his biographer, with much justice, urges on his behalf) the object of the author was to demonstrate, without taking ^ " A Benthamiana might be made of passages worthy of Addison or Goldsmith." (John Mill's Early Essays, Gibbs' edition, p. 381.) 28 JEREMY BENTHAM anything for granted, so that those who would judge of the legitimacy of his conclusions must needs examine the chain of reasoning link by link, as in following the proof of some Euclidian theorem. " We can regard in no other light than that of a public misfortune," wrote Sir Samuel Romilly in the Edinburgh Review for November, i8 17, "whatever prevents his writings from being known, and their utility and importance from being universally acknowledged. What principally ob- structs their circulation is the style in which they are composed . . . English literature hardly affords any specimens of a more correct, concise, and perspicuous style than that of the Fragment on Government or the Protest against Law Taxes . . . Since those publications, he seems, by great effort and study, to have rendered his style intricate and his language obscure."^ The truth is that, while the precise meaning of a sentence is rarely involved in the slightest obscurity, its construction is often such as to demand the closest attention on the part of the reader ; the whole of the qualifying remarks which he intended to make he insisted upon embedding as parentheses in the very middle of the sentence itself.2 Eminent critics have affirmed that throughout Bentham's writings there are numberless passages which, in point of wit, eloquence, and expressive clearness, have rarely been excelled in the works of any writer of our 1 Vol. xxix. p. 236 : " I have spoken of Bentham," said Romilly in his Diary, "with all the respect and admiration which I entertain of him, but I have thought myself bound not to disguise his faults. I shall be ex- tremely concerned if what I have said should give him any offence"; and cf. Quarterly Review, vol. xviii. p. 128. 2 Mill's Early Essays, by Gibbs, p. 381. LIFE IN LINCOLN'S INN 29 language : his close and ingenious reasoning provides constant and useful exercise for the mind, while his wealth of apt illustration, drawn from an infinite variety of sources, affords agreeable relaxation and enlivens the dullest topic. At the same time it is beyond dispute that men, who assuredly would not be deterred from the study of Bentham by the mere abstruseness of his subject-matter, have often been repelled by the difficulties of his later style. Francis Place, a devoted disciple, hoped to appease the severity of the master's method, and, in a letter to James Mill (October 20, 18 17), observed that most men think it trouble enough to study the subject itself without being obliged at the same time to make a study of the phraseology of the author. Mill, however, betrayed great alarm on receipt of the letter, and told Place that he had not dared to read it to Bentham : — " There is no one thing (wrote Mill) upon which he plumes himself so much as his style, and he would not alter it if all the world were to preach to him till Domesday."! It must not be supposed that, at any period of his life, Bentham indulged in mere abstract theories or metaphysical reasonings. He was ever bent on some practical application of that principle of utility which was to him the fount of all true wisdom, a very tree of life more precious than rubies : for speculative inquiry he cared little, except, indeed, when the pursuit of such inquiry became necessary to secure the practical results at which he aimed. " He found the philosophy of law a chaos, he left it a science ; he found the practice of the ^ Wallas' Life of Francis Place, p. 85. 30 JEREMY BENTHAM law an Augean stable, he turned the river into it which is mining and sweeping away mound after mound of its rubbish." In these words John Mill proclaimed the great task which his master had accomplished ; how he had brushed aside the accumulated cobwebs of centuries, how he had untied knots which the efforts of the ablest thinkers, age after age, had only drawn tighter, i The science of law was founded by Bentham on this principle of utility, which he regarded, moreover, as the only sure foundation of the science of morals, " The right end of all human action is," said he, " the creation of the largest possible balance of happiness"; and this tendency to produce happiness is what he meant by utility. His conception of " happiness," in the sense of a "sum of pleasures," was, writes Dr. Albee, in all re- spects identical with that of his Utilitarian predecessors; while his adoption of the " greatest happiness " formula was, in no sense, a departure from the traditional view of the Utilitarians, that the motive of the agent is uniformly egoistic.^ In a letter to Dumont, dated 6th September, 1822, Bentham states that he took the principle of utility from Hume's Essays : " Hume was in all his glory, the phrase was consequently familiar to everybody. The difference between me and Hume is this : the use he made of it was to account for that which is, I to show what ought to be"^ Years before the date of this letter, Bentham had noted in his common- place book that Priestley was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught his lips to pronounce the sacred ^ Early Essays, by Gibbs, pp. 360, 361. ^ Albee's History of English Utilitarianism (1902), at p. 189. ^ MSS., Univ. Coll., No. 10 ; cited Hal., i. p. 282, LIFE IN LINCOLN'S INN 31 truth, that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation} But this ap- parent inconsistency seems to be explained by a remark he made one day to Bowring : " I was at fault m}-self when I stumbled upon utility ; and this was imperfect until I found greatest happiness in Priestley, who did not turn it into a system and knew nothing of its value. He had not connected with happiness the ideas of pleasure and pain."2 It must be allowed that Bentham was not a profound student of ethics, or economics, or of what he called psychology ; but, in the opinion of John Mill, he was a great reformer even in philosophy, inasmuch as it was he who, beyond all others, aroused the questioning spirit, the disposition to demand the why of everything: "It was not his opinions^ in short, but his method, that constituted the novelty and the value of what he did."^ At a very early age he had dreamed of founding " a school," of controlling pupils who should be initiated in his " principles," and execute, under his eyes, various parts of his " plan."* In this way he hoped to propagate his ideas and advance the publication of his writings. George Wilson, afterwards leader of the Norfolk Circuit, was his " bosom friend " and one of his first disciples. They met at the table of Wilson's relative, Dr. Fordyce,^ whose lectures on chemistry were attended ^ Bow., X. p. 142. The phrase occurs in Hutcheson's Enquiry, 5th ed., ^753) ^t P- 185 ; see Montague's //-ao-w^rw/ on Government, p. 34 n. ■^ Ibid, , p. 567 ; vide ante, p. 20. ^ Early Essays, by Gibbs, pp. 329, 336. ** MSS., Brit. Mus., 33,538, f. 222 ; cited Hal., i. p. 297. ^ 1736-1802. Physician at St. Thomas's Hospital, 1770-1802. 32 JEREMY BENTHAM by Bentham. Wilson, we are told, was a man of clear understanding, deeply versed in the law, over six feet high, bashful and cold in manners, a most determined Whig, and "a slave to the fashion." But he soon became a great admirer of the young reformer, whom he persistently pressed to publish some of the rapidly ac- cumulating manuscripts. The two men, indeed, lived constantly together, and once, while bathing at Leyton during a summer holiday, Wilson saved Bentham's life. On one occasion only is it recorded that there was anything approaching a quarrel between them. Wilson, it seems, told his friend that he wished to consult him on a point of law, but Bentham laughed at the sug- gestion. " He was a lawyer of eminence : / had quitted the law ; he took it in dudgeon, even after I had ex- plained it, though the explanation was simple enough." Under Wilson's cold and reserved exterior there lay the warmest attachment to his friends, and the tenderest sympathy for the misfortunes of others that I ever met with, said Sir Samuel Romilly : if judgeships were elective, and the Bar — that is, the men best able to estimate the qualifications of a candidate — were the electors, he would, by their almost unanimous suffrages, have been raised to the Bench. But, continued Romilly, judicial stations were, in those days, reserved for men who held political principles less liberal than those which Wilson entertained. After leading the circuit for some years he took silk, and retired to his native country, Scotland, where he died in 1816. Another intimate friend of Bentham's was a certain John Lind, commoner of Balliol, who, "having received LIFE IN LINCOLN'S INN 33 the Holy Ghost, as much of it at least, whatever it be, as the bishop could give him," became chaplain in the Embassy at Constantinople. Dismissed from the chap- laincy " for being too agreeable to his Excellency's mistress," Lind, during the year 1773, returned to England, having in his charge Prince Stanislaus Ponia- towski, who had been sent upon his travels by his ill-fated uncle, Stanislaus, the last King of Poland. "The reverend divine, with the black garb and clerical wig, was now transformed into the man of fashion, with his velvet satin-lined coat, embroidered waistcoat, ruffles of rich lace, and hair dressed a la mode." He became practically the resident of Poland at the Court, though, being a subject of the King of England, he could not be received as the representative of a foreign potentate.^ As the author of a book entitled Letters concerning the Present State of Poland, describing the " atrocity " of the first partition, Lind acquired considerable cele- brity. Aided by his commissions and address, says Bentham, the work acquired for him high and favour- able notice; he was well received by the Prime Minister, Lord North ; " he was well received, too, at the house of his Honourable and Right Reverend Brother,^ and at the card table of his not less Reverend Wife. He was rather too much at that table ; sometimes I have seen him returning from it with a tolerably well-filled purse, but too often with an empty one." On more ^ Bow., i. p. 247. Lind was born 1737 and died 1781. ^ Brownlow North {1741-1820) ; Bishop of Lichfield 1771 ; translated to Worcester 1774 ; to Winchester 1781. D 34 JEREMY BENTHAM than one occasion he dined at Lord Mansfield's, where, said he, the conversation was always better than the cheer. While " in the sunshine of official favour," he pro- duced another work, entitled Review of the Acts of the Thirteenth Parliajnent, etc. (1775). The latter book was confined in its scope to the Acts affecting the Colonies, and, indeed, to those statutes which bore directly upon the contest with America — then the question of the hour. " The plan of the argument," wrote Bentham in 1827, "he had from me. Upon his mentioning the American part of his design, his plan not being as yet formed, I told him I had written two or three pages on the subject, which, such as they were, he was welcome to do what he pleased with. . . . My surprise was not small at finding that this page or two of scattered thoughts had been set in front of his work, and con- stituted the plan on which he was operating. They form pages 15 and 16 in the printed book."^ This work of Lind's was written on the Government side, in sup- port of the war, and appears to have brought Bentham to the favourable notice of Lord Mansfield, who, how- ever, made no advance towards a personal acquaintance with the young man. In 1774 Bentham had published a translation of Voltaire's Le Taureau Blanc, of which he sent a copy to his brother. Keep the sad, wicked book close, he wrote, unless you should chance to meet with one of us, and even then you must use discretion : " Re- member the sage Mambres preaches up discretion — and ^ Bow., X. p. 62. LIFE IN LINCOLN'S INN 35 whatever you do let it not be known for mine." ^ Lind addressed to the translator a letter, in the handwriting of an old man, purporting to come from Voltaire '^ d son chateau de Ferney, ce 20juillet, i'J74'' Bentham's first work of any importance appeared in 1776, and took the form of destructive, if somewhat captious, criticism applied to certain doctrines of con- stitutional law recently expounded by Blackstone in his Coinmentaries on the Laws of England. The book was called A Fragment on Government : it consisted, in fact, of a selection detached from manuscripts in course of compilation for the proposed Comment on the Com- mentaries, and was, primarily, intended to refute the doctrine of " original contract," to which Locke and his disciples adhered. While admitting the "enchanting harmony" of his author's numbers, the critic assailed the spirit of hostility shown towards "that Liberty which is Reformation's harbinger." The Tory doc- trine of passive obedience forbade resistance to kingly authority, in any case, on pain of divine displeasure : the object of the Whig fiction of an " original contract," entered into between the monarch and the people, was to combat this doctrine. " The People, on their part, promised tO' the King a general obedience: the King, on his part, promised to govern the People in such a particular manner always as should be sub- servient to their happiness " : such was the alleged com- pact. " The invention was a most unhappy one," wrote > MSS., Brit. Mus., 33,537, ff. 288-9 and 296-7. Cited by Halevy (i. p. 287), who adds: ^'' Uitifluence dti style voliairien nous paratt indiscutabk dans tons les manuscrits francais de Bentham." 36 JEREMY BENTHAM Bentham : " the reasonable use of occasional resistance wanted not the support of any system ; and this system was not capable of supporting anything." ^ He, accord- ingly, declared emphatically against the fiction, asserting that utility was the test and measure of all virtue ; that the obligation to minister to general happiness was an obligation paramount to, and exclusive of, any other. His fundamental axiom was that the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number is the measure of right and wrong ; " deeming that to be useful which, taking all times and all persons into consideration, leaves a balance of happi7tess — " a principle," writes Sir Leslie Stephen, " which to some seemed a barren truism, to others a mere epigram, and to some a dangerous false- hood." ^ As we have already seen {a?ite, p. 30), Bentham informed Dumont that he " took " the principle from Hume; though we find that as early as 1769 he was reading Montesquieu and Helvetius ; and, in old age, he told Dr. Bowring that Montesquieu, Barrington, Beccaria, and Helvetius — but most of all Helvetius — "set him on" the Utility or Greatest Happiness principle. The Fragment further assailed, with singular force and perspicuity, the theory of constitutional government adopted in the Commentaries as the philosophic basis of those ingenious and plausible reasonings whereby the English Constitution is presented to the reader as the perfection of human wisdom.^ In Blackstone's view, this best of all possible governments was a happy blend 1 MSS., Univ. Coll., No. loo; cited Hal, i. p. 416. '^ Bow., i. pp. 17, 227. ^ Ulilitariaiis, i. p. 178. ■* Cf. English Local Government, by Redlich and Hirst (1903), i. p. 70. LIFE IN LINCOLN'S INN 37 of the monarchical, the aristocratical, and the demo- cratical — the several branches being represented by King, Lords, and Commons. " Here, then," says he, " is lodged the sovereignty of the British Constitution ; and lodged as beneficially as is possible for society." He did not even stop short at the assertion — of which Bentham readily disposed — that the three powers, charged with the legislature of the kingdom, are ''en- tirely independent of each other," To this ideal scheme of Mixed Government — acclaimed by Montesquieu, adorned and extolled by Blackstone — the test of " utility " was applied : weighed in the balances, it was found to be wanting ; and Bentham's exposition re- mains a model of forceful reasoning and critical acumen. So early as 1775 Bentham had written the manu- scripts from which Dumont, many years later, compiled the Theorie des Peines ; and in June, 1777, ^^^ '^'^^ ^^"^ still very busy with the general theory of Punishments. " Wilson and I dined with Dr. Fordyce the day before yesterday ; and I read him the physiological part of my Punishments, and got from him some useful corrections."^ During the following spring he published a pam- phlet entitled View of the Hard Labour Bill, exhibiting a special application of the cardinal principles of his theory of punishments to the organisation of a regular penitentiary system, and in particular to the scheme of a Bill then before Parliamicnt, which had been intro- duced by William Eden,- with the approval of Mr. ^ Letter to his brother, 4 June; MSS., Brit. Mus., 33,538, f. 129; cited Hal., i, p. 294. * First Lord Auckland {1744-181^; vide post ^ p, 71. 38 JEREMY BENTHAM Justice Blackstone. The scheme under the Bill com- prised a plan of the architecture and management of a prison for the confinement of convicts, and of this plan Bentham's tract contained a detailed and somewhat severe criticism, though he afterwards maintained that the general tone of his comments was intended to be laudatory. " My delight at seeing symptoms of ever so little a disposition to improvement, where none at all was to be expected, was," said he, " sincere and warmly expressed."^ Under date 5th April, 1778, the follow- ing entry occurs in Jeremiah Bentham's diary : — " Chez jftls Jeremy, when he gave me six copies of his book to send to some of the judges by Thomas."- Jeremy's comment on this entry, fifty years later, was : " In these matters I had no option. It \^2J~, pushing, pushing, push- ing ; none of them took any notice of the book." Mr. Justice Blackstone, however, appears to have sent him a civil note, describing the tract as "ingenious," and adding "that some of the observations had already occurred to the patrons of the Bill, and many more were well deserving their attention." The Bill became an Act in 1779, and provided for the erection of two peni- tentiaries, over which John Howard (1726-90) — who, in Bentham's phrase, died "a martyr after living an apostle" — was intended to have the supervision.^ A site was chosen at Battersea, but the Act was never carried out, and the failure of this scheme led to the ^ Bow., i. p. 255. - The date 1789, given Bow., xi. p. 98, is erroneous. That was the date of publication of the Introduclion, not of the View of the Hard Labour Bill. The Act is 19 Geo. 3, c. 74. ^ Stephen's Utilitarians, i. p. 106. LIFE IN LINCOLN'S INN 39 formation of Bentham's great " panopticon " project which, years afterwards, brought so many disasters upon its author. He was anxious to see some general plan of punishment adopted by which solitary confinement would be combined with labour ; and Howard's revela- tions as to the state of the prisons made his "wish still more earnest." But thirty years after Eden's pro- jected reform — on 23rd November, 1812 — Mr, Justice Chambre told Romilly that the judges frequently sen- tenced men to long terms of transportation — longer than they otherwise would do, or than they thought the crimes deserved — in order to secure the actual trans- portation of the prisoners. It was, said the learned judge, very usual, where the prisoner was sentenced only to seven years' transportation, not to transport him at all, but to keep him for the whole term on board the hulks — a form of punishment which, according to Mr. Justice Bailey, made the prisoners much worse than it found them ! ^ The Societe Economique of Berne had, in 1777, offered a prize of fifty louis for the best plan of a Code of Criminal Law — a further sum of like amount was added by Voltaire and Thomas Hollis.^ Voltaire issued a commendatory pamphlet and, after some delay, Bentham resolved to compete. He set to work about September, 1778, and, in the following March, addressed to the Societe a letter containing the plan of his pro- posed Code.^ He appears, however, to have been too 1 Romilly's Memoirs, iii. p. 71. " Hal., i. pp. 140, 294. 3 MSS., Brit. Mus., 33,538, f. 313-14 ; abstracted Hal., i. p. 295. 40 JEREMY BENTHAM late to take part in the competition ; and, though he con- tinued to work upon the Code, his rate of progress was painfully slow. George Wilson was always ready to apply a much-needed stimulus, but, unfortunately, there was little response : " La raison est" explained Wilson in a letter written in French to Samuel Bentham, " qiiil fait trop de choses a la fois, non qiiil est oisif. II com- mence a ecrire du Code^ juais dans une heure il ecrit sur vingt autres suj'ets, et tout cela pour ne pas perdre des id^es qui se presenteraient sans doute de nouveau, et qiiil a peut-itre deja dans des papiers il y a longtemps ecrits et oublies." ^ At last, in 1780, as a first step towards the publication of the suggested "penal Code," Bentham sent to the Press a number of manuscripts which were printed, but not then published. After an interval of nine years, with " a patch at the end and another at the beginning," ^ they appeared as a separate work under the title oi An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation? On the publication, in 1776, of the Fragment on Govermnent, as the work of an anonymous author, it had attracted considerable notice. The Solicitor-General, Wedderburn (1733-1805), shook his head at the men- tion of the principle of " utility," and declared it to be a dangerous one. The man was a shrewd man, wrote 1 Letter 18 January, 17S0 ; Add. MSS., Brit. Mus. ; cited Hal, i. p. 296. 2 Bentham to Lord Wycombe, letter i March, 1789. (Bow., x. p. 197.) 3 Vide post, p. 94. Why, asks M, Halevy, did Bentham leave the most fundamental portion of his work unprinted ? He answers thus : '"'^ Puree que, dans sa prioccupation de donner au droit la Jot vie d'une sysieme integral, d'un code, il si sent isoli dans son propre pays. Uidie de codifier les lots est une idie coutinentaie, non britannique " (i. p. 153). LIFE IN LINCOLN'S INN 41 Bentham in 1822, and knew well enough what he meant, though at that time I did not. " In a Govern- ment which had for its end in view the greatest happi- ness of the greatest number, Alexander Wedderburn might have been Attorney-General and then Chancellor ; but he would not have been Attorney-General with ;^i 5,000 a year, nor Chancellor with a peerage, with a veto on all justice, with ;^25,ooo a year, and with sine- cures at his disposal, under the name of Ecclesiastical Benefices, besides et c ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 113 Hampstead.^ If I am not there at the time, come on to the White Lion ; inquire your way to Finchley Church, and when you are there for Dalits' s. In the great northern road, about a mile or a mile and a half beyond Highgate, in the way to Barnet you will come to a nursery ground. At the top of the hill, on the left- hand, is a public-house called the Bald-faced Stag ; at the bottom before you come to the Bald-faced Stag is another — the sign, the White Lion I believe. Close to this White Lion is the stile that goes to Finchley Church, which is about a mile distant." Having conceived a strong desire to enter Parliament, Bentham, in August, 1790, addressed a letter of no less than sixty-one pages to Lord Lansdowne, reproaching that nobleman for neglecting to execute a supposed promise to provide the necessary pocket-borough. Some- what tiresome by its prolixity, this letter is yet well worth reading, as exhibiting at once many of the excellences of the writer's earlier style, as well as ^his curiously defective perception of the ways of the world and of the motives which guide an ordinary man of affairs. " That it was a decided offer, which, when coupled with acceptance, makes a promise, I could not suffer myself to doubt. One thing only prevented me from regarding it as an unconditional and immediate one. The only vacancy apparently in view was that which seemed the natural result of your breach with Colonel Barr^.2 I could not tell, from anything you had at that ^ In the earlier letter he warned his brother to take the Hampstead road, "as the other would be unfindable." (Bow., x. p. 248.) - Elected for Chipping Wycombe in 1761, in succession to Lord Shel- burne, who never actually took his seat in the Commons. (Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. p. 118.) M.P. for Calne 1774-90. Vide a)ite, p. 65. I 114 JEREMY BENTHAM time said to me, whether this breach was absolutely irreparable : I could not tell whether, in the event of its being irreparable, some positive engagement or notions of expediency might not induce you to leave him in possession of his seat." A livery, my dear lord — remarked Bentham in a later passage of the letter — should have wages, at least where they have been promised ; and he goes on to relate how the Duke of Somerset, " upon meeting with I don't know what disappointment from George II.," carted his liveries with great parade to the palace and shot them down in the courtyard. " My livery will not be shot down in the courtyard : it shall be laid down silently in the drawer, with a God-bless-him to the master who once chose that I should wear it." Referring to his own qualifications for parliamentary life, the writer urges that, though speaking and writing are very different things, it does not follow, because a man has been thought to write tolerably well, that he should be pronounced incapable of speaking. " Or is it that a man who studies his parliamentary or other business is a pedant, and a pedant is not fit to sit among fine gentlemen ; and altogether the fitter a man is for the business of Parliament, the less fit it is for you to put him there ? This I suspect to be the logic that has overpowered the united force of affection, principles, and justice." To this effusion Lord Lansdowne replied next day with conspicuous restraint and much good feeling, dis- claiming any promise or engagement, and adding a solemn assurance, on his word and honour, that he had ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 115 never made any such offer as was supposed. The same reasons which induced his correspondent to decHne the practice of his profession had appHed — so Lord Lans- downe understood — in large measure to a parHamentary career : a view in which he was strongly confirmed by repeated conversations in which Bentham had stated his happiness to depend on his perfect independence, and declared that his every aspiration was centred in his particular pursuits, " The moment you mentioned Parliament to me in town, you were witness to my astonishment, and it fully explains the forgetfulness you mention, which you attribute to affectation, certainly not one of my failings, . , . Now that I know your wishes, I assure you that it will give me great pleasure if I can contribute to the completion of them ; and that I will spare no pains for the purpose, so far as consists with the engagements I have expressed or implied, which have taken place when I was totally ignorant of your inclinations. . . . I am now only afraid that you will be angry that your sixty-one pages have not, on the one hand, had the effect of subduing or terrifying me ; or, on the other, made me angry ; and that you apprehend them to be thrown away. They have not occasioned to me one moment's irritation, but they are not thrown away. I select with satisfaction the seeds of esteem and regard which I perceive interspersed. . . . ■ " As to ebullitions, I am myself subject to them ; and, though they are more momentary, they are not half so ingenious, and, therefore, not half so pardon- able. You may, then, depend, whatever you say or do, ii6 JEREMY BENTHAM upon my remembering nothing, but how truly I am your affectionate, humble servant — Lansdowne." To this kindly reply the rejoinder could hardly fail to be conciliatory : — " My dear, dear Lord, — Since you will neither be subdued nor terrified, will you be embraced ? These same seeds you were speaking of have taken such root, the ground is overrun with them ; and there would be no getting them out were a man to tug and tug his heart out. So Parliament may go to the devil, and I will take your Birmingham halfpence, and make a low bow, and put them gravely in my pocket, though they are worse than I threw away before." But, though his wrath was turned away, Bentham added somewhat disingenuously, as it would seem — " Offer ? Why no, to be sure it was not. Why, didn't I tell you I only called it so for shortness ? More shame for you that you never made me any. ... It was using me very ill, that it was, to get upon stilts as you did, and resolve not to be angry with me, after all the pains I had taken to make you so." The writer concludes with an inquiry as to when the doors of Bowood would be open to him — provided always that no " fair hands " had barred them against him — and Lord Lansdowne at once replies : " I leave it to you to make the application. If you make it rightly, you will make it unnecessary for me to keep the ladies waiting dinner longer, in order to assure you how affectionately and unalterably I must be always yours." ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 117 On his return to England in the summer of 1791, Colonel Bentham was included in the invitations to Lansdowne House and Bovvood, and was informed by his brother that he would there find ladies prepared to like him, "but proud, and virgins, and the most terrible of prudes." "When these three Dianas get together," complained Bentham to one of them, " the ice becomes even colder ; they are like snow, saltpetre, and sal-ammoniac" ;^ yet, on the 25th June, he writes to Lord Lansdowne : " I wonder what ladies there are at Bowood, and whether there be any part of the summer when a man would stand a chance of seeing them all three. I worship but at one altar : but that, as everybody knows, has three sides to it." — " I shall be in Wiltshire," replied his hospitable friend, " before the end of July, so, if you have any devotion in you, you may acquit yourself of it either in August, September, or October, as you feel disposed towards the three Deities, who have chosen a month apiece in their natural order; and if your brother is not too much captivated with Lady M to endure the simplicity of your religion, he will be very welcome." At the same time the brothers were receiving press- ing invitations to pay a long visit to Antony House, near Plymouth — its owner. Sir Reginald Pole Carew, sharing their interest in chemical and physical research and in the progress of mechanical invention.- The 1 Bow., X. p. 267. Presumably Miss Caroline Vernon, Miss Elizabeth Vernon, and Miss Caroline Fox. ^ Carew, who had met Samuel Bentham at St. Petersburg, was a warm partisan of the Panopticon scheme, and served on the committee which undertook in 1797 (with Charles Abbot as chairman) to report on the plan. ii8 JEREMY BENTHAM first note, dated 14th June, 1791, begins: "Oh! that I had legs like my friend Bentham, said I, when strolling about this evening, then would I never be at rest," and relates that the writer had just established a new ferry from Plymouth Dock to Torpoint, about a mile and a half from his house. The invitation was renewed on the 22nd July. " As I am come a great way, so would I stay a great while to receive you here. ... I take the opportunity of sending you this lettre de cachet^ enjoin- ing you and your brother to render yourselves here instantaneously, upon pain of incurring our high dis- pleasure ; et sur ce je prie Dieu de vous avoir dans sa digne et sainte garde. A vous." Colonel Bentham, who alone was able to avail himself of their friend's hospitality, received, while in Cornwall, a letter from Jeremy, making arrangements for the pro- jected journey to Bowood, which contains, by the way, a curious reference to the ill-starred Panopticon scheme : " Cast about with Carew all sorts of measures that appear to hold out a chance of bringing Panopticon to bear here; — the bribery plans, for example, in the event of its not getting a hearing otherwise. This as from yourself: anything of that sort will come better from an intriguing Russian like you, than from a reformer like your betters." The promised visit to Lord Lansdowne was paid in the late autumn of this same year (1791), and Bentham seems to have greatly enjoyed the diversion, if we may judge from the jocular tone of the letters written after- wards from Hendon to the ladies of Bowood and War- wick Castle. To Lady E. G. (probably Lady Elizabeth ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 119 Greville, then a child of some twelve years) he writes : " Honoured Madam ! — May it please your Ladyship ! I am the young man who was taken from behind the screen by my good Lady Warwick, in the room where the piano- forte is in Warwick Castle, to wait upon your sweet person, and had the honour and happiness of accom- panying you with the violin in one of Signor Bach's sonatas." He trusts her ladyship's condescending goodness will excuse his freedom in addressing her, as he thereby makes bold to do, for, being out of place and turned adrift upon the wide world, he wishes for the felicity of serving her ladyship in the capacity of musical instructor, or in any other of which he should be found capable. " I served the Hon. Miss F[ox], whom belike your ladyship knows — she being, as I am informed, your ladyship's cousin-german, — for ten long years, and hoped to have served her till death, had I not been, with grief be it spoken, forced to quit her service by hard usage. She was a dear lady, and a kind compassionate good lady — as I have heard every- body say, and to be sure so it must be, as everybody says so — to everybody but poor me. To be sure it must have been my own unworthiness, therefore it would be very unreasonable of me to complain." Two days later he makes bold to inform " Honoured Madam " that " my lady " and he had made it up, and she had given him his due and more, too, where- fore he had altered his mind, meaning no offence ; and so on. A few weeks after the date of these letters, the ladies of the Lansdowne family seem to have denied themselves 120 JEREMY BENTHAM to Bentham, and he thereupon addressed to them a lengthy plea or protest which, although written in a lively strain, clearly manifests considerable resentment. " Believe me, you can scarcely be more awake to what may be, or may be thought, propriety on your part, than I am. But, unless some recent aversion be at bottom, I really cannot find out what it is your delicacy, three of you as you are, could have had to apprehend from a man like me. ... Do you fear my becoming troublesome ? correct me, or even discard me at any time. Whatever place I may have enjoyed in your favour, I am, and ever shall be, your debtor for; your grateful and insolvent debtor. The smallest hint from Lord Lansdowne would do it — this would be the gentlest of a thousand modes. . . . Some of you, I doubt, were not chidden quite so severely, some years ago, as you ought to have been, for tearing flies' wings off, or holding them in the candle." The response to this protest was an immediate in- vitation, but the intimacy thus renewed was not of long duration. During the year 1791, Jeremiah Bentham, seeking the restoration of his health which had become much impaired, had gone to reside at Bath, where he died in the month of March, 1792. His property was equitably divided between his two sons, Jeremy's inheritance comprising — in addition to the estate of Queen's Square Place in Westminster — freehold and leasehold property yielding from ^500 to £600 a year, a considerable portion of which, consisting of farms in Essex, had been purchased by his grandfather. Being now in ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 121 possession of ample means, he quitted the farm at Hendon for Queen's Square Place, where, in his garden, was preserved a small house reputed to have been occupied by John Milton during the time in which he acted as secretary for Cromwell. Bowring describes it as " an obscure brick house," partially concealed by a fine sycamore tree in a corner of the garden ; and relates that on the occasion of his first visit to Bentham, his host suddenly stopped in front of the sycamore, laid his walking-stick — " Dapple " — on his guest's shoulders, and cried, " On your marrow-bones, sir ! " at the same time pointing to a slab which bore the inscription, "Sacred to Milton, Prince of Poets." ^ Lord Lansdowne had heard the news of the old man's death and wrote counselling Bentham to visit Paris, " the greatest scene which can come within the human comprehension." After enlarging upon the beauties of a "cottage" which he had just purchased, on the coast lying between Christchurch and Lymington, the writer added, " This cottage is, therefore, quite at your service ; but what is there here to keep pace with all we hear ? — a pavilion ! wines innumerable ; a table so plentiful^ and yet so refined ; such selection of company. . . . Tell your brother whenever he wants to rest his appetites from such profusion, I hope that he knows where he will be extremely welcome." Bentham made answer : " O the tyranny of the aris- tocracy ! Give it a furlong, and it will take a mile — a veto stopped me once from going to Brussels, and now ^ There were barracks adjoining, whence issued — to Bentham's horror — the cries of soldiers being flogged in the yard. 122 JEREMY BENTHAM comes a Lettre de Cachet ordering me to Paris. ... At present, the pavilion is turned into an hospital for re- fugees. Vaughan ^ consigns me a cargo on Saturday. I have obligations of the same sort to Dumont ; and now, while I am writing, comes a note from Romilly, announcing similar ones for to-morrow ; and what after all if I should have to house poor L. Rochefoucauld instead of his housing me ? " ^ Nothing apparently could exceed the cordiality of this correspondence ; yet the same summer witnessed the determination of those intimate relations between Bentham and the Lansdowne family which had sub- sisted for ten long years. The estrangement — for it was in no sense a rupture — was deeply deplored by Bentham, and its cause does not seem to have been placed on record. " Invitations ceasing," he wrote thirty- six years afterwards, " so of necessity did my visits to Lansdowne house. Other incidents such as, if related, could not in any the smallest degree be discreditable to any one party concerned, but which neither time nor space would allow me in any other way so much as to glance at, cannot but have contributed to this ever- lamented effect." Some say that invitations ceased by reason of the divergent views of the two men on current political topics ; by others it is suggested that a coolness arose ^ Benjamin Vaughan ^i75i-iS3S)i a loyal supporter of Lord Shel- burne ; M. P. for Calne 1792 ; emigrated to America 1798. ■^ Rochefoucauld was killed in September of the same year. " Vous deviez etre a diner chez Bentham^'' wrote Dumont to Romilly on llth September, " qiiand on a appris h M. de Liancourt la mort horrible de M. de la Rochefoucauld.''^ (Romilly's Memoirs, ii. p. 6.) ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 123 from Lansdowne's neglect of the Panopticon scheme. May it not be that Bentham, emboldened by accession to comparative wealth, had made advances to Caroline Fox such as proved unacceptable to that lady and rendered habits of close intimacy in some sort em- barrassing? When — a few months after Lord Lans- downe's death in 1805 — there came, as we have seen, a formal proposal of marriage. Miss Fox told Bentham that they could never meet biit as frie7tds, adding significantly : " This I did think that, after a separation of sixteen (? thirteen) years, we might have done with comfort and satisfaction to us both." Little light is thrown upon the subject by the extant correspondence : the few letters addressed to Miss Fox during their early intimacy are written, for the most part, in a strain of banter, though, as their writer himself remarks, the mere turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship, and, for aught we know, of many a kingdom. The point of the allusion is often lost to us for want of the necessary clue, yet some of the persiflage still remains amusing enough, thus : " Do you know why it was Jephthah sacrificed his daughter ? Was it that he wanted to get rid of her? No such thing. . . . Why then ? Because he had said he would ; and, if he had not been as good as his word, he would have been accused of inconsistency, he thought, and of want of perseverance, in all the Jerusalem newspapers." Prudence, said he in another passage, would have con- demned the whole of this letter to the flames ; but, [if ever the time should come, when one J. B. is able to write, or speak, or behave to a Miss F. or a Miss V., 124 JEREMY BENTHAM as he does to others, or as others do to them, it will be a sign that the reign of attractions and fascinations is at an end, and that F. and V. are become no more than A., B., or C. A few passages may, however, be found which suggest that there lay beneath this raillery an undercurrent of deeper feeling ; in one letter, for example, he begs the favour of a note from her in these words : " Tell me, said I, nine days ago, either that I have not offended, or that I am forgiven. Ten days which have elapsed since have lowered my pre- tensions. Tell me now, it would be a kindness done to me, that I have offended and am not to be for- given. . . . My great employment has been hunting for grounds of self-accusation — no very pleasant one while the bushes are beating, and still less when game has been found. If I have offended, has not the punish- ment been sufficient?" Whether our surmise as to the cause of this unfor- tunate estrangement be correct or not, there was manifestly no personal feud, for two years later we find Lord Lansdowne writing : " I have, I assure you, been in a great deal of pain for you, for I am afraid you have got among a set of r s. I have been perpetually thinking how I could be of use to you. The ladies are out of town. Why will not you and your brother come and dine here some Saturday with Romilly and Dumont, when it can do you no harm to talk your affairs over?"^ Lord Wycombe, too, who was staying in Italy during the ^ Letter December I2th, 1794; Bow., x. p. 306. Lord Lansdowne refers to the difficulties which had arisen from the Panopticon scheme. ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 125 autumn of 1795, kept up a friendly correspondence with Bentham, sending him long gossiping letters descriptive of the various incidents of his travel. And many years afterwards, in the summer of 1812, an invitation came from the then Marquis of Lansdowne — the " little Henry " of former days — summoning his old friend to take possession of the apartment at Bowood, which, for a generation, had gone by his name ; but Bentham could not find time to obey the summons, nor did he ever again enjoy the shelter of that hospitable roof. ^ ^ Bow., X. p. 472. CHAPTER VI FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK ON LEGAL REFORM (1793- 1 808) THE history of the unfortunate Panopticon scheme, which disturbed Bentham's peace of mind for more than twenty years, has been ah'eady sketched in brief outline ; and it would be at once tedious and unprofitable to trace in detail the course of his gallant struggles against an adverse fate — the end, as we have seen, was failure and financial disaster. In 18 1 3, it is true, he secured a large sum by way of compensation for his losses. " Oh, how grating — how odious to me is this wretched business of com- pensation !'' he exclaimed: "Forced after twenty years of oppression — forced to join myself to the Baal-peor of blood-suckers." And it was, indeed, a cruel stroke of fortune which compelled him to contribute — as he put it — to the impoverishment of a public he had fondly hoped to benefit by a signal service ; but no less than fifteen years earlier he had been driven to seek refuge in his brother's house. " While others are proving their loyalty by their affluence," he wrote, in despair, to George Rose of the Treasury, " I who have nothing left but loyalty, am reduced to shut up my 126 FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 127 house (the residence of the family for three and thirty years), fortunate in finding a brother's to take refuge in."i However, neither his long absorption in this prison project, nor his constant excursions into French politics, prevented him from making large additions to the swelling piles of manuscript. A few of his productions were printed with a view to immediate publication ; a number were handed over to Dumont or some other disciple, while many still lie in the British Museum or at University College. He engaged in the preparation of tracts on a great variety of subjects ; indeed, the habit of neglecting the Code for passing events of less enduring interest had become inveterate — he was for ever turning down one bypath or another. In December, 1792, he wrote a trenchant pamphlet, in the form of a running commentary upon a charge to the Grand Jury of Middlesex, delivered on the 19th November by Sir William Ashhurst, a puisne judge of the King's Bench. Ashhurst's charge had been printed at the instance of the Constitutional Associa- tion of that time and industriously circulated, but Romilly advised that publication of the pamphlet was not likely to do good and might do harm : " The praise given to the French would, I have no doubt, throw discredit on all the truths it contains." Bentham's references to France and its code, being few in number and capable of ready excision, must have been seized upon by Romilly as a pretext for the suppression of certain forcibly expressed home-truths as to English ^ February 23rd, 1798; Bow., xi. p. 116. 128 JEREMY BENTHAM law and English lawyers, which would, in those days, have rendered publication highly perilous to the author. " Why is it that, in a court called a court of equity, they keep a man his whole life in hot water, while they are stripping him of his fortune ? " inquired the writer : " Take one cause out of a thousand. Ten appointments have I known made for so many distinct days before a sort of judge they call a master, before one of them has been kept. Three is the common course ; and as soon as everybody is there, the hour is at an end, and away they go again. Why ? Because for every appoint- ment the master has his fee. Some of these law places are too good to be left to the gift even of judges : of these, which bring in thousands upon thousands a-year, the plunder goes to dukes and earls and viscounts, whose only trouble is to receive it. In France, no fees to judges, no selling of law places. Is it not this, for one thing, makes lawyers so eager to support Ministers in their schemes for cutting the throats of the French? — the French, who whatever mischief they have done to one another, have done none to us, but love and respect us." The pamphlet was not actually published until 1823, when it appeared under the title of "'Truth v, Ashhurst ; or. Law as it is Contrasted with What it is Said to be." ^ In the following two years Bentham turned his attention to fiscal questions. An essay, printed in 1793 and published in 1795, was entitled, "A Protest against Law Taxes, showing the peculiar mischievousness of all such impositions as add to the expense of appeal to ^ Bow., V. pp. 231-7. FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 129 justice."^ " It is" (wrote the Edinburgh Review on the appearance of a second edition in i8i6)"a work, which, for closeness of reasoning, has not perhaps been equalled, and for excellence of style has never been surpassed ; a chain of political argument, as close and as beautiful as anything which the severest of the sciences presents." Taxes on consumption, the author declared, fall on bodies of men who are quite able to protect themselves, while the oppressed and ruined objects of the taxes on justice are condemned to weep alone in holes and corners. Suitors for justice have no common cause, and scarce a common name. What does a Chancellor of the Exchequer care for them ? They are everybody and nobody. A tax on tobacco falls upon a man immediately and presses on him constantly ; everyone knows whether he means to sell or use tobacco. " A tax on justice falls upon a man only occasionally : it is like a thunder-stroke which a man never looks for till he is destroyed by it. He knows not when it will fall on him, or whether it ever will : nor even whether, when it does fall, it will press upon him most or upon his adversary. He knows not what it will amount to ; he has no data from which to calculate it ; it comes lumped to him in the general mass of law charges : a heap of items, among which no vulgar eye can ever hope to discriminate : an object on which investigation would be thrown away, as comprehension is impossible. Calamities that are not to be averted by thought are ^ Bow., ii. pp. 573-83. Dumont inserted an abstract in an Appendix to Traiti des Prtuves Judiciaires (1823). Merely putting in an answer to a bill is said to have cost, in one case, more than ;i^8oo. (Bow. , ii. p. 583. ) K I30 JEREMY BENTHAM little thought of, and it is best not to think of them. When is the time for complaint ? Before the thunder- bolt is fallen, it would be too soon — when fallen, it is too late."i It was reckoned that the expense of carrying through a common action to recover the most trifling sum could not be less than ^^24 on the plaintiff's side alone ; and at the time when Bentham wrote, a further extension of the taxes on law proceedings was impending. Upon those even who had the wherewithal to pay, such an imposition was grievous enough ; to those who had not, these impolitic taxes were neither more nor less than a denial of justice. Justice shall be denied to no man, justice shall be sold to no man, runs Magna Charta. Denied it is, said Bentham, to nine-tenths of the people; to the remaining tenth it is sold at an unconscionable price — a sale by the State as pernicious, in point of political effect, as one for the benefit of a king or a judge. George Rose displayed great interest in the subject- matter of the pamphlet and affirmed, in the presence of Pitt, that there should be no more law taxes ;2 but we still await the complete fulfilment of his promise. Bentham wrote and sent to Charles Long^ a paper which was shortly afterwards published under the title ^ Bow., ii. p. 581. - Bow., xi. p. 122. George Rose (1744-18 18) was for many years Secretary to the Treasury. ^ 1761-1838. Joint Secretary to the Treasury, afterwards Lord Farn- borough. "The work that was to be done was concocted by Rose — the secret superintendence of the v^orkmen was managed by Long." (Bow., x. p. 308.) FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 131 of " Supply without Burden ; or, Escheat vice Taxation^ being a proposal for the saving of taxes by an extension of the law of Escheat, including strictures on the taxes on collateral succession comprised in the Budget of 7 Dec, 1795." The tract purports to resolve a riddle which its author had propounded to Long in these terms : " What is that pecuniary resource of which the tenth part would be a tax, and that a heavy one, while the whole is no tax, and would not be felt by any- body ? " The answer afforded was, in substance : " An extension of the Law of Escheat whereby property would revert to the State in case an intestate died leaving only distant relations." Bentham proposed to draw the line at degrees beyond which marriage is no longer forbidden ; such relations as did not stand within the prohibited degrees he termed without the pale and proposed to exclude. He maintained that, when once this alteration of the law had come into actual operation, there would be little or no feeling of disappointtne?tt among those excluded from succession ; that, even as the law stood, the distance of relationship, in many cases, precluded expectation on the part of remote kinsmen. Hardship, he contended, depends upon dis- app ointment ; disappointnie^it upon expectation ; expecta- tion upon the dispensations — that is to say, the known dispensations — of the law. He had no wish to impair, in any degree, the liberty of a testator in regard to the free disposal of his estates by will where such dis- position was in favour of children or near relations.^ ' Bow., ii. pp. 585-598, cf. Rom. Mem. ii. p. io6. ^ As an "aid to the operation " of his main proposal, he did, however, suggest a certain limitation of the power of making bequests in favour of persons without the pa/g. (Bow., ii. p. 586.) 132 JEREMY BENTHAM He recognised, moreover, that the operation of succes- sion laws, regulating the devolution of an intestate's property upon members of his family, was in full accord with the principle of " utility," the children being thus maintained in that state of life to which their father's wealth had called them. The daughter of a labourer, left penniless, will go forth to her labour without any sense of disappointment and, perchance, without a murmur of discontent ; not so the rich man's daughter, reared in ease and opulence. But there is a vast difference between children who have shared their father's fortune and the distant relations unearthed by some enterprising attorney to assert a claim of kinship. The exclusion of such relations from a share in their kinsman's riches, while adding to the resources of the State, would inflict no conceivable injury or hardship upon any individual. Supply without burden, ex- claimed Bentham, is victory without blood. But the plan presented grave difficulties ; and it would have been no easy matter — if, indeed, at all possible — (as his friend James Trail ^ shrewdly observed) to convince the public that the suggested mode of raising supplies would be less burthensome or oppressive than a slight tax on collateral succession. The administration and reform of the Poor Laws was one of the many subjects which, at this period, engaged Bentham's attention. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the strict principles of the Eliza- ^ Barrister; M.P. for Oxford; died 1809, "He was," said Romilly, "a very remarkable instance of a man most eminently qualified to have attained the highest honours of the profession . . . but no attorney ever discovered his merits." (Rom. Memoirs, i. p. 434.) FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 133 bethan Poor Law had, by slow degrees, been greatly relaxed. " The labour test prescribed by the Elizabethan law was falling into disuse, and it had become customary to give outdoor relief in money payments to the able- bodied and infirm alike without distinction." ^ Gilbert's Act (1782), intended as a temporary expedient during the distress caused by the American War, enabled assistance to be given, in such parishes as adopted its provisions, without applying the workhouse test.^ No doubt, as sometimes happens at this day, hardship had resulted from the refusal of occasional relief to the industrious poor — relief such as was best suited to meet the needs of the particular case ; but the main — if not the sole — object of the innovations seemed to be the alleviation of existing destitution, and nothing more. Indeed, it has been well observed that the Poor Laws and their administration had come to be regarded by the Government simply as a means to prevent dis- content from developing into despair and revolution.^ It is true that the treatment of the "deserving" poor was receiving some consideration from the public ; but the difficulties of that perplexing problem, still un- solved, were almost ignored by the Legislature. Bentham was one of the first to perceive that the mere giving of relief to the suffering afforded a wholly unsatisfactory basis for the solution of the many diffi- culties that had arisen. There must, he clearly saw, be restrictions framed to check the growth of pauperism by ' English Local Government (Redlich and Hirst), i. p. loi. - Cf. Stephen's Utilitarians, i. p. 93. 2 English Local Government (Redlich and Hirst), i. p. 88. 134 JEREMY BENTHAM a rigorous application of the labour test, by the segrega- tion of such as might be shown to be incorrigible vagrants, and by a sustained effort to improve those susceptible of improvement : the education of the poor he conceived to be of far greater moment than the education of the rich. In the early part of 1797 a Poor Law Bill, which Pitt had introduced in the Commons the year before — on a plan suggested by Mr. Ruggles, a country gentleman of Essex — was criticised in considerable detail by Bentham, who submitted his manuscripts to the promoter of the Bill. Pitt's measure fell through, and its abandonment seems to have been largely due to Bentham's luminous Observa- tions ;^ but it comprised several projects still worthy of passing notice in view of modern political develop- ments. There was, for example, a scheme for supple- menting wages by affording relief to every man who could not earn " the full rate or wages usually given in his Parish," — the " Under- Ability, or Supplemental Wages Clause," as Bentham called it ; another for provid- ing money to paupers to enable the purchase of a cow, for the constant maintenance of which, says Bentham, " about three acres of land is looked upon as necessary." Both these projects were denounced in forcible terms — the one as " equalisation," the other as " sentiment- alism " ; both as unfair and impracticable. The Bill also proposed to create something analogous to Old Age Pensions, by the provision of what Bentham de- scribed as " annuities humanely destined to diffuse a gleam of comfort over the evening of life." ^ The manu- ^ Bow., viii. pp. 440-61. ^ Plans, said he, fof throwing the parish upon the parish. FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 135 script appears to have lain unpublished until 1838, when Edwin Chadwick ^ issued the Observations in the form of a pamphlet for private circulation. But Bentham did not content himself with a mere criticism of other men's proposals. He propounded an elaborate plan for a uniform national system under a non-official board ; suggested the location and detention of beggars and other vagrants in workhouses, unless they could find security ensuring that they would en- gage in labour elsewhere ; and (amongst other innova- tions) advocated — as in the case of the Panopticon — the cotitracf, as distinguished from the stipendiary, system of management, on the duty -and -interest -conjunction principle. The directors of a joint-stock company were, indeed, to act as the central authority. The scheme was first made public in the autumn of 1797, and appeared in Arthur Young's Annals of Agri- culture. A " Succedaneum to Pitt's Poor Bill " it was styled by its author, who (amongst other things) urged the establishment of " Frugality Banks " on lines co- incident, in the main, with those upon which the Legis- lature proceeded on the creation of Savings Banks. His plan — wrote Chadwick forty years later — con- tained the anticipation of those improvements which a long period of trial suggested in the institution of banks of this character ; indeed, the whole system with its deferred annuities and other characteristics may, as Hill Burton has said, be found distinctly set forth in the papers contributed by Bentham to the Annals.- He ^ i8oo-i8go. Chief Commissioner for Poor Law, 1S33 ; knighted, 1S89 ! - Cf. Bow., viii. pp. 361-431 ; Tracts on Poor Law; and Paitper Mantigement, 136 JEREMY BENTHAM also urged that, as a further encouragement to frugality, facilities should be afforded for the transfer of small sums of money from place to place such as are now enjoyed under the modern system of post office orders.^ Romilly gives us a glimpse of Bentham "locking himself up at Hendon" to complete his Civil Code; but, during the last tw^o or three years of the eighteenth century, v^^e find him engaged on a curious variety of topics. His friend Patrick Colquhoun," a police magis- trate, who had been a Glasgow trader, was commissioned to report on the best means of increasing the efficiency of the Police ; and, with Bentham's assistance, a Bill was prepared, which took the form of the Thames Police Act, 1800. At the same time a scheme was elaborated for the prevention of forgeries,^ and sugges- tions were made for the manufacture of a sort of ice- house, or " Frigidarium," for the purpose of preserving fruit, vegetables, and other fermentable substances. In November, 1800, a long letter, written by Bentham under the signature of " Censor," appeared in Cobbett's Peter Porcupine, It related to the method of taking the census, and was addressed to Charles Abbot, who had introduced his "Population Bill" into the House of Commons. Many of the hints contained in this letter were acted upon, and the suggested improvements adopted in obtaining the census returns. Proposals were also made for the conversion of Stock into An- ^ Bow., viii. p. 417. ' 174J-1820. Author of the Treatise on the Police oj the Metropolis ; ' ' he hit the mark by pushing in guart, where learning would have missed it by pushing in tierce," said Bentham. * It is said that between February, 1800, and April, 1801, more than one hundred persons were executed in England for forgery. FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 137 nuity Notes — a project which Bentham contended was quite free from risk, would benefit small holders and prove superior to the Exchequer Bill system. The treatise embodying these proposals is styled — ''A Plan for savitig all trouble and expense in the transfer oj stock, and for enabling the proprietors to receive their dividends without powers of attorney, or attendance at the Bank of England, by the conversion of Stock into Note Annuities."'^ The author — who was of opinion that Government ought to have the monopoly of Paper Money as well as of Metallic Currency — proposed that the State, after the manner of private banks, should issue notes for small sums ; the notes issued by the State to carry interest daily from the date of issue. This essay was printed in part, and the whole scheme sub- mitted to George Rose on the 3rd January, 1801. In the year 1802 Dumont at last gave to the world the result of his labours on the Benthamic manuscripts. The Traite's de Legislation passed through the press in the spring, and was published at Paris in June, three months after the Treaty of Amiens. " It is very enter- taining to hear Bentham speak of it," wrote Romilly to Dumont : " He says that he is very impatient to see the book, because he has a great curiosity to know what his own opinions are upon the subjects you treat of." 2 Dumont himself was confident of success, and declared that the author of the Vue Generale dun Corps Complet de Legislation would certainly be placed at an infinite distance above all who had preceded him. ' Bow,, iii. pp. 105-53 ; cf. letters to Sir F. Baring, x. p. 340. 2 Mem., ii. p. 75. 138 JEREMY BENTHAM The work appeared in three volumes, which con- tained — " Principes du Code CiviV^ and '■' Principes du Code Penal" '^ the latter code being subdivided into four parts — " Des Dalits," ^ " Re'medes politiques contre le inal des Dalits'' * " Des Peines" " Des Moyens indirects de pr^venir les Dalits." ^ There were published in this treatise, in addition to the two Codes, " Principes de Legislation''^ " Vue Ge'nirale d'un Corps Coinplet de Ligis- lationl''' '''Promulgation des Lois, etc.,"^ '' De V Influence des Terns et des Lieux en matiere de Legislation""^ " Code Penal — Titre Particulier"'^^ and a Memoir upon the Panopticon scheme.^^ It will thus be seen that Bentham's survey covers a field of vast expanse ; and, in truth, many a salutary modification of our system of jurisprudence may be traced to the ideas enshrined and developed in these volumes. His conclusions, explained Dumont, apply alike to a monarchy or a republic : he does not say to the people, " Change your rulers," but to the rulers, " Study the remedy for the ills that afflict your people." He rent asunder, wrote Bulvver Lytton, the fantastic and illogical maxims on which technical systems were founded, he derided their absurdities and exposed the flagrant evils which in practice they pro- ^ Vol. ii. pp. 1-236 ; Bow.,i. pp. 297-358. "^ Vol. ii. pp. 239-434, and vol. iii. pp. 1-200. •' Adaptations from the Introduction (1789). ^ Bow., i. pp. 367-86. ^ lb., pp. 533-78. ^ Vol. i. pp. I-140. ■^ lb., pp. 146-370; Bow., iii., 154-210. * Vol. iii. pp. 275-301 ; Bow., i. pp. 158-63. ^ Vol. iii. pp. 325-95 ; Bow., i. pp. 172-94. ^" Vol. iii. pp. 302-321 ; Bow., i. pp. 164-168. ^' Vol. iii. pp. 209-75. FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 139 duced. Perhaps his grandest achievement, Lytton continued, was " the example which he set of treating law as no peculiar mystery, but a simple piece of practical business, wherein means were to be adapted to ends, as in any of the other arts of life." ^ No part of the work is more luminous, or possesses greater living interest, than the author's enunciation of the general principles of punishment. These principles were borrowed in some measure from Helv6tius and Beccaria, and nowadays are commonly accepted ; yet it needed no little courage to advance them when the theft of a chicken from an enclosed yard was a capital offence, and there was everywhere a strong disposition towards the view of Sir Leicester Dedlock's relative : " Far better hang wrong fellow than no fellow at all." Romilly, in his charming diary, relates a striking instance of the prevalent savagery : One evening in June, 1808, after the introduction of his Bill to abolish the death penalty for pocket-picking, while he was standing at the bar of the House, a young man, the brother of a peer, came up to him and, breathing in his face the nauseous fumes of an undigested debauch, stammered out, " I am against your Bill ; I am for hanging all." Romilly was confounded, sought to find some excuse for him, and observed that he supposed the young man meant that, as the certainty of punish- ment afforded the only prospect of suppressing crimes, the laws, whatever they were, ought to be executed. " ' No, no ! ' was the reply ; ' it is not that. There is no ^ Article in England and tht English^ 1833, by Bulwer Lytton, assisted by J. S. Mill; reproduced in Mill's Early Essays, by Gibbs (1897), at p. 390. I40 JEREMY BENTHAM good done by mercy ; they only get worse. I would hang them all up at once."' Even Bentham himself regarded the conviction of an innocent man with an indifference which is somewhat surprising. " He calmly weighs in his balance," wrote an Edinburgh reviewer, " the inconvenience of condemning the innocent against that of suffering an offender to escape." ^ Montesquieu,^ a magistrate by profession, had adhered to the ancient doctrine of retaliation — an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. He regarded it as obvious and indisputable that the penalty for stealing goods should be the forfeiture of other goods. He opined that " when one intelligent human being has inflicted injury on another, the former deserves {me'rite) to suffer a like injury." But Bentham saw clearly enough that the use of this word " mente" — this talk of an offence as "de- serving" punishment, as "being equivalent" to the penalty — could lead only to error and confusion. Fol- lowing Beccaria,^ he denounced, as a false principle that had long reigned a tyrant throughout the vast province of penal law, this "reasoning by antipathy," as he phrased it : for it is but an irrational subjection to the blind impulses of anger and revenge which have in all ages obscured the vision of judges and legislators.* Penal ^ Vol. xl. p. 179. - idSgiysj. Prhident a vioriier in the Parliament of Bordeaux. ^ n35-n94' His treatise on Crimes and Punishments was published in 1764. •* 7>azV/j (Principes de Legislation), i. p. 122. The Theorie des Peines, in which the matter is further discussed, was declared by Romilly to possess "very extraordinary merit," and to be likely to make "a very deep impression." When it appeared in 181 1 a reviewer, referring to Bentham's treatment of this subject, wrote : " It has been impossible for us to give even a specimen of the rich vein ot illustration which runs through the FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 141 legislation before Bentham's days, said Sir Samuel Romilly, resembled what the science of physic must have been before physicians knew the properties and effects of the medicines they administered. It is the effects we must assess and ever keep steadily in view ; the effects alike of the wrong done and of the penalty proposed. The benefit of mankind by the repression of crime is the ultimate object of our penal codes, and this must not be lost sight of while pursuing the immediate object, which is the punishment of the individual culprit. The real end to be attained is the protection of society, not the torment of an offender. From the point of view of " utility,"" indeed, all punishment is in itself an evil, for every punishment involves the infliction of pain, and pain is an evil. It would therefore be unwise to attempt the enforcement of every moral precept by means of some prescribed penalty, since the enactment of a fixed and positive punishment for a noxious action of slight and varying importance, or of a private nature, might well create a greater evil than the one sought to be suppressed. " Penal law," said Bentham, " can only be applied within certain limits." Its power, for example, extends only to palpable acts or omissions susceptible of manifest proof: or there may, perchance, be an insuperable difficulty in subjecting the offence to such clear and precise defini- tion as would guard effectually against misapplication whole of the original treatise. Examples are never wanting from the laws and the history of all ages and nations to explain and to enforce the general positions. The work in this department has a manifest superiority over Montesquieu's celebrated performance." {Edin. Rev., vol. xxii. p. 27.) 142 JEREMY BENTHAM of the law, as in the case of rudeness or ingratitude. Again, the fear of detection may be so slight as to raise but little expectation of punishment in future instances of similar delinquency, as in the case of illicit commerce between the sexes, unattended by any act of violence or public indecency. La legislation, en un mot^ a bien le tnhne centre que la morale, niais elle n'a pas la mime circonference} On the other hand, a crime wrought for but small individual profit may entail widespread suffering ; and the punishment, albeit attended by pain to the de- linquent, must be brought into correspondence with the aggregate resulting effects, regard being had only to the general advantage. Moreover, an offence already committed may concern a single individual alone, yet the commission of similar offences may affect all men. V affaire pass^e n'est gu'un point, mais Vavenir est infini? Punishment, then, while it must not be in excess of that which is absolutely necessary, should, so far as may be, suffice for the prevention of similar offences. In many cases, after the commission of an offence, it will be found impossible to redress evil already wrought, but it is always possible to get rid of the inclination to repeat the offence ; for, howsoever great may be the " profit " resulting from crime, the " pain " of punishment may always be made to preponderate. The " profit " of a crime is the force which urges a man to delinquency ; the " pain " of the punishment is the force employed to restrain him from it. We must then see to it that the second of these forces is the greater, otherwise the ' Traitis, i. p. 98. '■' Ibid,, ii. p. 292. FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 143 crime will be committed— that is to say, committed by those who are restrained by the laws, and not by such tutelary motives as benevolence, religion, or honour. Appropriate legal punishments, says Bentham, are services imposed on those who undergo them for the good of society ; and regarding them in this light, one speaks of the punishment allotted to a criminal as a debt which he owes and must needs discharge. But were public opinion to tolerate the exaction of a most savage and inhuman penalty, it is all important to remember that the mere risk of incurring even such a punishment would fail to operate as a complete de- terrent — the Nemesis is too uncertain to restrain those helpless, hopeless wretches from whom the ranks of crime are, in the main, recruited. It is, therefore, not merely on the restrictive action of the sanctions, in relation to this or that particular offence, that dependence must be placed. We must seek to eliminate, so far as may be, the criminal pro- pensities of the individual, to induce and encourage habits of thought alien from crime ; and, in this way, to weaken or destroy the potency of seeming tempta- tions. While advanced age will not yield to new im- pressions, youth may be moulded like wax ; many crimes are not deeply rooted in the heart — they spring up from seduction, example, and, above all, indigence and hunger. Some, again, are but sudden acts of vengeance which do not imply habitual perversity.^ When the angel Gabriel prepared the prophet Mahomet for his mission, the story goes that he took out of ' Bow., i. p. 500. 144 JEREMY BENTHAM his heart a black spot which contained the seed of evil. Unhappily, says Bentham, this operation is not practicable in the hearts of ordinary men ; but while the punishment is being undergone, refonnative in- fluences may be brought to bear upon the delinquent, he may be induced or compelled to engage in work — the mode of treatment being adapted to his mental or moral condition — and so out of the evil of the punishment there will spring positive good, a gain alike to the offender and to society at large. Thus the problem resolves itself into a particular case for the application of the general principles of the " moral arithmetic," and we see how these ideas of punishment became fundamental to the Benthamic penal code. The theory, as we have said, was largely borrowed from Beccaria. In what, then, does the originality of Bentham consist ? It consists, as M. Haldvy points out, in a superior faculty of logical arrangement destined to make him one day master of a school of thinkers. Beccaria, who sketched the ideas in outline, did not approach Bentham either in rigorous definition of the principles or in the systematic develop- ment of their far-reaching consequences. ^ Bentham, says Professor Montague, grasped with astonishing firmness axioms which Beccaria had merely indicated with the light touch of an essayist.^ ' Hal., i. p. 100 ; and cf. Edin. Rev., vol. ii. p. 28. " In England the philosophical element of the movement {i.e. abolition of capital punish- ment) was nobly represented by Bentham, who, in genius, was certainly superior to Beccaria, and whose influence, though perhaps not so great, was also European." (Lecky's Rationalism in Eie, vol. i. p. 349.) " Fragment on Government^ p. 32. FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 145 Barbarous as were the provisions of our criminal code at this period, it is, perhaps, worth while to note that they had become largely inoperative. Judges and jurors alike rebelled against a too rigorous enforcement of the law; as is ever the case, any attempt to exact a penalty grossly disproportioned to the offence served only to shock the general sense and to excite a spirit of compassion with the accused. Between 1803 and 1 8 10 great numbers of prisoners were found not guilty and discharged ; and, though no less than 1,872 persons were sentenced to death for petty thefts and divers small offences against property, one only of those sentences was, in fact, executed. Bentham was among the first to denounce this condition of affairs, and to point out that the certainty of a comparatively slight penalty would prove a far more efficient check than the possibility of a most extravagant punishment. The more certain we can make the punishment, the less may its severity be : " Plus on pent augmenter la certitude de la peine, plus 07i pent en dimifiuer la grandeur."'^ Nor should we omit to relate how Bentham insisted that acts of cruelty to animals must be classed among crimes or offences cognisable by law ; the word crime, said he, being incurably indistinct and ambiguous, is the word to be employed on all rhetorical occasions. He foretold the coming of a time when humanity shall stretch her mantle over everything which breathes ; yet it was half a century before the Legislature of his own country made any real attempt to recognise its funda- mental duty in this regard, and, though a further halting ' Traill, ii. p. 387, L 146 JEREMY BENTHAM step was taken in 1900, the prophecy is, to-day, far from complete fulfilment. Many an act of gross bar- barity still finds no place in the category of punishable offences. In Bentham's view, men may be allowed to kill, or inflict pain on, animals with a determinate object, if that object be beneficial to mankind and there is a reasonable prospect of its accomplishment ; but no man should be suffered to torment them. Why, he asked, should the law refuse its protection or deny its aid to any sensitive being? With characteristic vigour he urged the suppression of all forms of wilful cruelty, " soit par maniere (T amusement, soit pour flatter la gourjnandise."^ Under the guise of "sport" to beguile the leisure of the rich or idle, cock-fighting, bull-baiting, fox - hunting, coursing, all entail the most exquisite suffering and the agonies of a prolonged and painful death. Even the milder pursuits of shooting and fishing are, at times, attended by incidents such as clearly reveal the presence of some degree of brutality, or, at least, a marked absence of reflection on the part of those who engage in them. Nor should the Legislature, he contended, restrict itself solely to prohibitive decrees : the death of animals may be rendered less painful by the adoption of many simple processes well worthy of being studied and of becoming " un objet de Police" If, moreover, humanity to animals — the sentiment of benevolence — were inculcated in the minds of children, would it not tend towards the prevention of crimes of violence, " on du moins de prevenir cette depravation ^ Traites, iii. p. 124. FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 147 brutale qui, aprh s'etre jouie des animaux, a besom en croissant de s'assouvir de douleurs huniaines"}'^ On the 15th June, 1809, the House of Commons was engaged in rejecting a Bill which proposed to make it an offence maliciously to wound horses, cattle, sheep, or swine. During the course of the debate, Sir Samuel Romilly remarked that nothing could be more just than the observation of a distinguished painter (Hogarth), who, beyond all others of his profession, had devoted his talents to the cause of morality : the artist, in tracing cruelty through its different stages, had represented it as beginning with delight in the sufferings of animals and ending in the most savage murder. Cruelty to animals, observes Lecky, naturally indicates and promotes a habit of mind which leads to cruelty towards men, Dumont's hopes of success were in large measure realised, and on the appearance of the Traites, Bentham rapidly acquired renown, " You will be pleased," wrote Lord Lansdowne to Lord Holland, " that Dumont and Bentham's book is likely to make its way and lay the foundations of a new science in Legislation." - For the purpose of introducing Charles Fox, Dr. Parr had taken him to the author's door. Writing to complain that Bentham abruptly " ran away " to avoid the introduction, Parr added : " I am sure you would not have been sorry to hear what passed between him (Fox) and myself about your mighty talents, your ' Traith, i. p. 107. Bentham had already referred to this subject in the Introduction (1789), Bow., i. pp, 142-3. In 1798 was published the second edition oi Pity's Cifty intended to excite "the compassion of youth for the 'Animal Creation.'" - April 13th, 1803; Y'lizmdiMxicQ! s Shelbtirne, iii. p. 569. 148 JEREMY BENTHAM profound researches, your important discoveries, your irresistible arguments." Sir Frederick Eden ^ declared that Dumont had collected a glorious harvest of Bentham's sowing : " If life be, in truth, divided into pain and pleasure," said he, " Bentham has certainly much increased our stock of the latter." Romilly, the overworked lawyer, who bore the marks of toil *' but too conspicuously in his face," talked of translating the book into English. " To do him justice," said Bentham, " I mean in point of sanity — it must have been rather in the way of velUite than volition." " Anne told you, I believe," wrote Romilly to Dumont on the 31st May, 1803, "that there is no mention of you in the third number of the Edinburgh Review. I don't think you have any reason to be sorry, unless you think it would be of use to your book to have it abused. The editors seem to value themselves principally upon their severity." ^ How- ever, the criticism, which ultimately appeared in the seventh number (April, 1804), though adverse, cannot fairly be described as hostile. The reviewer^ maintained that the judgment of the legislator should be directed rather by the common impressions of morality, the vulgar distinctions of right and wrong " as ^ Nephew of the first Lord Auckland ; author of History oj the Labouring Classes, etc. ; organiser of the Globe Insurance Office. Died 1809. ^ Romilly's Memoirs, ii. p. 104. In January, 1798, Romilly had married one Anne Garbett, whom he had met at Bowood. ' Presumably Thomas Thomson : see Metnoirs of Francis Horner, i. p. 236. Thomson [1^68-18^2) was appointed deputy clerk-register in 1806, but removed in 1839: {National Dictionary of Biography.) FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 149 to which all men are agreed," than by the " oracles of utility." He took leave of the publication " with some feelings of fatigue," but was, nevertheless, so obliging as to lay down his pen " with sentiments of the greatest respect for the talents of the author." Dumont, who had merely heard rumours of these strictures, wrote to Bentham : " I am charmed that the lessons of these young people have come in time to prevent me from continuing my follies. I only just wait to read what they say, before I throw all your MSS. into the fire. What remains of life will be tranquil." ^ Within ten years of the appearance of this criticism, the Edinburgh referred to the Traites as that " admirable volume " ; ^ and, indeed, had declared, as early as 1809, that Bentham had in that treatise done more to elucidate the true grounds of legislative interference than all the jurists who had gone before him.^ The book had an immediate and considerable sale in Russia. The Empress Dowager expressed a wish that Dumont, who was paying a visit to St. Petersburg in 1803, should be presented to her, and orders were given for the preparation of a careful rendering of the Traites into the Russian tongue. " I desire for my country," wrote General Sabloukoff, " the possession of those truths which the beneficent genius of Bentham has created for the whole human race. Russia wants ' Eow., X. p. 415. • Vol. XX. p. I. ■^ Vol. XV. p. loi. See the review, by James Mill, of Bexon's Theorie de la Legislation Penale : Jeffrey had struck out all Mill's references to Bentham, but himself inserted this declaration: (cf. Bow., x. p. 452). Brougham characterised the praise as "excessive " and " not very consistent with the former article.'" {Ibid., p. 454.) I50 JEREMY BENTHAM laws. It is not only Alexander the First who desires to give her a code — Russia herself demands one. . . . Let Jeremy Bentham prepare it ! " ^ A large number of copies were sold in the Spanish Peninsula, where trans- lations of several of Bentham's works appeared ; ^ indeed in 1822, the Cortes of Portugal decreed the rendering of his works into Portuguese at the expense of the nation.^ Blanco White, editor of the Espafiol, bore testimony to the effect produced by the writings in Spain : " Though thwarted in their circulation by prejudice and ignorance, they were looked for and read with avidity ; they were mentioned as a leading rule for the amendment of our laws, when a committee was appointed to that purpose, during the Central Junta." ^ In Italy, Greece, and even South America, Bentham's books rapidly became known, and in 18 10 he wrote — with a vanity almost childlike — from the " Hermitage," as he styled his house in Queen's Square Place : " Now at length, when I am just ready to drop into the grave, my fame has spread itself all over the civilized world ; and, by a selection only that was made A.D. 1802, from my papers by a friend, and published at Paris, I am considered as having super- •^ To General Bentham, 5th February, 1804 ; Bow., x. p. 413. Admiral Modvinoff wrote: "I am laying up a certain sum for the purpose of spreading the light which emanates from the writings of Bentham." {Ibid., p. 419.) "^ Cf. Borrow's Bible in Spain, ii. p. 276, An Alcalde, whom the author met in 1837, spoke of " the grand Baintham who has invented laws for all the world. . . . The most universal genius which the world ever produced — a Solon, a Plato, a Lope de Vega. ... I possess all the writings of Baintham on that shelf, and I study them day and night." ^ Bow., xi. p. 20. * Ibid., x. p. 456. FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 151 seded everything that was written before me on the subject of Legislation." ^ And, in truth, the boast had very solid foundation. It was avowed, in the none too friendly pages of the Edinburgh Review, that his reputa- tion had become " thoroughly European," though he had been left almost " a stranger in his father's house." While his fame and the knowledge of his great qualities have been growing abroad, " we have been amusing ourselves," wrote the reviewer, " like the valet-de-chambre of a hero, with his foibles and peculiarities at home. . . . This singular state of exotic reputation (a sort of juriconsultal bishopric in partibus transmarinis) is not, however, a matter of accident or jealousy. Strange as in England it may sound to ordinary ears, and even ridiculous to legal ones, they have got an idea on the Continent that there is such a thing as the Philosophy of Legislation." - In 1805 Lord Lansdowne had died at the age of sixty- eight, and in the same year, as we have already seen, Bentham made an offer of marriage to Caroline Fox. These proposals were rejected in terms that left no doubt as to their finality ; but the rebuff administered to him in no way impaired Bentham's energy or diverted him from his great purpose. So far from being driven to " muse and fold his languid arms," he was soon engrossed in a conspicuously prosaic subject, to wit, " Reform of the Scottish Judicature." The Edinburgh Review had published an article by Jeffrey, in which the great Scotch lawyer speaks of Bentham as a profound ^ Letter to his cousin Mulford who "had a notion that whatever was in print was a lie." (Bow., x. p 458). •^ Vol. xlviii. p. 458. 152 JEREMY BENTHAM and original thinker, cites lengthy passages from the Draught of a Plan for the Organisation of fudicial Establishments, and expresses a hope that he may be induced to write on the subject of the proposed reform of the Court of Session.^ His assistance in the matter was, in fact, sought by Lord Grenville, apparently on the suggestion of Lord Henry Petty ; and a series of papers was soon prepared in vigorous denunciation of the astounding condition of affairs then prevailing in Scotland — the enormous expense, the great delay, the elaborate treatises laid before the judges in the form of pleadings compared with which the declara- tions and pleas of an English court seemed simplicity itself^ How, asks Bentham, shall we extract a simple system of pleading ? " Comyns, title pleader, shall be taken into the laboratory. It shall be thrown into the roasting furnace ; the arsenic, 60 per cent, will fly off in fume ; it shall be consigned to the cupel ; the lead, 30 per cent, will exude out and repose for everlasting in the powder of dead men's bones. The golden button, 10 per cent, shall be gathered up and made the most of"^ More than one bold attempt, undertaken at this period, to obtain legal reforms of the highest conse- quence is connected inseparably with the name of Samuel Romilly. Some of the attempts met with partial success, and Bentham justly claimed to share in the glory associated with these enterprises — in par- ^ Vol. ix. p. 462. Jeffery {1773-18^0) became a judge of the Court of Session in 1834. '^ Bow., V. pp. 1-60. ° Ibid., p. 28. FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 153 ticular, with the projects for tempering the severity of an inhuman penal system. Bentham's influence upon his friend was both direct and profound. ^' Jamais filiation d'ide'es," says M. Halevy, " 7te fut plus facile a suivre!''^ Manuscript writings, rough fragments, printed proofs were all alike at Romilly's service. " Having given to the matter," wrote Bentham, "that softening which his temper suggested and policy required, illustrating and enriching it with such facts as his experience had brought within his observation, Romilly made it up into one of those pamphlets which bear and do so much honour to his name." ^ In the year 1808 Bentham made the acquaintance of James Mill, the historian of British India, who at this time resided in Stoke Newington, whence he came with some frequency to dine at Queen's Square Place, usually calling on his way to spend an hour with Francis Place at his shop near Charing Cross. The enormous influence which, towards the end of his life, Bentham exerted upon liberal thought in England was, says Mr. Graham Wallas, largely due to his constant association with a number of able men, some of whom always enjoyed the " most complete intellectual in- timacy " with him and with each other : " Of these men the ablest was James Mill."^ The summer months were spent at Barrow Green, about half a mile from Oxted. Bentham speaks of the Manor Farm where he lodged as " a very pleasant abode ^ Hal., ii, p. 280. "^ MSS., Univ. Coll., No. 132; cited Hal., ii. p. 369. ^ Life 0/ Place, p. 65. Mill was born in 1773 and died in 1836. 154 JEREMY BENTHAM in warm weather," standing in a place that was once a park and still bore a " park-like appearance " : it was in the possession of the tenant for life, a widow whose first husband (one Hoskins) had been the lord of Barrow Green and other manors. She was not only her own housekeeper but her own cook — and a good cook too, taking " great pride and delight " in the culinary art. One of the two halls which this ancient homestead boasted was hung around with the horns of deer chased in former days on the neighbour- ing hills. Outside the house, a spreading lawn stretched away to the shrubbery ; and beyond, a long straight avenue of chestnut trees, which Bentham called "the cloisters," led down to the margin of a lake some seven acres in extent and well stocked with various kinds of fish. The smooth surface of the water was broken here and there by clusters of reeds and bulrushes ; there was an island in the centre, and the banks were skirted by clumps of trees and tangled thickets. At some distance from the house, on the further side of the public road, was a large kitchen garden protected by walls on every side, but the fruit trees had in later years been much neglected. " About half a mile beyond the lake," wrote Bentham, " rises a range of hills, very bold, with here and there chalk pits, here and there woods with pleasant walks in them and very extensive prospects, exhibiting gentlemen's seats in abundance." ^ To this old manor house Bentham invited James Mill and his family in the summer of 1809, when the intercourse between the two men gave rise to a close ' Bow., X. p. 426. FIFTEEN YEARS' WORK 155 friendship, and produced on the mind of the older philosopher an impress comparable, in extent and en- durance, with that received more than a quarter of a century earlier amidst the memorable scenes of the first visit to Bowood. We shall see, for example, in the next chapter, how he was straightway drawn towards current politics and engaged in warfare which lasted throughout the remaining years of his life. Mill, on his side, became Bentham's favourite disciple, and wrote the history of British India under the influence of his friend's writings — an influence, says Mr. Justice Stephen, traceable in the most unmistakable manner whenever reference is made to any subject connected with law or lawyers.^ ^ History of the Criminal Law ^ iii. p. 297. CHAPTER VII BENTHAM BECOMES A POLITICIAN IN April, 1807, Grenville stoutly refused to comply with George III.'s demand for a pledge against any concession to the claims of the Catholics. The King, thereupon, expelled his Minister and dissolved Parlia- ment. During the general election following upon the dissolution, remarkable scenes were witnessed in the City of Westminster, where a notable democratic victory was gained by Sir Francis Burdett. Grown weary of the " double imposture " of Whigs and Tories, Sir Francis had, in the preceding autumn, withdrawn from his costly struggle in Middlesex. " What * the best of kings ' and ' the best of patriots ' have done for them- selves" said he, " we know and feel ; what further they will do for us we can only conjecture." ^ But neither the duel between Burdett and the candi- date selected to " run " with him, nor the turmoil of a fifteen days' poll, disturbed, in the slightest degree, the "hermit" of Queen's Square Place, who pursued the even tenor of his way absorbed in schemes for the reformation of the Scotch Judicature. The recluse did not, however, long m.aintain this attitude of indifference ^ Cf. Wallas' Life of Francis Place, p. 44. 156 BECOMES A POLITICIAN 157 towards current politics : a striking change was brought about, largely through the influence of his friend James Mill, then only thirty-five years of age, and full of zeal and energy. The two men, it is true, differed greatly in disposition and mental equipment ; the younger was a metaphysician, the elder was not. " Bentham, though punctilious and precise in the premises he advances," wrote Bulwer Lytton, " confines himself, in that very preciseness, to a few simple and general principles. He seldom analyses — he studies the human mind rather after the method of natural history than of philosophy. He enumerates — he classifies the facts — but he does not account for them." ^ Yet Mill, despite his metaphysics, was a pronounced politician, an active and advanced Whig, a writer for the Edinburgh with strong views in favour of the emancipation of the Catholics ; he was, moreover, eager in defence of the liberty of the Press, at that time gravely imperilled by the action of judges of the Ellenborough type.^ It was not long before Bentham — embittered, as some suggest, by the neglect of his Panopticon scheme — became a redoubtable prot- agonist of the school of Mill, wrote to Cobbett for information to be used in a " work on the subject of libel," and printed a vigorous treatise entitled. Elements of the Art of Packing as applied to Special furies : Par- ticularly in Cases of Libel Law. ^ As the book was passing through the press, the alarmed bookseller hesi- ' England and the English (1833) ; cited in John Mill's Early Essays, by Gibbs, at p. 408. '^ " Ellenborough's eloquence," said Bentham, "is commanding: it is fierce and atrocious, the object of my abomination." ^ Bow., V. pp. 61-186; first published 1821. 158 JEREMY BENTHAM tated to proceed, and suggested as a less offensive title, " Perils of the Press," while Romilly begged the author not to make it public : " I do most sincerely and anxiously entreat you not to publish it." Sir Samuel had no doubt that both the author and the printer would be prosecuted. Even a friendly attorney-general would probably have found himself under the necessity of prosecuting, from the representations which would be made to him by the judges ; but Gibbs^ — urged Romilly — would want no such representations, and would say that not to prosecute such an attack on the whole administration of justice would be a dereliction of his duty : " Recollect what you say yourself — that it is much easier to attack King George than King Ellenboro', etc." 2 And, indeed, the Chief Justice and his fellows were assailed in such terms that conviction would have been as certain as prosecution. Not only money and power, but dignity and respect, being secured by office, the chief object of solicitude and pursuit remaining to the judge — declared the author, in a comparatively mild passage — is ease :'^ "But, so far as jury-trial is con- cerned, the ease of the judge is as the obsequiousness of thejury. These volunteers, so different from some others, being by the very nature of their situation, and without need of exertion anywhere, kept in a state of constant preparation and established discipline, waiting and wanting for nothing but the word of command, and drilled into that sort and degree of intelligence, which is ^ Vicary Gibbs (17^1-1820) was Attorney-General from 1807 to 1812. Mill, Brougham, Burdett, Miss Fox, and a few others received copies of the book, but it was not published until 1821. - Letter of January 31st, 1810; Bow., x. p. 450. ^ Bow., v. p. 90. BECOMES A POLITICIAN 159 sufficient for the understanding it, labour^ on the part of the judge, is reduced to its minimum, ease raised to its maximum . . . The /ove of ease is too gentle a passion to be a very active one : but what it wants in energy it makes up in extent : for there is neither cause nor judicatory in which there is not place for it. As to vengeance, it is only now and then, and by accident, that it comes upon the stage of judicature; but, when it does, such is its force, that, in the character of a sinister interest, no interest to the action of which that situa- tion is ordinarily exposed can compare with it. For the exhibition of the triumphs of this tyrant passion, and of the sacrifices made to it, the Kin^s Bench is, by patent, the great and sole King's theatre ; the liberty of the press, its victim ; libel laiv, the instrument of sacri- fice." Though Mill and Romilly were, at this period, Bentham's most intimate friends, he held intercourse with many other active politicians. Young Henry Brougham,^ already a prominent figure in public life, is represented as " intriguing " for invitations to dinner at the " Hermitage," and it was intended to secure for him, if possible, one of the seats at Westminster in case it should be vacated by the death of Cochrane's father.^ " Romilly's is the only house I go to," wrote Bentham, ^ iyjS-i86S. Contributor to Edinbuygh Review ; admitted to Lincoln's Inn 1803; M.P. for Camelford 1810; Att. Gen. to Queen Caroline; received Great Seal and a peerage 1830. '^ Cochrane {1773-1860) became M.P. for Westminster 1807 ; convicted in 1814 of a conspiracy fraudulently to raise the price of the Funds, but he was re-elected for Westminster, and continued to sit until 1817 ; his father (Lord Dundonald) survived until 1831. i6o JEREMY BENTHAM "and Brougham one of the very few, indeed, that I admit into mine." Both of them he regarded, at that time, as " more democratic than the Whigs." Burdett, the "hero of the mob," as Bentham dubbed him, was pressing with offers of hospitality. There was, too, correspondence with Sir James Mackintosh and Lord Holland, while Edward Sugden, afterwards Lord St, Leonards,^ sent a copy of his pamphlet on the Annuity Act as a " tribute due to the father of the subject." Long manuscripts were now penned on the necessity for parliamentary reform : — " Till the time came when I had occasion to apply my mind to the present enquiry," wrote he on the 23rd January, 18 10, " it was blank paper on the subject. . . . Never having bestowed any serious thought on the subject, I never had in my own concep- tion any tolerably correct or comprehensive view about the matter." 2 A Catechism of Parlia7nentavy Reform was prepared, but did not appear publicly till 18 17, when it was pub- lished with an Introduction of great length showing the " Necessity of Radical, and the Inadequacy of Moderate Reform." ^ Bentham had, however, sent the Catechism, in November, 18 10, to William Cobbett, as a chapter of a proposed work on Parliamentary Reform, Cobbett being at that time editor of the Political Register, a journal published to revive the democratic movement, ^ ijSi-iSjs ; Lord Chancellor 1852. * MSS., Univ. Coll., No. 126; cited Hal., i. p. 358. ' Bow., iii. pp. 433-557. On the 23rd March, 1818, a public meeting of Westminster householders passed a resolution thanking "that profound reasoner and pre-eminent writer on Legislation, Jeremy Bentham, Esquire, for his philosophical and unanswerable vindication," etc. BECOiMES A POLITICIAN i6i which had languished under the coercive laws of 1795 and 1800.^ The contribution was considered but, in the end, rejected by Cobbett ; and this circumstance, as M. Hal6vy suggests, may well have constituted one cause of Bentham's pronounced and persistent anti- pathy towards him.^ ^' Le philosophe politique''^ described " le politicien " as a " vile rascal," though a " powerful writer " ; as a " man filled with odium humani generis." ^ Within a year of his death, while writing to a member of the Government to deprecate a proposed prosecution of Cobbett for political libel as a proceed- ing calculated to lower the Administration in public esteem, Bentham declared that a more odious com- pound of selfishness, malignity, insincerity, and men- dacity had never presented itself to his memory or imagination.* A conspicuous and, occasionally, absurd figure in the politics of the time was Major Cartwright, who had advocated universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and payment of members for more than thirty years. " There is Major Cartwright," said Hazlitt, " he has but one idea or subject of discourse. Parliamentary Reform. Now, Parliamentary Reform is (as far as I know) a very good thing, a very good idea, and a very good subject to talk about ; but why should it be the only one ? " ^ When he made the Major's acquaintance in 1 8 10, Bentham was content that the franchise should be conferred on those only who paid direct taxes, but a ' Cf. Wallas' Life of Place, p. 41. » Hal., ii. p. 201. ' Bow., X. p. 471. * June 22nd, 1831 ; Bow., xi. p. 68. ^ Essay on People with one Idea. M i62 JEREMY BENTHAM few years later he was prepared to support a demand for universal suffrage. What principle, said he, can be more " impregnable " than universal suffrage ? — " in all eyes but those to which tyranny is the only endurable form of government," The Edijiburgh Review — in an article which, by the way, denounced the ballot as certain to deprive election of all its popular qualities and of many of its beneficial effects — asserted that his plan of reform was no other than that of Major Cart- wright, " translated out of the pure and plain English which is the good Major's only valuable quality as a writer, into the peculiar language of Mr. Bentham, which his most judicious friends do not consider as his strongest point." ^ " A great sensation," wrote Francis Place to Hodgskin in May, 1817, referring to the Cate- chism which had just appeared, " has been produced by a book in favour of universal suffrage and annual Par- liaments written by Mr. Bentham." - After his manner, however, the author seems to have been as much con- cerned to introduce reforms in procedure as to ex- tend the right of voting beyond existing limits ; he was anxious to establish a complete and regular system for the publication of parliamentary debates, and hoped, by the adoption of a secret ballot and the creation of equal electoral districts, to see the gross scandals attendant upon elections removed, or, at least, greatly reduced. In the year 18 10 Bentham placed at the disposal of James Mill the house which had been occupied by Milton ; and shortly afterwards granted to his friend, at the rent of some ;^50, a lease of other premises overlook- * Vol. xxxi. p. 173. 2 Wallas' Life of Place, p. 127. BECOMES A POLITICIAN 163 ing his own garden in Queen's Square Place. During the summer months, Mill and his family were received as guests at Barrow Green, and, in later years, at Ford Abbey — a large mansion in the neighbourhood of Chard, at one time the property of Sir Edmond Prideaux, Attorney-General of the Commonwealth. Bentham became tenant of Ford Abbey in 18 14, the year after his receipt of the ;^2 3,000 paid under an Act for " making compensation to Jeremy Bentham, Esquire, for the non-performance of an agreement between the said Jeremy Bentham and the Commis- sioners of his Majesty's Treasury, respecting the custody and maintenance of criminals." ^ The rent asked was ;^8oo a year, but the house, with a portion of the estate, was eventually secured for ;^3i5, subject to one month's notice to quit, with special stipulations as to the tapestry in the halls and the care of the gardens. There was, too, an altogether unnecessary provision for the preservation of the deer, which, as Bentham remarked, he was much more disposed to caress than to kill. This magnificent abode — occupied in former days as a monastery — was situate in the midst of a beautiful and extensive park, with lakes and groves, and a noble avenue of chestnut trees stretching for more than a quarter of a mile. An imposing pile of build- ings, richly ornamented, had, in the days of the Tudors, been added to the remains of the monastery, which ^ 52 Geo. III. c. 144. About the same time Bentham acquired an interest in Robert Owen's manufacturing establishment at New Lanark, and this investment resulted in considerable pecuniary proiit. (Bow., x. 476. 477-) i64 JEREMY BENTHAM were of Gothic architecture; and the whole structure (Sir Samuel Romilly tells us) presented a most striking and beautiful effect. The pleasure-grounds, gay with a vast profusion of flowers, possessed, so the tenant with rapture proclaimed, all the features of beauty imagin- able, and " prodigiously " did he enjoy life there en grand seigneur. " I was not a little surprized," said Romilly, who visited him in the autumn of 1817, "to find in what a palace my friend was lodged. The grandeur and stateliness of the buildings, form as strange a contrast to his philosophy as the number and spaciousness of the apartments, the hall, the chapel, the corridors, and the cloisters do to the modesty and scantiness of his domestic establishment. We found him passing his time, as he always has been passing it since I have known him, which is now more than thirty years, closely applying himself, for six or eight hours a day, in writing upon laws and legislation, and in composing his Civil and Criminal Codes ; and spend- ing the remaining hours of every day in reading, or taking exercise by way of fitting himself for his labours, or, to use his own strangely invented phraseology, ' taking his ante-jentacular and post-prandial walks,' to prepare himself for his task of codification. There is something burlesque enough in this language; but it is impossible to know Bentham, and to have witnessed his benevolence, his disinterestedness, and the zeal with which he has devoted his whole life to the service of his fellow-creatures, without admiring and revering him." 1 ' Memoirs, iii. p. 315. BECOMES A POLITICIAN 165 Every year for four years, James Mill, with his wife and children, was entertained at Ford Abbey for about six months. Mill was up between five and six o'clock engaged on the proof-sheets of the History of India with the aid of his still more illustrious son — then a mere child undergoing the severe and unpleasant discipline, which made him, at the age of eight, "an adept in the first six books of Euclid and in Algebra." His father related how, during their first visit to Devon- shire, the little boy had read, in addition to his Latin books, the last half of Thucydides, one play of Euripides, one of Sophocles, two of Aristophanes, and the treatise of Plutarch on education ! ^ Bentham himself rose soon after seven, and from eight o'clock until noon was writing busily, save during a short interval for breakfast. Mill and he would sit together several hours daily, at work in a large saloon, which contained an organ and settees of the date of the Commonwealth, surrounded by cartoons beautifully executed in tapestry. At noon the host played upon the organ for an hour, occasionally engaged in a game of battledore and shuttlecock, and then, after a stroll in the fields, was at work again with his amanuensis from two o'clock until dinner at six — a simple repast without ale or wine. " The first day I came," wrote Place on August 7th, 1817, "wine was put upon the table ; but, as I took none, none has since made its appearance. After dinner Mill and I take a sharp walk for two hours, say, till a quarter past eight, then one of us alternately walks with Mr. Bentham for an hour ; 1 Wallas' Life of Place, p. 70. i66 JEREMY BENTHAM then comes tea, at which we read the periodical pubH- cations ; and eleven o'clock comes but too soon, and we all go to bed." ^ Nobody who could stay here would ever go from hence, Bentham used to say : nobody is so well anywhere else as everybody is here. In a letter written to Hodgskin during this visit to Ford Abbey, Place describes his host as "the most affable man in existence, perfectly good-humoured, bearing and forbearing, deeply read, deeply learned, eminently a reasoner, yet simple as a child ; annoyed sometimes by trifles, but never by anything but trifles never worth a contentious observation." 2 The relations subsisting between Bentham and James Mill were of a most cordial character, and the occasions were but few when, in the language of Mill, the old man " extracted umbrage " from his behaviour. Once — it was during the first year at Ford Abbey — there was a slight break in the hitherto uninterrupted course of the friendship : perhaps they had been too much in one another's company, " which," as Mill observed in an admirable letter of explanation addressed to his host, " often makes people stale to one another, and is often fatal, without any other cause, to the happiness of the most indissoluble connexions."^ The guest was very anxious to avoid an open rupture, as, on the occasion of such a quarrel, the rule of the world is to believe much of the evil which each ^ Letter to his wife. (Wallas' Life, p. 76.) Place, then in his forty- sixth year, was visiting the Abbey for the first time. See Mr. Wallas' interesting narrative. ^ Ibid.^ p. 81. ' September 19th, 1S14 ; Bow., x. p. 481. BECOMES A POLITICIAN 167 party to the quarrel says of the other, and very little of the good each says of himself. He suggested that the long annual visit of his family should not be renewed, and hoped that this idea of limitation would give additional interest to their intercourse; "for," added he, " there is such disparity between the apparent cause — my riding out a few times in the morning with Mr. Hume to take advantage of his horses in seeing a little of the country, instead of walking with you — and the great umbrage which you have extracted, that the dis- position must have been prepared by other causes and only happened first to manifest itself on that occasion. I remain with an esteem which can hardly be added to, and which, I am sure, will never be diminished, my dear Friend and Master, most affectionately yours." The coolness soon passed away ; and for the greater part of the three following years Mill and his family were received as welcome guests at Ford Abbey and, indeed, formed part of the household. Twenty-five years later an unprofitable controversy, as to the relations subsisting between the two men at this period, was excited by a reviewer in the Edinburgh} It arose in this wise : Bowring, in his biography which had just appeared, had indiscreetly — and probably with as little accuracy as discretion — retailed some idle words of Bentham's as to the motives which actuated Mill in framing his political creed, and further alleged that, when Bentham " took up Mill he was in great distress, and on the point of migrating to Caen." These state- ments were seized upon by the reviewer with much ^ Said to be W. Empson, afterwards editor, 1847-52 ; vol. Ixxviii. p. 460. i68 JEREMY BENTHAM relish and elaborated in an acrimonious essay, wherein the writer added, on his own authority, that Mill became estranged from Bentham, and " so far withdrew his allegiance from the dead lion as to deny that he had ever called him Master." John Mill, himself an Edin- burgh reviewer, indignant at the publication of these and other similar allegations, obtained leave to refute them in the following number. " At the time when Bentham is said to have 'found' Mill about to 'emi- grate ' " — he pointed out in a concise and dignified letter — " they had already been intimate for many years, as the dates prove ; since the ' emigration ' spoken of could not have been projected until after the Continent was open. Like many others, Mr. Mill had thoughts of removing to a country where a small income would go further in supporting and educating a family ; but a person is not usually said to be ' in great distress ' who never in his life was in debt, and whose income, what- ever it might be, always covered his expenses." Bentham and Mill had, indeed, formed a scheme of migrating together to Venezuela, which, according to Bentham, was a land abundantly watered both by rains and rivers, with a delightful summer temperature all the year round : " Within sight of the sea, though almost under the line, you have a mountain topped with ice, so that you may absolutely choose your temperature, and enjoy the vegetable luxuries of all countries."^ Nor was there any real basis for the sug- gestion of estrangemejit : after Mill's appointment to the India House in the summer of 1819, the inter- ^ Bow., X. p. 457. BECOMES A POLITICIAN 169 course between him and Bentham was, no doubt, less frequent, but it is beyond question that their friend- ship continued unimpaired throughout the life of the elder man.^ John Mill declared that his father's feeling towards his old friend never changed ; nor did he ever fail, publicly or privately, in giving due honour to Bentham's name, or in acknowledgment of the in- tellectual debt he owed to him: "The 'allegiance' which he disclaimed was only that which no man, who thinks for himself, will own to another. He was no otherwise a disciple of Bentham, than of Hobbes, Hartley, or Ricardo." 2 On September 13th, 181 8, James Mill himself wrote : " It is really a source of happiness to myself to be near him {i.e. Bentham), and though there are no small in- compatibilities between us, I could not part from him without a good deal of emotion. The union in in- tellectuals is perfect, which, with the first man in intellectuals of his age, cannot fail to be a source of pleasure ; and in the morals and sympathies, with a good many clashings between him and me, there is also much in his character to love, his sincerity and simplicity of character it would not be easy to match, and there is nothing which goes so far as these two qualities in laying the foundation of attachment."^ The mention of Ricardo serves to recall the fact that he was a visitor both at Ford Abbey and the Hermit- age, but Bentham describes him as the disciple rather ^ Cf., e.g., Bentham's letter to Chamberlain Clarke, August, 1828. Ibid., p. 605. - Early Essays, by Gibbs, at p. 414. ^ MSS. cited Hal., ii. pp. 374-5. I70 JEREMY BENTHAM than the master of James Mill : " Mill was the spiritual father of Ricardo," he used to say, "while I am the spiritual father of Mill," thus claiming the economist as "a sort of spiritual grandson." Mill, says M. Haldvy, was the man of action who supplied, to some extent, will-power to the cautious and hesitating Ricardo. ^ So early as 1793 Bentham had himself written a long essay on " Political Economy," some portions of which appeared in Bibliotheque Brittaniqiie for 1798.^ The essay itself was sent by Dumont to Speranski, the Russian statesman and reformer, who, in a letter dated October loth, 1804, wrote: " I believe that in following the Plan of Mr. Bentham Political Economy would occupy a position much more natural, more easily to be studied, and more scientific. You may thus judge the value I attach to the promised work." But there was really very little that was novel in Bentham's speculations, and, after the preparation of this manu- script, he abandoned the pursuit of the subject, except in so far as its study was necessarily involved in that of the science of legislation. Accepting many of the conclusions of Adam Smith, whose genius he greatly admired, Bentham examined the problems of Political Economy with special reference to the laws that should govern a nation's commerce and regulate its industries. Rigorously confining himself to questions of immediate practical importance — such as the problems of popula- tion and finance — he declared what ought to be done, and, above all, what ought not to be done, with a view ^ Hal., ii. p. 217. * Bow., iii. p. 73 n. The chapter on " Population "' so appeared. - BECOMES A POLITICIAN 171 to the advancement of national prosperity. He founded his arguments upon the principle that production and trade are limited by the amount of capital in a country ; and, reasoning on this as a sole and sufficient basis, he affirmed that security and freedom is all that in- dustry requires for its complete development. He urged the necessity for the removal of national jealousies, and sought to combat the overweening desire for colonial expansion — the promotion of colonisation, not as a mode of relieving population, but in the hope of en- riching the mother country. We should, he maintained, cease to consider colonies with the " greedy eyes of fiscality": "If wisdom alone were listened to, the ordinary object of contention would be reversed — the mother country would desire to see her children power- ful that they might become free, and the colonies would fear the loss of that tutelary authority which gave them internal tranquillity and security against external foes."i To destroy foreign commerce, it is only necessary to sell everything and purchase nothing : such (said he) is the folly which has been passed off as the depth of political wisdom among statesmen. Trade has been confounded with gambling, in which the gain of one man is always founded upon the loss of another — it has been pretended that men can only enrich them- selves by despoiling others, that they live as gladiators only by destroying one another. On the contrary, in a social undertaking all the adventurers may reap their share of advantage ; since, other things being equal, ' Bow., iii. p. 57. 172 JEREMY BENTHAM the more labour there is, the greater will be the result. Agriculture, manufactures, commerce have no need of favour, they demand only a secure and open road. These manuscripts on Political Economy were eventually made use of by Dumont in the Theorie des Peines et des Recompenses, the first edition of which was published at Paris in 1811. The second volume of that work was rendered into English, and appeared, in 1825, under the title oS. Rationale of Reward} It was edited by Richard Smith, of the Stamps and Taxes, who prepared for the press many of Bentham's MSS. In Bowring's edition, however, Book IV. of the Rationale of Reward {i.e. the portion relating to Political Economy) was re-edited from the original MSS., and appeared separately under the title of A Manual of Political Economy.^ Bentham proposed, amongst other measures, the creation of prizes for the encouragement of discoveries and research, and the institution of a Register of Trade Marks. He advocated, also, the free grant of Patents — then charged with exorbitant fees — or, at least, that no fees should be paid until the inventor had reaped some benefit from the Patent. As we have already seen, the Tactiques des Assemblees delib^ratites and the Traite des Sophismes politiques, etc., were published at Geneva in 1816; and in that and the following years there appeared two octavo volumes en- titled Chrestomathia, or Useful Education, a curious and uninviting collection of papers explanatory of the design of an institution " proposed to be set on foot under the ^ Bow., ii. pp. 189-266; and cf. iii. pp. 31-84. ^ Bow., iii. pp. 31-84. BECOMES A POLITICIAN 173 name of the Chrestomathic day school for the exten- sion of the new system of instruction to the higher branches of learning." ^ Mill, Place, Wakefield, and others interested in a scheme for the extension of the Lancasterian system to Secondary Education having secured his support, Bentham, it seems, not only wrote commending the system of education as based on utilitarian principles, but even offered his garden as a site for the erection of a school. The building plan, however, presented great objections, which led him gradually to impose harder and harder conditions ; and in 1820, says Mr. Wallas, "after an enormous corre- spondence, his offer of a site was finally declined, and the project was given up." 2 It was during this period that Bentham wrote the lengthy manuscripts on educational subjects, which are published by Bowring in his eighth volume under the titles : A Fragment on Ontology, Essay on Logic, Essay on Language, Fragments on Universal Grammar." ^ In the year 18 17 he published a tract written to expose the mischief arising from the laws relating to the administration of oaths ; it was entitled Swear not at all^ and had been printed originally in 18 13. In ^ Bow., viii. pp. 1-191 ; Place saw this work through the press. The actual curriculum proposed for the higher Lancasterian schools was largely borrowed from it. (Wallas' Life of Place, pp. 84, loi.) "^ Life of Place, p. 112. ' Bow., viii. pp. 193-357. These papers are justly described by Halevy as "Zsj longs et inutiles matiiiscrits" (ii. p. 357). * Bow., V. pp. 187-229; and cf. ibid., ii. p. 210, and ibid., vi. and vii. passim. See now 5 &^ 6 IVil/. 4, c. 62 and the Oaths Act of 1888 (j/ <^ S2 Vict, c. 46), etc. Bentham recommended that courts should be fitted up with a picture of Ananias and Sapphira. 174 JEREMY BENTHAM some cases, so he declared, the Promissory Oath pre- vented a man from doing what he knew to be right ; in others, it afforded him a ready excuse for the commis- sion of some wrong. George III. laid on his Coronation Oath the responsibility of the American War and of his resistance to the claims of the Catholics. He had sworn to maintain his dominions entire ; he had sworn to preserve the Church of England. At Oxford, barbers, cooks, bedmakers, errand boys, and other unlettered retainers to the University were habitually sworn in English to the observance of a medley of statutes penned in Latin — the oath thus solemnly taken being never kept. On matriculating, he had himself been excused from taking the oaths by reason of his tender years ; and this, said Bowring, relieved him from a state of very painful doubt, for even then he felt strong objections against needless swearing. At a later period of his University career, when called upon to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles, he experienced great " distress of mind," for in some parts of that " dogmatical formu- lary " he found no meaning at all ; in others, no meaning save one, which, in his eyes, was "but too plainly ir- reconcileable either to reason or to scripture." It is probable that he had not so much as heard of the convenient doctrine oi no7i-7iaturalinterpretatio7i in vogue eighty years afterwards. Bentham did not, however, regard Assertory or Judicial Oaths as open to the same serious objections ; but, while recognising the necessity of some formal sanction, he did not approve of the ceremony being made a sacred invocation, for that was apt to obscure BECOxMES A POLITICIAN 175 the real mischief of judicial falsehood — the mischief occasioned by the lie. If criminality be centred in the profanation of the ceremony, who is to say whether the sanction for truth be in operation or not? Who can say what are the religious opinions hidden in the breast of the witness ? First went ordeal, he writes ; then went duel ; after that went, under the name of wager of law, the ceremony of an oath in its pure state ; by-and-by this last of the train of supernatural powers, ultuna c(slicolilm, will be gathered with Astraea into its native skies. In February, 1818, Henry Bickersteth — the distin- guished equity lawyer who in after years became Lord Langdale ^ — being an ardent advocate of parliamentary reform, was bent on inducing the authors of various rival schemes to concentrate upon one definite plan, to be propounded by Bentham and proclaimed by Burdett. " If," said he, " the names of Bentham and Burdett went together in this proceeding, we should not only have universal notoriety, but all the reflection and sagacity, as well as all the active zeal in the kingdom, would be called into immediate action on this subject." - Reform, he declared, could be peaceably obtained only by the pressure of public opinion, acting with con- tinually increasing uniformity and weight in favour of the cause ; and in such matters public opinion is, he affirmed, no more than the opinion of some individual, so advantageously promulgated and so well sustained 1 178S-18J1. Senior Wrangler 1808, called to the Bar 181 1. In 1836 he succeeded Lord Cottenham as Master of the Rolls. 2 Bow,, X. p. 493. 176 JEREMY BENTHAM that it is in the end adopted by the multitude as their own. Burdett was well content to play the role assigned to him ; but Bentham protested that, for his part, he was quite unprepared to cope with the necessary details, and felt a diffidence of his own strength, such as, he must confess, was not generally accounted among the number of his weaknesses. These scruples were, however, over- come ; and at Bickersteth's suggestion, he drew up a series of concise and forcible resolutions, which, while setting forth the principal abuses complained of, em- bodied "the more general regulations constituting the intended remedy." Burdett undertook to move the resolutions : " My tongue shall speak," said he, " as you do prompt mine ear. . . . My first reward will be the hope of doing everlasting good to my country ; my next, and only inferior to it, that of having my name linked in immortality with that of Jeremy Bentham ; and though, to be sure, it is but as a tomtit mounted on an eagle's wing, the thought delights me. Bentham and Burdett ! — the alliteration charms my ear." Sir Francis did not approve of adding to the demand for universal suffrage and annual Parliaments any declaration in favour of the Ballot, fearing that its introduction would create great prejudice against the scheme ; but the draughtsman insisted upon secret voting as fundamental, and the resolutions were moved, as a whole, on the 2nd June, 1818. In these resolutions, remarks M. Hal^vy, the principle of the artificial identification of interests, entre les gouvernants et les gouvern^s, was rigorously applied, though in conformity BECOMES A POLITICIAN 177 with the traditional spirit of the English Constitution. But the proposals received no support whatsoever either from the Tories or from the Whigs, and were got rid of by a motion for the order of the day. Canning spoke for the Tories; and Brougham, rising from the Whig benches, while declaring his profound respect for Bentham — a man, said he, removed from the turmoil of active life, who had voluntarily abandoned the emolu- ments and the power which it holds out to dazzle am- bitious and worldly minds — denounced the schemes of the member for Westminster as chimerical and visionary. He sneered at the Ballot and ridiculed Burdett's pro- posals for the extension of the suffrage ; they were not, indeed, said he, so consistent as those of that more sturdy reformer, Bentham, who would not admit of a line being drawn even at the gates of Bedlam, who tossed away the rule and scale altogether. Young or old, men or women, sane or insane, all must vote ; all must have a voice in electing their representative. Burdett replied with much eloquence to this attempt " to render ridiculous the ablest advocate which Reform had ever found — the illustrious and unrivalled Bentham." And, in truth, Brougham greatly overstated his case. Bentham, in his plan of Parliamentary Reform, had expressly excluded minors and persons unable to read. It is true that he forbore from excluding the insane in terms ; and that he was disposed to extend the suffrage to women, though he recognised that the public was not, as yet, prepared for so great an innovation. He could not discover any reason for the exclusion of females, and he pointed out that those, who in support N 178 JEREMY BENTHAM of it gave a sneer or a laugh for a reason because they could not find a better, had no objection to the vesting of absolute power in that sex and in a single hand. It is, however, interesting to note that, in the unpublished essay on Representation, written in 1789 {ante, p. 98), Bentham had stated very tersely the grounds for refus- ing the franchise to married women. In the same essay he had, in terms, recognised the incapacity of the in- sane ; but, in preparing his plan of reform, he treated their exclusion as a matter of small importance and as likely to give birth to disputes and litigation. Shortly after the rejection of Sir Francis Burdett's motion, Parliament was dissolved, and a requisition was presented to Romilly inviting him to become a candi- date for the City of Westminster. Sir Samuel complied with the requisition, and a fierce contest ensued. Ben- tham did not vote, but, for the first and last time in his life, took active part in an electoral struggle by writing a hand-bill — on behalf of Burdett and Douglas Kinnaird, the Radical candidates — against his old friend Romilly, who had become, in Bentham's phrase, " no better than a Whig." Romilly was returned at the head of the poll, yet never took his seat for Westminster, dying by his own hand on the first day of Michaelmas term in the same year, his wife, to whom he was most tenderly attached, having died but three days before. Worn by sleepless nights during the long weeks of Lady Romilly's illness, distraught by an anxiety which cul- minated in despair, his mind gave way under the strain, and his useful life was brought to a close in the sixty- second year of his age. BECOMES A POLITICIAN 179 The sad death of his dear and constant associate was severely felt by Bentham, but the gentle Romilly had happily not allowed the incidents of the election to interfere in any way with their personal relations. Three weeks after the contest we find him dining with his " most excellent friend " — " a small but very pleasant party " — and almost the last page of his diary records that, while some of his acquaintances were very angry with Bentham for his hostile interference, he himself felt not the least resentment. " Though a late I know him to be a very sincere convert to the expediency of Universal Suffrage," wrote Romilly, " and he is too honest in his politics to suffer them to be influenced by any considerations of private friendship." ^ ^ Memoirs, iii. p. 365. CHAPTER VIII BENTHAM IN OLD AGE WHEN Bentham, in 1818, determined his tenancy of Ford Abbey — owing, it is said, to the loss of some ;^ 8,000, recently adventured in a Devonshire marble mine, which had been acquired by a man " who had a patent of some sort and went out of his mind " — he retired to the house in Queen's Square Place, and during the remaining years of his life rarely left its precincts. This dwelling is described by Rush, the American Minister, as "a peculiar place of residence, unique and romantic-like," situate at the end of a kind of blind alley which widened into a small neat court- yard — " shrubbery graced its area, and flowers its window-sills — it was like an oasis in the desert — its name the ' Hermitage.' " ^ Inside the house Rush found everything prim and orderly, the furniture, indeed, seemed to have stood unmoved for generations. A parlour, library, and dining-room made up the suite of apartments, each of which contained a piano, " the eccentric master of the whole being fond of music as the recreation of his literary hours." The garden, dark with the shade of ancient trees which formed a barrier ' Residence at the Court of London, p. 286. 180 BENTHAM IN OLD AGE i8i against all intrusion, had once been distinguished for its variety of fruits ; but at the beginning of the nineteenth century a few currants and gooseberries, with abundance of fine mulberries, were all that time and smoke had left. The " hermit," as he called himself, wrote on an average from ten to fifteen folio pages a day, and, in later years, every page was headed with the date of its composition. If, while occupied with one subject, some- thing worth remembering occurred to him on another, he forthwith noted it on a slip of paper, which was pinned to a small green curtain hanging near ; and his disciples would sometimes find the curtain covered with such memoranda. He took the air in his garden with great regularity, walking, or rather trotting, as if impatient for exercise : in addition to " ante-jentacular " and " post- prandial " perambulations, he enjoyed an " ante-prandial circumgyration." It has been said that you would be as sure of finding him at home as of finding Robinson Crusoe in his island — his white hair, long and flowing ; his neck bare ; dressed in a brown, quaker-cut coat, light brown cassimere breeches, list shoes, and white worsted stockings drawn over his breeches' knees — in general appearance strikingly like Benjamin Franklin, though of a more benign and cheerful cast of counten- ance. For his years he seemed remarkably hale and vigorous, but his eyes were dim and his rest much disturbed by dreams and extreme physical sensibility. If his hand touched his body, it is said that he at once awoke in pain. The peaceful routine of life in his pleasant home i82 JEREMY BENTHAM is thus described by Bentham in a letter to one W. Thompson, of Cork, who had consulted him as to the possibility of establishing a Chrestomathic school in that city : " During your stay in London, my hermitage, such as it is, is at your service. ... I am a single man, turned of seventy ; but as far from melancholy as a man need be. Hour of dinner, six ; tea, between nine and ten ; bed, a quarter before eleven. Dinner and tea in society ; breakfast, my guests, who- ever they are, have at their own hour, and by them- selves ; my breakfast, of which a newspaper, read to me to save my weak eyes, forms an indispensable part, I take by myself. Wine I drink none, being in that particular, of the persuasion of Jonadab, the son of Rechab. At dinner, soup, as constantly as if I were a Frenchman, an article of my religion learned in France ; meat, one or two sorts, as it may happen ; ditto, sweet things of which, with the soup, the principal part of my dinner is composed. Of the dessert, the frugality matching with that of the dinner. Coffee for anyone that chooses it." In extreme age he seems to have accustomed himself to take a small quantity of wine — some half glass of Madeira daily. During these years of retirement in the Hermitage, Bentham kept in close touch with men who were active and prominent in the outer world ; with Brougham, in particular, to whom he supplied much political material, or " pap," as the future Chancellor called it, he was in constant communication. "Insincere as Brougham is" — so he is reported to have said — " it is always worth BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 183 my while to bestow a day on him. I am going off the stage, he keeps on." " Dear Grandpapa," wrote the great advocate in 1827, " many thanks for the pap, I am already fat on it. I did not acknowledge it, being busy eating it ; and saying nothing at meals is the way with us little ones — when hungry. I shall be in town next week late. Yours dutifully." The old man, who speci- ally approved Brougham's efforts in favour of popular education, and was, we are told, much delighted with his phrase, " the schoolmaster is abroad," ^ at once replied, begging his " dear sweet little poppet " to toddle to the Hermitage immediately on its return to receive more " pap made in the same saucepan." But the "little poppet" proved a great disappointment to Bentham — the wisdom of the reformer could not, he said, "overcome the craft of the lawyer." Worse even than his persistent opposition to the Ballot was his half-hearted attempt to reform the entanglements and technicalities of law proceedings : " Brougham's moun- tain is delivered, and behold ! — the mouse." Many of Peel's projects are merely for the creation of new offices with large salaries, said Bentham one day to Bowring ; the places fail, but the salaries have to be paid, and so there comes a cry against reform. Brougham, with his support of special pleading, is, he declared, as bad as Peel — " boys of the same school, heirs of the same in- heritance, preachers of the same faith ! Shake them in a bag : look at them playing push-pin together ! " In March, 1830, Bentham refused "pap" to the ' Bentham cites the phrase as, "the schoolmaster is sent abroad." (Bow., V. p. 609 i84 JEREMY BENTHAM " naughty, naughty boy," Master Henry Brougham, who had outgrown it. " What you are in want of is another dose of jalap to purge off your bad humours, and a touch, every now and then, of the tickle Toby which I keep in pickle for you." Master Peel was now, by comparison, a real good boy — growing better and better every day — from whom a lesson should be taken. No more law-fees for him, no more cramming of his playfellows with them, so the nice " Parliament ginger- bread " shall be given to him to munch. In 1 83 1 Brougham had become Lord Chancellor; and Bentham, within a few months of his death, wrote an attack on the Chancellor's proposal to absorb, in his own Court, the Courts of the Vice-Chancellor and of the Master of the Rolls. This article, with some elaborate and, indeed, carping criticisms of the Bank- ruptcy Court Bill, was published in 1832, under the title. Lord Brougham Displayed} While describing the Chancellor as one of the most admirable members this country ever saw of the most highly talented profession, and as a most amiable man in private life, Bentham did not hesitate to charge him with a greed for patron- age, nor scruple to refer to him as the lord high jobber driving on his course with his learned job horses, contemplating a fall upon his bed of down — the retiring pension. Brougham affirmed that his Bill would result in a great diminution of the patronage and advantages then belonging to the Keeper of the Great Seal, and with much forbearance spoke admiringly of the critic, who had thus impugned his motives, as " a personal * Bow., V. pp. 549-612. BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 185 friend of mine — a man of extraordinary learning, the father of the English Bar, and the father of law reform." John Cam Hobhouse.^ the companion and friend of Lord B}Ton, was, at this period, Burdett's colleague in the representation of Westminster. He frequently visited Bentham, and undertook to arrange some of his manu- scripts and put his words into the vernacular ; " although I suspect," said he, "it would be difficult to find language more to the purpose than Bentham's own." - He ex- pressed, in particular, a wish to edit the manuscripts on Political Fallacies ; but they were, in fact, edited by one Bingham, with assistance from Place and James Mill, and published in 1824. The Book of Fallacies'^ consists of a laborious, but incisive, exposure of many mischiev- ous absurdities which passed current as good sense in political assemblies ; and it was directed mainly against the devices made use of in support of corruption and arbitrary power. Thus Bentham ridicules appeals to the Wisdom of our Ancestors, "the Chinese Argu- ment"; the Hobgoblin Argument, "No Innovation!"; the Procrastinator's Argument, "Wait a little, this is not the time " ; the Snail's Pace Argument, " One thing at a time ! " " Not so fast ! " " Slow and Sure ! " and so on. Fallacies of " Confusion " are also admirably dealt with ; for example, the use of " impostor terms " applied to the defence of things which under their proper name are manifestly indefensible, as where a man, delighted ^ Afterwards Lord Broughton (1786-1869). » Wallas' Life of Place, p. 83. ^ Bow., ii., pp. 375-488 ; see Dumont's Sophismes Politiques. i86 JEREMY BENTHAM to be supposed " a man of gallantry," would be far from pleased if he were plainly designated "an adulterer." Sydney Smith, who declared that he read everything its author wrote, reviewed the book in the Edinburgh} stating his conviction that most persons would prefer to become acquainted with Mr. Bentham through the medium of reviews, " after that eminent philosopher has been washed, trimmed, shaved, and forced into clean linen." The chief fallacies, so happily exposed by Bentham, are gathered together by his reviewer in the well-known " Noodle's Oration," beginning : " What would our ancestors say to this, Sir ? How does this measure tally with their institutions? How does it agree with their experience ? Are we to put the wisdom of yesterday in competition with the wisdom of centuries ? {Hear, hear.) Is beardless youth to show no respect for the decisions of mature age? (Loud cries of hear, hear.) If this measure be right, would it have escaped the wisdom of those Saxon progenitors to whom we are indebted for so many of our best political institutions ? Would the Danes have passed it over? Would the Normans have rejected it?" It is from the folly, not from the wisdom, of our ancestors, said Bentham, that we have so much to learn ; experience, indeed, is the very mother of wisdom. Many strange rumours as to the old man's singu- larities obtained currency in those days both here and in the United States. Most of them were highly coloured, and some of them wholly false. The Times actually published a letter stating that, having invited ' August, 1825. BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 187 one Parry to breakfast and dine with him, he gave his guest no breakfast at all and left him without dinner until ten o'clock at night. The writer of the letter, presumably Parry himself— an engineer who worked under the inventor of the Congreve rockets — added that, as they walked in the public streets, the appearance of his host was so ridiculous as to bring upon them the ribald insults of a notorious strumpet. Bentham's conduct was, in truth, sufficiently peculiar to afford some ground for such reports. No disturbance of the regular routine was allowed, even for a moment ; he refused to receive his old acquaintance, Lovell Edge- worth, and would not return calls paid to him by the Duke of Richmond and Lord Sydney. Madame de Stael applied to Dumont for an introduction, saying, " Tell Bentham I will see nobody till I have seen him." "Sorry for it," grumbled Bentham, "for then she will never see anybody." We can, however, hardly assign this refusal to admit the famous authoress in his house solely to anxiety lest his thoughts should be distracted, for he was in the habit, we are told, of referring to her, in conversation, as a " trumpery magpie." The strict seclusion of the Hermitage probably served to intensify the bashfulness which, according to the hermit's account, clung to him like a cold garment through life. But he often proved himself " on hospit- able thoughts intent," and the guests found a dinner daintily served when Anne, the housemaid, summoned them to " the Shop," as Bentham called the room where he dined. It was surrounded by books, and contained an organ which was played while the party sat down to i88 JEREMY BENTHAM dinner. The table was always liberally supplied, and he delighted to devise means of giving pleasure to his guests : if he chanced to discover that one of them specially relished any particular dish, it was prepared and quietly placed before him. " Get together a gang," he wrote to Brougham in May, 1822, "and bring them to the Hermitage, to devour such eatables and drink- ables as are to be found in it." "From Honourable House," Brougham was directed to bring Denman — Queen Caroline's Solicitor-General, afterwards to be- come Lord Chief Justice ^ — Joseph Hume, Sir James Mackintosh, and David Ricardo; from the India House he was to bid James Mill—" Hour of attack, half past six ; Hour of commencement of plunderage, seven ; Hour of expulsion— with the aid of the adjacent Police Office if necessary — quarter before eleven; Day of attack to be determined by Universal Suffrage. N.B. to be performed with advantage all plunderage must be regulated. . . . Witness ; Matchless Constitution." At the age of eighty he wrote to Burdett : " Francis, I see how it is with you. You don't know where to go for a dinner ; and so you are coming to me. I hear that you have been idler than usual, since you were in my service ; always running after the hounds, whenever you could get anybody to trust you with a horse. I hear you are got among the Tories, and that you said once you were one of them ; you must have been in your cups. You had been reading High Life below Stairs, I suppose, and wanted them to call you Lord Burdett. *Cf. Bow., xi. p. 38, where Bentham states that he had but one inter- view with Denman, for whom, however, he felt "esteem and affection." BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 189 You have always had a hankering after bad company whatever I could do to keep you out of it." After Bentham's death, Sir Francis did, indeed, " get among the Tories"; for, in 1837, at the age of sixty- seven, he retired from the representation of West- minster, and was returned as a Conservative for North Wiltshire. When no guests were expected, the old man dined with one of his secretaries, whom he called "reprobate"; sometimes two " reprobates " would share his meal. He keenly appreciated the pleasures of the table ; though during the last few years of his life, the sense of taste was much impaired, and he formed the habit of beginning dinner with dessert, declaring that he wholly lost the flavour of the fruit if he ate it after stronger viands. At eleven o'clock his nightcap was brought in, his watch handed over to the " reprobate " who held for the time being the office of " putter to bed," his eyes washed, and his clothes removed ; he was then " read to sleep " by one of the " reprobates," each of whom had sworn fealty to a trinoda necessitas, the asportation of the candle, the " transtration " of the window, " item of the trap-window." It was in 1820 that Bentham formed the acquaint- ance of his biographer, John Bowring, who was then about twenty-eight years of age. Bowring was intro- duced to the old man's notice by a naval officer named Blaquiere ^ — " a sort of wandering apostle of Bentham- 1 Author of Letters from the Mediterranean {1813) and History of the Revolution in Spain (1822). He was an active member of the Greek Committee with which Bentham associated himself in 1823-4. A boat, in which he embarked at Plymouth for the Azores, was lost at sea. I90 JEREMY BENTHAM ism" — as one possessing a special knowledge of the Spanish Peninsula ; and, as the first fruits of the con- nection, there appeared in the following year letters addressed to the Spanish People on " the Liberty of the Press & Public Discussion," ^ and a volume containing the Three Tracts relative to Spanish and Portuguese affairs, with a continual eye to English ones : (a) On a House of Lords, (b) O^i fudicial Delays, (c) O71 Anti- quated Constitutions? A close intimacy sprang up, and the younger man was always a welcome guest at the Hermitage ; frequently he became an inmate of the house, and received, he tells us, at the hands of his host, blessings, benefits, benignities, courtesies in every shape. The most interesting portion of his correspondence was placed by Bentham in Bowring's hands ; and he be- queathed all his manuscripts to Bowring's care, in order that he might superintend their publication. A fairly complete edition of the works appeared in 1843 ; but the letters and memoirs are ill-digested and badly arranged. The old man's friendship, so Bowring declares, was to him that of a guardian angel : " It conducted me, with faithful devotion, through a period of my existence in which I was steeped in poverty and overwhelmed with slander. His house was an asylum — his purse a treasury — his heart an Eden — his mind a fortress to me. It is only since his death, and when, in my situation of executor, all his papers have fallen into my hands, that I have learned how much I owed to his courageous friendship — his unbroken, his unbending trust." When the Westminster Review was started in 1823 ^ Bow., ii. pp. 275-97. - Bow., viii, pp. 463-86. BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 191 the necessary funds were provided by Bentham. The Whigs being already represented by the Edinburgh, and the Tories by the Quarterly, the new periodical was projected as an organ of the Radicals. Bowring at first managed the political department ; and the important section known as the " Reviewers Reviewed " was supplied by James Mill, who opened with a trenchant attack on the Edinburgh as the older of the two existing papers. Afterwards the whole control fell for a time into the hands of Bowring ; but he was by no means well fitted for editorial work, and in later years, the responsibility was shared by that able man and accom- plished writer, Colonel Perronet Thompson. Reform, as Sir Leslie Stephen says, was now becoming respect- able, and even the Whigs were gaining courage to take it up seriously. In October, 1826, Bentham himself contributed — in an ingenious and suggestive review of Humphrey's important proposals for a Real Property Code — some criticisms, which doubtless had a direct influence on the land law reforms of 1832 and 1833.^ The review is written throughout in a crabbed and per- plexing style; for, while denouncing "surplusage" and " involvedness " as the efficient causes of the " lengthi- ness" of conveyancing instruments, the writer seems to have had no perception of the beam in his own eye. Place at first refused to contribute to the new magazine unless his articles were published without alteration. " Mine must be legitimate children," he wrote, " however ' Bow., V. pp. 387-416. In July, 1831, Bentham forwarded to the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Law of Real Property an elaborate outline of a Plan for a General Register of Real Property. 192 JEREMY BENTHAM ugly and ungraceful they may be." No ! characteristic- ally observed Bentham to the editor, " ugly or ungraceful children we cannot adopt, nor will we traffic in pigs in a poke} " The two tracts known as the Defences of Economy against Burke afid Rose — written in 1810 and first published in 1817 — were republished during the year 1830 in a volume entitled Official Aptitude Maximised: Expense Minimised^ which also contained reprints of Observations on Mr. Secretary Peel's Speech on the Police Magistrates Bill and of the famous Indications respecting Lord Eldon. The " Indications," originally published in 1824, had been sent to the press in spite of urgent representations by the author's legal friends, who de- clared that prosecution and conviction would assuredly follow the publication of this philippic. John Scott (1751-1838), Earl of Eldon, had held the Seals for more than twenty years, and the state of business in his Court of Chancery had, in the words of Romilly, then, perhaps, the ablest counsel at the bar, long been a most grievous and intolerable evil to the suitors. Though neither eloquent nor accomplished, Eldon was a man of powerful understanding, with a profound knowledge of case law, and during his short reign in the Common Pleas, had proved himself to be endowed with many judicial qualities of a high order : sitting in Banc he was bound to keep pace with his fellows ; sitting with a jury he was bound to resolve forthwith the questions raised for his ruling. In the Court of Chancery, however, his indecision and habits of pro- 1 Wallas' Life of Place, p. 87. ^ gg^^^ v_ pp, 263-386. BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 193 crastination soon occasioned serious delays, and the scandal was more than once brought before the notice of Parliament. But at the time Bentham wrote, arrears of undecided causes, motions, and petitions were still growing apace, and the unhappy suitors "dragged at each remove a lengthening chain." His scathing indict- ment was not, however, directed only against Eldon's dilatory methods ; it was levelled also against certain gross abuses which prevailed both in the Chancery and King's Bench offices — fees exacted for services never performed, valuable sinecures created by a gradual and insidious process, the irregular attendances of the higher officials in receipt of very large incomes, a system of gratuities constantly augmented, which, as Sir James Mansfield well said, was the very mother of extortion. Years before, a solicitor of standing called Lowe had complained, by way of petition, against the " corruption of office " ; and, in particular, had charged the illegal exaction of specific sums claimed as fees due to the secretary of bankrupts. Now these fees, in fact, formed part of the Chancellor's emoluments, and it is known that in one year he received from this source alone ;^4,900 ; accordingly, Eldon desired the Master of the Rolls to assist him on the hearing of the petition, and managed to extricate himself from this delicate position by a characteristic expedient. After argument the Court took time to consider judgment — but, says Romilly, who was one of the counsel engaged, no judgment was ever given, and the fees were taken by the Lord Chancellor as before. An instructive chapter of Bentham's pamphlet, dealing with another illegal exaction, is headed : " How o 194 JEREMY BENTHAM the illegality got wind and how Felix trembled !" Lord Eldon, he says, advised His Majesty to commission Lord Eldon to report upon the conduct of Lord Eldon, and the title of the next chapter tells its own tale : " How the Chancellor went to Parliament and got corruption established." On 28th June, 1825, Eldon defended himself before a sympathetic audience in the House of Lords, closing his speech with a reference to his favourite topic — the purity of his own conscience. " I am incorrupt in office ; and I can form no better wish for my country than that my successor shall be penetrated with an equal desire to execute his duties with fidelity." Many years before, in his speech as Attorney-General against Home Tooke, he had, after his manner, justified his own character : " It is the little inheritance I have to leave to my children, and, by God's help, I will leave it unimpaired." Here he shed tears, and to the astonish- ment of the Court, the Solicitor-General — Mitford, afterwards Lord Redesdale — began to weep in concert. "Just look at Mitford," said a bystander to Home Tooke : " What on earth is he crying for ? " " He is crying," placidly replied the accused, " to think of the little inheritance Scott's children are likely to get." ^ In acknowledging a presentation copy of Official Aptitude Maximised, Sir James Graham (1792-1861) wrote to Bentham : " Permit me to offer my sincere thanks for the present of your valuable work, which I shall study with the respect due to the production of the most enlightened and honest jurist, every mark ^ Edin, Rev.^ vol. Ixxxi. p. 170. BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 195 of whose approbation is regarded by me as an honour- able distinction." It was in this same year (1830) that Graham brought forward his memorable motion for the reduction of official salaries. Bentham's Radical Reform Bill^ had been published in December, 18 19, and the tract, Radicalism not Danger- ous^ was written about the same date, though never pub- lished in the author's lifetime. In 1822 a small octavo appeared, bearing the motto " Leave us alone," and entitled : Observations on the Restrictive and Prohibitory Commercial System^ especially with a reference to the decree of the Spanish Cortes offuly, 1820.^ This little volume, which contains a forcible exposition of the principles of Free Trade and the dangers of Retaliation, was edited by Bowring, who some years earlier had been sent to Spain and Portugal as the representative of a commercial house. In most cases, says the author, the prohibitory system produces a retaliatory operation, and the power of retaliation possessed against a nation is often very great. What, he asks, will be the condition of a state, if other countries, whose wares are excluded, load with excessive taxation, or exclude by total pro- hibition, the surplus of her produce for which she has no consumption at home? It cannot fail to be calami- tous — and even should ill-will be averted from a sense that no injury was intended, contempt will occupy its place in proportion as the impolicy of the system is manifest. Though far removed from the " levellers " and " com- 1 Bow., iii. pp. 558-97. 2 Ibid., pp. 599-622. ' Ibid,, pp. 85-103. 196 JEREMY BENTHAM munists," Bentham deeply distrusted the Whigs, and would have no fellowship with the "canny" oppor- tunism which fashioned the politics of such men as Henry Brougham. He was, indeed, rapidly becoming — if he had not already become — the oracle of the Radicals, the recog- nised Master of a School of advanced Politicians. Parle fail 7neme que Benlham devienl radical, le parti radical va changer de caraciere, says M. Halevy ;^ and, in truth, although he was now an ardent reformer and deter- mined champion of Liberty, a convinced republican and opponent of a " Second Chamber,"^ there was nothing of the Revolutionary or Jacobin about the new leader. Two years before his death, in a memorandum of "J. B.'s Creed," he declared his preference for the English Constitution — "such as it is" — to non-govern- ment, and, indeed, to every other but the United States Government. " But I do not prefer it," he continued, "such as it is, teeming with abuses and other im- perfections, to what it would be if cleared, in the whole or part, of all or any of these same imperfections." Writing in 1822, he described the English Government as the least bad of all bad governments, that of the United States as the first of all governments to which the epithet good, in the positive sense of the word, could with propriety be applied. Although a severe critic of the laws of entail and ^ Vol. ii. p. 212; cf. Redlich and Hirst's English Local Government, i. p. 96. 2 See his Letter to his Fellow Citizens of France, which converted O'Connell to the anti-Second Chamber faith. (Bow., iv. pp. 419-50, and ix. p. 144.) BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 197 of the principle which favours the accumulation of property in the hands of one member of the family, he fully recognised the necessity for assuring men in the enjoyment of their wealth. The treasure of the com- paratively rich is — as he well said — an insurance office to the comparatively indigent ; but security must be given to its owners, and the demands made upon them, by way of provision for the poor, must be so regulated as not to afford an inducement to idleness in those who claim relief from their wealthier neighbours. He in- sisted, however, that the property of the rich is in no real danger from the poor ; while the property of the poor is not only in danger from the rich, but constantly encroached on by them. " The small property of the poor is, every particle of it, necessary to their sub- sistence : it is, therefore, more carefully watched and guarded. . . . But the property of the poor is of no value in the eyes of the rich : hence they conclude it to be of little value in the eyes of its possessors." He was of opinion that the tyranny of the rich over the poor would exist, to an appreciable extent, even in the most perfect democracy; but equality in respect of legal power would — so he believed — be sufficient to keep this tyranny within comparatively narrow bounds. Not content to demand the freedom of the Press, he required full liberty for the decent expression of opinion in every form ; he was intensely eager to remove the fetters by which an unscrupulous executive, with the aid of a pliant judiciary, had sought to restrain the honest expression of opinion on matters of public interest, 198 JEREMY BENTHAM whether political or religious.^ In his eyes, such perse- cution was not only an act of immorality in one of the most mischievous shapes, but "a sort of confession or presumptive evidence of non - belief in the very opinions which the persecutor thus professes to sup- port." Writing to Richard Carlile,- who lay imprisoned in Dorchester Gaol, Bentham explained : " Whatever your opinions may be, had they been opposite to what they are, my weak endeavours towards your support, under the oppression you are enduring, would not have been otherwise than they are, , . . Nor should I regard with less sympathy and indignation any persecution for opinions directly opposite to mine in every point than for opinions directly coincident with my own in every point" To him, as a friend of mankind, the oppressed, whosoever they might be, were the objects of sympathy ; and, accordingly, on December 9th, 1824, he sent £s to the Catholic Association " in the humble and cordial hope that his oppressed brethren of the Catholic per- suasion would neither retaliate persecution by persecu- tion, nor attempt redress by insurrection." In fact, the great leader of the movement for Catholic Emancipation — Daniel O'Connell (1775 - 1847), the " Liberator of Liberators," as he styles him — was one ^ " Perpetual obsequious instruments in the hands of the monarch and his ministers" is Bentham's description of the judges in a letter to the Traveller, written in 1825. "Woe to the defendant in a political pro- secution — woe to a politically obnoxious party in any suit, if the falsity of it be, though but for a moment, out of the eyes of jurors." (Bow., x. p. 549-) ^ 1 790- 1 843; a disciple of Thomas Paine. He lay in Dorchester Gaol 1819-25. BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 199 of Bentham's intimate friends, " O'Connell," wrote the old man once, " I love you with a father's love ! " The famous Irishman, in return, openly avowed himself " an humble disciple of the immortal Bentham," who con- stantly sought to induce in him a more tolerant spirit in religious and political controversy. Bentham, while holding himself aloof from both political parties, begged O'Connell to refrain from tirades against the Liberals, the body which comprised all to whom he could look for assistance : " Do not run amuck (Malay like) against all your friends, except a comparatively small number of zealous Catholics." Endure the conception, and even the utterance, of other men's opinions how opposite soever to your own, he would urge ; and put off the advocate's gown which has but one side to it — at any rate, when you assume the mantle of the legislator. So early as 18 17 Bentham had published a collection of Papers Relative to Codification} including certain correspondence between himself and the Emperor Alexander the First, in connection with an offer to frame a Code of Laws for Russia. The Emperor had penned a letter of profuse thanks, sent a remembrance in the shape of a valuable ring — which was returned sealed up as it was received — and intimated that his commissioners would be com- manded to address their inquiries to Bentham, who, however, felt confident that no such inquiries would ever be made of him. This collection contained also some correspondence with James Madison, President of the United States — to whom an offer had been made 1 Bow., iv. pp. 451-533' 200 JEREMY BENTHAM of a " complete body of statute laws, or Pannomion " — and it was declared by Romilly to embrace " some of the most important views on the subject of Legislation, and on the nature of common or unwritten law, that have ever been laid before the public." ^ Six years later there appeared the Codification Proposal'^ addressed to all nations professing Liberal opinions, accompanied by a quaint fasciculus of testimonials to the merits of the author, culled from every quarter of the globe ; and, not long afterwards, Dumont published the trea- tise De V Organisation judiciaire et de la Codification. Bentham believed that a system of laws could be so framed and expounded as to be easily understood and readily administered. By this method he hoped to get rid of the legal profession and the " demon of chicane." His ideal was undoubtedly an extravagant one ; for no code can be devised so elastic as to forestall all the difficulties that may hereafter arise from the ever- varying exigencies of society and commerce, nor, indeed, so complete as to embrace the solution of every problem that might result even from existing conditions. As he himself said, a single improper word in a body of laws — especially of laws given as constitu- tional and fundamental ones — may, perchance, prove a national calamity, and civil war may be the consequence of it. Out of one foolish word may start a thousand daggers ! His want of practical training led him, moreover, to underrate, if not to disregard, the importance of issues of fact, which cannot, in the nature of things^ ' Edin. Rtv.y November, 1817. - Bow., iv. pp. 535-94. BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 201 be determined by reference to any code. Where ten counsel are to be found well versed in the most abstruse niceties of jurisprudence, it would not be easy to secure one thoroughly competent to grasp, marshal, and ex- pound the inferences to be deduced from a mass of com- plex or conflicting oral testimony. But, however ready to detract from Bentham's merits, the critic of his work must acknowledge the debt which the whole civilised world owes to him for the impulse he gave to the pro- vision of codes. Even in his own country it has not been without effect in certain branches of the law,^ and in British India his teaching has borne excellent fruit. " Had Bentham done nothing more," writes Professor Montague, " than point out the way in which the law of England could best be applied to the needs of India, he would have rendered a distinguished service to his country and to mankind."- In 1829 he published the draft of a proposed Petition for Codification^ which he asked Burdett to present to the House of Commons. Burdett professed great devotion to him. " I hardly know," said he, " the thing you could, at least would, ask of me, that I should not feel the greatest gratification in complying with." So far, however, as the request to present the petition was concerned, he contented himself with replying that he would " consider of it " ; nor does it appear that Burdett ever undertook the task of presentation. It has been objected to the principle of codification ^ Notably the law relating to negotiable instruments {43 6^ 46 Vict. c. 61). ^ Edition of Fragment on Government, at p. 56. 5 Bow., V. pp. 437-548. 202 JEREMY BENTHAM that it requires one uniform suit of ready-made laws for all times and all states of society ; but this objection rests on a misconception, for the principle relates to the forfu only of the laws, not to their substance. The different needs of different nations occupied Bentham's attention no less than the other manifold conditions which affect the making of laws ; ^ though it is no doubt true, as John Mill pointed out, that, taking next to no account of national character and the causes which form and maintain it, he was precluded from considering, except to a very limited extent, the laws of a country as an instrument of national culture. Thus he did not thoroughly appreciate that the slave needs to be trained to govern himself, the savage to submit to the government of others ; but the errors into which he was led by such oversights, though fundamental in the department of constitutional law, were not, in Mill's opinion, of a nature to lead him far astray in his treatment of most branches of civil and penal legislation.^ With the draft Petition for Codification was published another petition — "for Justice" — the prayer of which comprised an outline of the ^ro^os,Qd Judicial Establish- ment and of the proposed system of Procedure. The volume containing these Petitions was forwarded to the Duke of Wellington in December, 1828, accompanied by a long letter begging him to become " Commander- in-Chief" of a Law Reform Association and to promote ^ See, e.g. , Influence of Time and Place in Matters of Legislation. (Bow., i. pp. 169-94.) "^ London and Westminster Review , August, X838. BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 203 Bentham's Dispatch Court Bill} He was urged to put an end to the tedious formalities and ruinous delays which at that time prevailed in the Civil Courts, and to substitute therefor " the simplicity, the honesty, the straightforwardness of courts-martial ! " " Your name," wrote Bentham, " will— ay, shall — be greater than Cromwell's. Already you are, as in his day he was, the hero of war. Listen to me and you will be what he tried to but could not make himself — the hero of peace — that peace which is the child of Justice." The Duke duly acknowledged the communication, and soon after received another long letter upbraiding him for his folly in engaging with Lord Winchilsea in the famous duel on Battersea Fields. Sir H. Hardinge was, it seems, the Duke's second, while Lord Falmouth attended the Earl of Winchilsea. " On the signal being given, the Duke instantly raised his pistol and fired at his opponent, without doing him (or his clothes, as absurdly rumoured) the slightest injury. The Earl then raised his weapon and discharged it in the air."^ Bentham's good-humoured remonstrance brought an immediate reply from the Duke, and without any delay the old man was, in his own phrase, " at him once more." The promptness of his attention, Bentham ex- plained, had called forth the garrulity of old age. " Wellington is very civil," he observed one day, " and gives immediate answers to letter after letter that I send him." When O'Connell received his copy of the Petitions, ^ Bow., iii. pp. 319-431. ^ John ^m// newspaper, March 29th, 1S29. 204 JEREMY BENTHAM he at once wrote to his " revered master " for " sugges- tions, nay commands," as to what he should do in Parliament. " If you think it right I will begin with the Despatch Court, that is the first or second day of the Session — then the natural as opposed to technical procedure ; at least, a portion on this subject — then an address to procure a Code. Every day I will have a petition on some one or more law abuse." ^ During the last fourteen years of his life, Bentham was occupied in ceaseless efforts to complete the Constitutional Code for the Use of all Nations Professing Liberal Opinions? The work had long been in progress ; so early as 1816, indeed, extracts from the manuscripts had been printed, and an " avant courrier " in the form of Leading Principles"" was published in 1823. The first volume made its appearance in 1830, and the other two were then in such a state of forwardness that little was needed for their completion. " Were the Author to drop into his last sleep while occupied in the tracing of these lines," wrote Bentham in the Preface, " able hands are not wanting from which the task of laying the work before the public would receive its completion." But although the old man was still busy at work within three weeks of his death — " codifying like any dragon," as he put it — the book was not published in its integrity until 1 84 1. The Code has been described as the most comprehensive, as well as the most mature, of all his works : its influence in many countries was considerable — and it has been said that, of all the great reforms ^ Letter from Derrynane Abbey, dated October 22nd, 1829. (Bow., xi. p. 22.) - Bow., vol. ix. '■' Ibid.y ii. pp. 267-74. BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 205 which followed his death, none was nnore Benthamic than those which built up the modern system of local government in England.^ It undoubtedly contains throughout many interesting and fruitful suggestions, but — except in the first book — it is replete with un- inviting detail, and the style is often such as to repel even the most resolute reader. A print depicting the interior of the House of Lords during the investigation known as "the Queen's Trial," displays Bentham in a rather prominent position. Oddly enough made up the group will be, he wrote to Dr. Parr : - " Before and quite close to me is an old acquaintance of former years, Sir Humphrey Davy ; then comes that ' servile poet and novelist,' Sir Walter Scott, and next to Scott that ' ultra-servile sack guzzler,' Southey." " I shall laugh heartily," replied Parr, " to see your figure by ' those reptiles,' Walter Scott and Southey " : for it was well known that Bentham did not admire poets, and, indeed, never read poetry with enjoyment, although he would grant that doggerel might prove useful for the purpose of " lodging facts more effectually in the mind." It is, however, only fair to record that he was as sturdy an advocate of liberty of taste as of liberty of conscience, and that one of the " reptiles," at any rate, had provoked strong language by the violence of his attacks on all who maintained popular opinions. Bentham and Parr were not the only men of liberal ideas who bore a grudge ^ Redlich and Hirst's English Local Government, i. pp. 90, 91, - This print was published by Bowyer on June ist, 1823 ; but the position of those grouped near Bentham was altered before publication. 2o6 JEREMY BENTHAM against Southey. In 1794 he had written a piece entitled " Wat Tyler," which asserted in extravagant terms the claims of the people to equality of rights and a division of property. Some twenty-three years later, those whom he was used to assail as Jacobins caused the piece to be published, whereupon the author — then become Poet Laureate — applied for an injunc- tion to restrain its publication. But Lord Eldon, to Southey's infinite chagrin, refused the application on the ground that, the work being " of a most dangerous tendency," its author was not entitled to claim relief^ On one occasion, we are told, " the hermit " went out to dine — a most rare adventure, says Bowring. It was at Hendon,with George Grote (i 794-1 871), the historian of Greece, who had been introduced to his guest by Ricardo. In 1825 he paid a brief visit to Paris, being abroad just a month. The object of this visit — son voyage triomphal a Paris, M. Halevy calls it — was to consult a physician as to the treatment of a cutaneous disorder from which he was at that time suffering ; and according to a family tradition, he was attended by Thomas Hodgskin in the capacity of secretary.'- He saw his old friend Lafayette and was much gratified by his reception in the French capital. Once, as he entered the Courts of Justice, the whole Bar rose to welcome him, and the President insisted that the famous English jurist should occupy the seat of honour at his right hand. In the early part of February, 1832, less than four ^ Romilly's Memoirs, iii. p. 285. "^ Thomas Hodgskin, par Elie Halevy (1903), p. 85. BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 207 months before his death, Bentham received, with sincere pleasure, a renowned statesman, whom he had not met for nearly forty years. Talleyrand had long held the genius of Bentham in high esteem. He had ad- vocated the building of a Panopticon in Paris, and shown a lively interest in the publication of the Traites de Legislation, offering to charge himself with the costs of a complete edition if the publisher feared the specu- lation. Once when Bowring observed that from no modern writer had so much been stolen as from Bentham, and stolen without acknowledgment — Talley- rand assented, adding : Et pille par tout le monde, il est toujours riche. " Do you want an appetite, Prince ? " wrote the old man : " The means of finding one for Friday next is to come to this retreat, and take a Hermit's dinner on Thursday'' — " To dine with Bentham — to dine alone with Bentham," replied Talleyrand ; " that is a pleasure which tempts me to break an engagement I have been under for several days." So early as the summer of 1831 Bentham remarked that his memory was occasionally impaired ; his spirits became, at times, less buoyant ; and he more than once expressed the belief that these symptoms betokened a sure, if gradual, break-up of the system. Indeed, from the spring of the following year, the old man, though still able to write and capable of sustained thought, calmly awaited death, which took place on the 6th June, 1832. As the end drew near, he said to the friend watching by his side, " I now feel that I am dying ; our care must be to minimise pain. Do not let the servants come into the room, and keep away the 2o8 JEREMY BENTHAM youths ; it will be distressing to them, and they can be of no service."^ His head resting on Bowring's bosom, he became gradually colder, and the muscular powers were deprived of action : it was an imperceptible passing. " After he had ceased to speak, he smiled and grasped my hand, looked at me affectionately, and closed his eyes. There was no struggling, no suffering ; life faded into death, as the twilight blends the day with darkness." With a view to the advancement of science, he directed that his body should be dissected. This injunction was obeyed, and gave Matthew Arnold occasion for much elaborated merriment at the expense of the faithful Benthamite — " On a pious pilgrimage to obtain from Mr. Bentham's executors a secret bone of his great dissected master." ^ The skeleton, covered with the clothes he commonly wore, and supporting a waxen effigy of his head, is carefully preserved in the Anatomical Museum of University College, London. Across one knee rests his favourite stick, " Dapple," and at the foot of the figure lies the skull, with the white hairs of the old man still clinging to its surface. " He never knew prosperity and adversity, passion nor satiety," wrote John Mill : " he never had even the experience which sickness gives ; he lived from child- hood to the age of eighty- five in boyish health. He knew no dejection, no heaviness of heart. He never felt life a sore and weary burthen. He was a boy to the last."' Like a boy, too, he was eager for praise ^ Montague's Fragment on Government, p. 14. * Essays on Criticism (First Series), Preface (1865), p. x, " Mill's Early Essays, by Gibbs, p. 349. BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 209 and ready to take affront. Apt, as he was, to embrace the passing compliments of courtesy as deliberate judgments on his merits, his complacent acceptance of such civilities lent colour to the charge of excessive vanity which, with some show of justice, has been so often levelled against him. Yet in his personal relations he was, in no sense, arrogant, boastful, or ill-mannered. " The way to be comfortable," wrote he on sending, in his eighty-fourth year, an autograph to Lady Hannah Ellice, " is to make others comfortable ; the way to make others comfortable is to appear to love them : the way to appear to love them is to love them in reality. Probatiir ab experteniia per Jeremy Bentham, Queen's Square Place, Westminster. Born Feb. 15: anno 1748. Written (this copy) 24 Oct. 1831." "His moral life," said Dumont, " is as beautiful as his in- tellectual." Never did any philosopher better conform his life to his doctrines.^ Rush tells us that at table he talked but little, and had a benevolence of bearing suited to the philanthropy of his mind. " He seemed to be thinking only of the convenience of his guests. . . . Bold as are his opinions in his works, here he was wholly inobtrusive of theories that might not have commanded the assent of all present." ^ He made it a rule to avoid discussion with those whose opinions were so remote from his own as to render discussion fruitless. A moralist, like a surgeon, he once remarked, should never wound, but to heal. Say not " I have a right to proclaim and defend my opinion " : What is ' Edin. Kev., vol. xxix. p. 217. 2 Residence at Court of Loftdon, p. 286. 2IO JEREMY BENTHAM the English of all that ? "I have a right to give pain — to make enemies — to have backs turned, and doors shut against me." Two years after Bentham's death Francis Place referred to him as " my constant, excellent, venerable preceptor, of whom I think every day of my life, whose death I constantly lament, whose memory I revere, and whose absence I deplore " ; ^ and it is safe to affirm that more than one distinguished man, both in the Old World and the New, shared Place's sorrow, and with him mourned the loss of a venerated teacher. Although brought up in the tenets of the Church of England, Bentham does not seem to have accepted any theological creed. While strongly opposed to the maintenance of religious establishments by the State, he in no way concerned himself with questions of dogma, until in later years he was aroused to active hostility by the attitude of the clergy on educational issues ; indeed, in his elements q{ Penal Law, he suggests that the services of religion in prisons should be rendered attractive so as to become efficacious, and that the chaplain, by his kindly offices, should constitute himself a " daily benefactor — a friend to console and to en- lighten." In his view, the adoption of dogma — even false dogma — might in certain circumstances promote the general happiness, and so conform to the principle of utility. During the last fourteen years of Bentham's life there appeared several works on theological subjects written by him or based upon his notes. In 1818, Church-of- ^ Wallas' Life of Place, p. 92. BENTHAM IN OLD AGE 211 Englandisin and its Catechism examined, preceded by Strictures on the Exclusionary System as piirsued in the National Society's Schools;'^ in 1822, An Analysis of the Influence of Natm'al Religion, by Robert Beauchamp (edited by Grote) ; in 1823, Not Paul but fesus by Gamaliel Smith, a work which had been put together by Place in 18 17. These productions contain some trenchant writing on the evils of clericalism, but are of no more permanent value than the theological essays of Sir Isaac Newton. In some passages the subjects are treated with much levity, and the whole of these writings are excluded from the collected edition of the works by Bowring, who did not share the Master's views on theological topics. "Jug" (short for Jugger- naut), with its derivatives " juggical," "anti-jug," etc., was used by Bentham and his friends as a " conveniently unintelligible synonym " for orthodox Christianity.^ But, fiercely as he sometimes wrote on these subjects, he always stood out boldly for universal toleration : every man, he would say, is master of his own actions, no man of his own opinions. ^ Written some years earlier. Mother Church of England relieved by Bleeding {i?>2^) and the Book of Church Reform (1831) are extracted from this treatise. 2 Wallas' Life of Place, p. 82. CHAPTER IX BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS " A BENTHAMITE! What sort of animal is jl\. that ? " — the founder of the Benthamic school inquired of M. Dumont in 1802 — "I can't find such a word in Boyer's Dictionary. Utilitarian would be the more propre term." This word " utilitarian," which was already acquiring, as M. Halevy puts it, une acception pejorative, had been applied by Bentham some twenty years before to one Joseph Townsend — " a parson, brother to the Alderman " — whom he described as " a utilitarian, a naturalist, a chemist, a physician." ^ But despite Bentham's protest, " Benthamite " was for half a century the epithet commonly used to designate the older generation of utilitarians, a body of men who, while less speculative, and perhaps less scientific, than their immediate successors in this school of philosophy, exerted more influence upon practical legislation.- The axiom of " utility " — that the greatest happiness of the whole community ought to be the end pursued in all human actions — is one inseparably linked with 1 lyjg-iSid. Rector of Pewsey ; Fellow of Clare Coll., Camb. ; author of several works ; he was, said Bentham, " beloved by everybody." "^ Mr. Wallas takes 1824 as marking the change of era; Life of Place, p. 85. 212 BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 213 the name of Bentham, though he made no pretension to be the discoverer of a principle which, as we have already seen, had formed a fundamental doctrine of many earlier writers. How, then, was this end — this "greatest possible happiness" — to be attained? In Bentham's view, Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign x^dj&X.&xs, pleasure and pain. He sought to measure the good or evil of an action solely by the quantity of pleasure or pain — physical or intellectual — resulting from it. The greatest happiness would flow, therefore, from a supreme blend of pleasures ; and it obviously became essential for him to devise some scheme of " moral arithmetic " for the determina- tion of the various " lots " of pleasure and pain, some sort of " felicific calculus," with elements or dimensions of value, such as would enable him to measure the good or evil of the consequences which actions tend to produce. The greatest sum of happiness would, he held, accrue to the community by each individual member of it doing the utmost to increase his own — not necessarily by the pursuit of immediate pleasure, but by doing that which, possibly at the cost of present pain, would ultimately secure him a balance of pleasure. Bentham did not, however, deal fully or even consis- tently with this "self-preference" principle, nor did he make clear whether it rested on anything more than assumption. He was, indeed, far from encouraging individual selfishness. No, we must not add force to a passion already sufficiently strong ! " Society is held together only by the sacrifices that men can be induced to make of the gratifications they demand ; to obtain 214 JEREMY BENTHAM these sacrifices is the great difficulty, the great task of government." ^ In the later years of his life Bentham came to the conclusion that the phrase " The greatest happiness of the greatest number" was wanting in clearness and precision. He accordingly substituted for this phrase the simpler expression, "The greatest happiness," as representing the true object of politics and morals. The "greatest number" he dismissed as superfluous; and thus, says Colonel Thompson, one of his most capable disciples, " the magnificent proposition emerged clearly, and disentangled from its accessory." Now, the "accessory proposition" is that the greatest aggregate of happiness must always include the happiness of the greatest number ; and this assertion Colonel Thompson regards as manifestly true. He assumes, first of all, that the greatest number must always be composed of those who individually possess a comparatively small portion of the good things of life; and then he goes on to argue that, if anything is taken from one of these to give to another whose possessions are greater, it is plain that what he loses in happiness is greater than what the other gains. Half a crown is of infinitely more consequence to the porter who loses it than to the duke who may chance to find it. A chief part of the baseness of the rich man, who seized the ewe lamb of his poor neighbour, consisted in doing that which caused so much greater pain to the sufferer than happiness to the receiver.^ This reasoning may perhaps be sound on the as- ^ Bow., ii. p. 497 ; and see ibid., ix. p. 192. Col. Perronet Thompson's Works, i. p. 136. BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 215 sumption made by Colonel Thompson, if it be further assumed that happiness is synonymous with opulence, and that there is a given limited amount of wealth to be distributed arbitrarily among the various members of the community ; but '' the greatest happiness of the greatest number," clearly involves both the intensity of the happiness and the number of persons among whom it is diffused, and it cannot be lopped of its "greatest number" as one might eliminate the word "right" where it recurs in the phrase, " the right man in the right place." Although Bentham's aim was undoubtedly to diffuse happiness amongst the greatest possible number of persons, it is manifest that a measure which conferred happiness in a high degree upon each member of a large minority might, in certain circumstances, be preferable to one which gave a much lower degree of pleasure to each member of the numerical majority. May it not be that Bentham was moved to reject the latter clause of his famous formula by some doubt as to the truth of the " accessory proposition " rather than by the mere perception of superfluity ? We are inclined to ask whether the formula, in either shape, connotes any really definite idea ; certainly the involved and pseudo- mathematical statements extracted by Bowring from the Deontology ^ contain no lucid reason for the change, nor throw any light on the difficulties that surround Bentham's interpretation of his axiom. It would seem, ^ Bow., i. pp. 18-19. The Deontology, or Science of Morality, was published in 1834, and, as the edition was not exhausted, is not included by Bowring in the collected works. It is an unsatisfactory book, and is generally supposed to represent the views of its editor (Bowring) rather than those of Bentham. {Sed cf. Alhee's C/tilitarian ism, p. 177 n.) 2i6 JEREMY BENTHAM indeed, that in order to reduce the " greatest happiness " principle to a form which embodies a definite, accurate, and intelligible proposition, we must state it as follows : If it be assumed that the happiness which a man derives from the enjoyment of his property increases with the amount of the property but at a diminishing rate, then a given amount of property divided amongst a given population will produce the greater aggregate amount of happiness the more nearly the division approaches equality of distribution. The truth of this proposition may be readily and rigidly demonstrated ; but, as will be seen from the nature of the hypotheses, it can prove of little or no practical value. That Bentham attached too high a degree of im- portance to the doctrine of utility will be generally admitted ; but, in the opinion of John Mill who knew him well, we probably owe all that he did to its adoption. It was, says Mill, necessary to him to find a first principle which he could receive as self-evident, and from which he could derive all his other doctrines as logical consequences.^ Armed with this principle of " utility " as with some brand Excalibur, he deemed himself fully equipped to encounter any difficulty, to remove any obstacle, that should present itself in the wide range of morals, politics, or law. It is not surprising to find that his equipment proved inadequate, more particularly in the department of morals — for neither pleasure nor pain can be expressed in terms which admit a rigid application of the rules of arithmetic and algebra. ^ Early Essays, by Gibbs, p. 376. BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 217 In the year 181 7 he published, with explanatory notes and observations, the remarkable Table of the Springs of Action,^ purporting to show the several species of pleasures and pains of which man's nature is susceptible, together with the various interests, devices, and motives respectively corresponding to them. The collation of appellatives, " neutral, eulogistic and dyslogistic," affords a curious, if not very informing, ensample of Bentham's peculiar treatment of ethical questions ; and although psychologists deem the table absurd, especially if taken as setting forth the elementary or " simple " feelings, it probably contained as much psychology as was required for the exposition of his legislative theories.- It must, indeed, ever be borne in mind that the real end and aim of all his labours was practical legislation — a great part of his writings, says Sir Leslie Stephen, may be regarded as so much raw material for Acts of Parliament — and it will be allowed that in the field of law, at any rate, he met with conspicuous success. Dr. Albee goes so far as to declare that Bentham contributed almost nothing of importance to the science of ethics, or " deontology," as he himself phrased it, and further, deplores his attempt to reduce that science to " moral arithmetic " in the "grimly literal sense." But even Dr. Albee concedes that he unquestionably did more than any of his contemporaries to bring the Utilitarian theory into popular ethical discussions, and admits that his short- ^ Bow., i. pp. 195-219. First printed in 1815, but compiled, for the most part, at a much earlier period. ^ Stephen's Utilitarians, i. p. 252, 2i8 JEREMY BENTHAM comings as a philosopher may be assigned in part to the fact that his works treat primarily of jurisprudence.^ We should, therefore, never forget that " moral arith- metic " had not as its main object the creation of an ethical code, but rather the founding of a science of law and the establishment of a basis for the theory of legal rewards and punishments. It has been said that there is scarce an argument in Bentham's voluminous writings which is not to the purpose so far as it goes,^ and it certainly would not be easy to discover many instances of false reasoning. In applying to actions the tests of " moral arithmetic," his premisses are sometimes inaccurate and often incom- plete ; but, if we assume the validity and sufficiency of his premisses, we must admit that his reasoning is gener- ally sound and his conclusions just. The defects and limitations of his doctrines, as well as his personal disqualifications for the great task which he imposed upon himself, have formed the subject of much friendly comment and more hostile criticism. His own mind viewed as a " representative of universal human nature " was, we are told, singularly incomplete. He had enjoyed but scant experience of the various and ever-varying sorts and conditions of men. He failed to sympathise with many of the strongest feelings that direct the thought and action of mankind, and he lacked the power of imagination, says Mill : he sought not only to construct philosophy out of materials furnished by his own mind, but to construct it without regard to the lessons of history, and without any reference to ' History of Eni^liih Utiiitarianism (1902), p. 1 90. ■^ Stephen's Utilitarians, i. p. 316. BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 219 the opinions of his predecessors, whose views he dis- missed as " vague generalities." Now, no man's syn- thesis can be more complete than his analysis, Mill continues ; and it never seems to have occurred to Bentham that these same vague generalities contained the whole unanalysed experience of the human race — while the collective mind may not penetrate below the surface, it nevertheless sees all the surface.^ Regarding the nations of the earth as aggregates of beings fashioned in a mould of his own creation and bent on the pursuit of their own selfish interests, unmoved either by purely generous impulses or by the violence of passion, he was led to believe that the whole duty of man might be enforced by the operation of Sanctions ; that is to say, certain pains and pleasures so annexed to actions as to form chains, as it were, binding a man to the observance of some particular rule of life or conduct. He considered that there are four distinguishable sources from which such pleasures or pains are used to flow : {a) the physical sanction, pleasures or pains naturally arising in the course of human conduct ; {U) the political, or, as it might perhaps be termed, the legal sanction, dependent on the law of the land ; {c) the moral, or popular sanction, operat- ing through the moral habits of existing society without reference to the directions of the legislator ; and {d) the religious sanction, operating through some superior being.'^ Of these four sanctions the physical is alto- ^ Early Essays, by Gibbs, p. 346. ^ Bentham afterwards treated the sanction of sympathy as separate from the physical sanction, i.e., he distinguished between pleasure or pain coming to a man directly, and pleasure or pain coming, as it were, by reflexion — through the medium of pleasure or pain regarded as having place in the breast of another. (Bow., iii. p. 290.) 220 JEREMY BENTHAM gether the groundwork of the poHtical and the moral, as also of the religious, in so far as it bears relation to the present life. Bentham takes as an illustration the case of a man's goods being consumed by fire. If this happen by pure accident, it is simply a calamity ; if by reason of his own imprudence, it may be styled a punishment of the physical sanction ; if by the sen- tence of the magistrate, a punishment of the political sanction ; if for want of assistance withheld by his neighbour from some dislike to his moral character, a punishment of the moral sanction ; if through distrac- tion of mind occasioned by the dread of God's displeasure, a punishment of the religious sanction. The real meaning which Bentham attached to the sanctions (especially to the physical sanction) may, perhaps, be best gathered from his own observations in relation to an offence characterised by cruelty. He is considering to what extent the atrocity of a supposed offence should operate in determining the force of evidence required to prove its commission. " In such a case," says he, " the seducing motives have to contend with the motive of humanity, sympathy, general benevo- lence (take which name you will) — to contend with it in its character of a restraining, a tutelary motive. The disposition of the individual in question being given (that is, the effective force with which it habitually acts upon his mind) — the greater the degree of cruelty said to be displayed in the offence said to be committed, the greater the force with which, on that particular occasion, the motive in question must have opposed the perpetration of it But the principle of humanity BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 221 is but one of several principles, which, on every such occasion, are acting upon the human mind in the character of tutelary and restraining principles. There are, besides this, the three respective forces of the political, the moral or popular, and the religious sanctions. Neither is this by any means the most intense and uniform in its operation, of the four tutelary forces. It may or may not be stronger than the force of the religious sanction — it may or may not be stronger than that of the moral — but it never can be accounted comparable in strength to that of the political sanction. Many men fear the wrath of Heaven ; many men fear loss of character ; but all men are acted upon, more or less, by the fear of the gaol, the scourge, the gallows, the pillory, and so forth. In this point of view, what- ever improbability is given to the supposed offence by those other restraining motives, the additional improbability given to it by the circumstance in question seems scarce worth taking into the account. On the other hand, the force of the political and moral sanctions acts upon a man in the character of re- straining motives, only upon the supposition of dis- covery. The force of humanity has this in common with that of the religious sanction, that the supposition of discovery is not necessary to the application of it ; and, besides the comparatively greater extent of its operation when contrasted with the religious sanction, the principle of humanity (whatever may be the force with which it acts) is surer to be present to the mind." 1 ^ Bow., vii. p. 116. 222 JEREMY BENTHAM Bentham's rigid adherence to the dogma that moraHty depends upon determinate consequences and not upon motives, coupled with his disregard of the more subtle moral influences, undoubtedly led him astray in the discussion of some of the nicer questions of individual behaviour and social development. But his vigorous, self-reliant, and practical mind was admirably fitted to analyse and classify the material interests of society — to regulate the mere business part of our social arrangements. His mistake, says Mill, simply consisted in supposing that the business part of human affairs was the whole of them. Now, as law happens to be a matter of business — is, in fact, the business part of human affairs — he was able, after many years of constant labour, to determine the nature of the " political " sanctions conducive to happiness, and to achieve a memorable triumph in the department of legislation. It has been said that before Bentham's day no one had ever dared to speak disrespectfully of English law or of the British Constitution. But the assault of this arch-innovator was as bold as it was long-sustained ; countless absurdities passing current as rules of evidence, astounding fictions spreading over the whole field of jurisprudence, cunning devices for plundering suitors and enriching officials, all were ruthlessly exposed. He would have no commerce with mere abstractions. " The more abstract the proposition is," said he, " the more liable is it to involve a fallacy." He insisted on a rigorous application of the " method of detail." He would never reason about a whole until it had first been resolved into its component parts. He BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 223 classified and reclassified, and would accept no formula which could not be interpreted in terms of definite facts.^ " Hasty generalisation," he cried, " the great stumbling-block of intellectual vanity ! — hasty general- isation, the rock that even genius itself is so apt to split upon ! — hasty generalisation, the bane of prudence and of science ! " In the preceding chapters we have dealt with Bentham's views on the subject of Punishment. Some indication has been given of the nature of his work in relation to Codification, the abolition of the Usury Laws, Prison Discipline, the Poor Laws, Local Govern- ment, the Administration of Oaths, Law Taxes, Savings Banks, the Laws of Real Property, the Patent Laws, etc. Many of the salutary reforms which he struggled to effect have long been accomplished ; and as a result some of his most valuable writings are to-day rarely read, or even referred to, with any just appreciation of their merits. His books would now be more esteemed had his work been less effective. The two volumes on Judicial Evidettce, for example, relate largely to anomalies and abuses which have since disappeared ; yet these volumes contain many chapters of absorbing interest, full of valuable suggestion to the mind of any man concerned with the study of law. The Introductory View was prepared by James Mill and partly printed in 1812;^ but more than one book- seller, we are told, declined to be responsible for the publication, fearing lest it should be held to constitute a libel on the administration of justice. Dumont's Traite ^ Cf. Stephen's Utilitariaiis, p. 317. '^ Bow., vi. pp. 1-187. 224 JEREMY BENTHAM des Preuves Judiciaires, published at Paris in 1823, contained, however, in a condensed form Bentham's general speculations on the subject, and an English version appeared in 1825. Two years later the lengthy treatise known as the Rationale of Evidence ^ was pub- lished, in five volumes, under the editorship of John Mill, then a young man barely twenty-one years of age. It had been begun three times, at considerable intervals, each time in a different manner and each time without reference to the preceding undertaking. " One service," writes Mr. Wallas, " which all Bentham's disciples were allowed to perform, was the writing of Bentham's later books." ^ According to Sir James Mackintosh, these disciples resembled the auditors of an Athenian philosopher, and gathered their opinions rather from the familiar conversation of the Master than from the written word ; but John Mill declares that it was his father who exercised persoftal sway over the younger men, while Bentham's influence was exerted mainly through his writings.^ A verbose and acrimonious review of the treatise on Evidence appeared in the Edinburgh. It was a per- sonal attack upon the author and his youthful editor rather than a criticism of the work itself. The writer denounced the " slovenly and careless confidence with which the office of editor had been performed," and, turning upon Bentham, added, coarsely and churlishly enough, "a man who wilfully leaves his brats with a nursery girl can scarcely be astonished should he find that they are not washed and combed, holes darned, ' Bow., vi. and vii. - Life of Place, p. 83. ^ Hal., ii. p. 292. BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 225 and heads scrutinised, as accurately as might be desired."^ Bentham taxed Brougham with having " let slip the dogs of war " at him — " in the Edinburgh, and perhaps elsewhere" — but Brougham gave an un- qualified denial to the charge, and, indeed, asserted that he had a correspondence of weeks, and all but a rupture, with Jeffrey on the subject : " How could you listen to such a tale of tales as that / of all your friends ever could have let slip the dogs in E. R. at you ? " ^ Anyhow, the reviewer — doubtless a professional lawyer — was manifestly chagrined at Bentham's supposed deter- mination, as he interpreted it, " to put a caput lupinum on the lawyer's shoulders, and turn him into the wilder- ness as the general scapegoat for the sins of society." But the author's vigorous and masterly onslaught upon the abuses and anomalies then prevalent in the Courts — marred as it undoubtedly is by divers eccentricities of style and some unnecessary violence of diction — was recognised, even by this irate lawyer, as a " great work," containing grains of mustard seed that some day would be trees. Bentham's object was to ascertain the best method of proceeding to investigate truth by means of " evi- dence" or "judicial proof" — the medium through which the results of jurisprudence must needs be obtained. It was high time, declared the Edinburgh in a review of Dumont's treatise,^ that the judicial authorities, then as ever, ready to mistake their own decisions for the voice of reason, should be undeceived ; that the stagnant ^ Edin. Rev., vol. xlviii. p. 457. "^ November 19th, 1830; Bow., xi. p. 61. ^ Vol. xl. p. 170. Q 226 JEREMY BENTHAM atmosphere of the Courts, thronged by eager and ob- sequious crowds, should be stirred and purified by the fresh air of common-sense. Vos de reo, de vobis populus Romanus jiidicabit. Legal matters, we are told, were at this time among the most fashionable topics of conversation. The cause of law reform had just lost a resolute and fearless champion by the deplorable death of Romilly — the gentle and enlightened lawyer who avowed that " every day he disliked the profession of the law the more, the more he met with success in it." Branded as a Jacobin, a hypocritical pretender to humanity, a wanton de- stroyer of those establishments which form the safe- guards of society, he had borne " for the testimony of truth," with a serene equanimity amounting almost to indifference, constant obloquy and "reproach far worse to bear than violence." There was assuredly sore need of activity on the part of law reformers. In the civil courts, the rule which excluded the evidence of persons interested in the result of the litigation forbade the very parties to the suit from bearing oral testimony to the facts within their knowledge. Plaintiffs and defendants were alike condemned to sit silent spectators of the trial and ofttimes to witness some grievous miscarriage of justice which might have been readily averted had they been suffered to testify.^ Bentham urged the abolition of this and many another barbarous rule of law. He announced, at the outset of his work, as one ^ Cf., e.g., the case o{ Bardell v. Pickwick, the issue of which might have been different had Mr. Pickwick been allowed to give evidence. BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 227 of his three main propositions, that an objection, the efifect of which is to exclude the testimony of a witness altogether, ought not to be allowed — that is, ought not to be allowed under some pretence that the exclusion would tend to rectitude of decision. His rule was, Let in the light of evidence ; and he would grant only one exception — where the letting in of such light would be attended with preponderant collateral inconvenience, in the shape of vexation, expense, or delay ; for even evidence, said he, even justice itself, like gold, may be bought too dear. He accordingly maintained that the evidence of interested persons should be received, and that it should be left to the jury to make allowance for all such circumstances as might reasonably be supposed to affect the credibility of the deponent. The other two main propositions of his treatise were in the nature of problems which he proposed to solve. What means can be adopted to secure the truth of evidence? and. What rules can be laid down for esti- mating the probability of the truth of evidence? His solutions of these two problems constitute a master- piece of cogent argument and exhaustive exposition. So far as the procedure of the criminal courts was concerned, he proved to be a less drastic reformer. In ordinary cases of felony, involving penalties of death or exile, the counsel for the prisoner was not, until the year 1836, permitted to address the jury on any of the facts charged against his client. It was argued that the judge was, in truth, counsel for the prisoner — the most trite and the most absurd of all false and foolish dicta, said Sydney Smith. In April, 1824, 228 JEREMY BENTHAM George Lamb ^ presented to Parliament a petition from jurors at the Old Bailey, praying that counsel should be allowed to prisoners accused of felony ; but such was Bentham's prejudice against professional lawyers — " hirelings of the law, purchasable male prostitutes," he called them — that he had little or nothing to urge against this rule of practice. He merely remarked that the founders of English jurisprudence were so jealous of the power of rhetoric over the affections of the jury, that, by putting a gag into the advocate's mouth, they determined to give to the jury the same sort of security that Ulysses, when among the Syrens, gave to his companions — by putting wax into their ears. Bentham was, moreover, so apprehensive of the dangers resulting from an improper acquittal that he was inclined to approve the French method of in- terrogating prisoners — at any rate, he preferred it to the then existing English practice based on the maxim, nemo tenetur se ipswn accusare. Had he enjoyed a larger experience at the Bar, he would, we think, have been more impressed by the dangers that must ever attend the compulsory examination of accused persons. He would have been more alive to the supreme necessity of securing — even when such testimony is given voluntarily — a competent judge, who would not fail to remind the jury that the stoutest hearts may be subdued by confinement and anxiety, that it is easy to mistake righteous indignation for truculence, or * 1^84-1834. Brother of second Lord Melbourne ; afterwards Under- Secretary of State in the Home Department. BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 229 confound misery with remorse, and to warn them, too, that innocent men may well be led into the suppression or falsification of facts, an accepted badge of guilt. Romilly narrates a case which came under his notice in 1807, as Solicitor-General, where an absolutely innocent young man, charged with mutiny on the Hermione in 1797, thinking to excite the compassion of his judges, in effect admitted his guilt, but pleaded extreme youth and his dread of the mutineers. He was sentenced to death and executed, although his relatives had procured from the Navy Office a certificate showing that at the time of the mutiny he was serving as a boy on board the Marlborough, far from the scene of the offence alleged against him. It would seem, indeed, that Bentham failed to realise the extent to which the sense of security and men's confidence in the awards of the law may be impaired by the fact of a wrongful conviction ; and it has been suggested that, in this particular, he was a follower of Archdeacon Paley, who opined that a prisoner, led to the block to suffer for a crime of which he is wholly innocent, ought to solace himself with the reflection that " he who falls by a mistaken sentence may be con- sidered as falling for his country ! " ^ If this indeed be so, it is consoling to find that the eminent divine was followed by the philosopher with somewhat reluctant feet and at a respectful distance. (Cf. ante, p. 140.) It was, in truth, not on advocacy, nor on rigorous rules of evidence, but on publicity , that Bentham mainly relied as the safeguard of testimony. He called pub- ^ Moral and Polilicai Philosophy {\\}a.Q^\\\oxi), vol. ii. p. 302. 230 JEREMY BENTHAM licity the " soul of justice " ; for, while only a few- individuals are gainers by real justice, to make its usefulness general it must appear as well as exist. " The most tyrannical magistrate," he declared, " be- comes moderate, the most daring circumspect, when, exposed to the view of all, he feels that he cannot pronounce a judgment without being judged himself."^ Amidst his many other valuable contributions to systematic jurisprudence it is difficult to make choice, but we may well recall, as of special service to the State, Bentham's exposure of the laws relating to Bankruptcy, Insolvency, and Imprisonment for Debt. He showed with minute elaboration how the property of debtors, instead of being applied to the " undignified purpose " of satisfying their debts, was transferred to " the dignified function of contributing to the fund provided for the remuneration of legal science." The wretched piece of legislative patchwork which has bankruptcy for its subject — to adopt his own designation — was at once complex, crude, and ill- administered. The great bankers and merchants of the City of London complained that assignees plun- dered the debtor's estate and misapplied his assets, while the penal clauses, though of the utmost rigour were wholly ineffective. A bankrupt was required, on pain of death, to appear to his commission and make full discovery of his estate. Unless his difficulties clearly arose from some casual loss, he might, after being set in the pillory for two hours, have one of his ears nailed thereto and cut off. Convictions, hovv- ^ Cf. Edin. Rev., vol. xl. at p. 195. BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 231 ever, rarely took place ; for men chose rather to submit patiently to the gross frauds practised upon them, says Romilly, than to become parties to the execution of such cruel and sanguinary laws. The enactments relating to Insolvent Debtors (that is, insolvent persons who were not traders) stood equally in need of amendment. The distinction between Insolvency and Bankruptcy was, as Bentham clearly showed, a source of fraud and vexation to the suitor, a gold-mine to the man of law. " Precious distinction ! a wall of paper to fraud, a wall of adamant to justice." Speaking generally, a creditor might cast the insolvent into gaol and keep him there for life, even if he were willing to give up everything he had in the world for the satisfaction of his debts.^ At uncertain intervals, Par- liament was driven to relieve the overflowing prisons. The general law was, for the time being, abrogated, contracts were cancelled, and the gaolers turned loose upon the world a crowd of debtors who — howsoever honest when they entered prison — had, for the most part, learned the maxims and acquired the habits of that abode of shame and misery. Bentham did not advocate the complete abolition of imprisonment for debt. Humanity in her soft colours, said he, decks the breastplate of the debtor's ^ Exorbitant fees were, moreover, demanded on behalf of judges, attorneys, and gaolers. At Dover Castle the fees on first commitment of a prisoner from Margate amounted to £4 igs. lod., and the man might lie there, at the suit of the Crown, from ten to twenty months without trial or hearing before a court of justice. Only a very small portion of the damp, dark, and filthy courtyard was paved ; the rooms were without grates, and neither mops, pails, brooms, fire, nor candles were allowed. (Neild on Prisons, 1812 ; Editi. Rev., vol. xxii. p. 387.) 232 JEREMY BENTHAM champion : Justice, in her grave and sombre tints, that of the champion of the injured creditors. " Ah ! let him out ! let him out ! " cries the noble senti- mentalist, who gets nothing by his being kept in. " Yes, true enough ; if there he be, and have nothing wherewith to pay, nor have done anything for which it is fit he should be punished, the sooner he be let out the better. But do you know whether he have wherewith to pay ? do you know how and why he came there ? " ^ These questions, said Bentham, demand careful consideration. Arrest on mesne process was, however, unreservedly condemned by him, and he probably deserves the credit of its ultimate abolition* Under this process, at the pleasure of any man, another might be arrested for an alleged debt of ;i^20 or more — until 1826, ;^io — and forthwith consigned to gaol with- out having any opportunity of being heard, and with no alternative than that of removal to a spunging house, should he be in a position to pay for such accommodation. The " demon of chicane," in the shape of an angel of beneficence, had, indeed, suggested "a wretched palliative," to wit, an affidavit preceding the warrant of arrest ; but this affidavit contained no as- surance of the creditor's belief in the necessity for the arrest, nor did it even aver that the alleged debt exceeded in amount any counterclaim or debt due per contra. The true course, urged Bentham, is an immediate scrutiny into the circumstances of each individual case. Firstly, to ascertain the cause of the alleged debtor's resistance to the claim, and, secondly, ^ Bow., vi. p. 181. BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 233 to inquire as to his solvency and means of payment. But let the debtor be punished only when it has been shown that blame attaches to him. " To all such dis- tinctions," said Bentham, "under the guidance of Judge and Co., existing Law inexorably shuts her eyes. Why ? Because to make the distinctions it would be necessary for the judge to hear evidence — to hear evidence from the best source, in the best shape, and at the properest time : against all which he sits resolved." The measure of punishment would, he suggests, have been incom- plete if the shorn creditor had not come in for a share of it. " While the debtor, instead of being compelled to give up what he has in his power, if anything, for the satisfaction of his creditor, is either rioting or starving in gaol — who knows or who cares which ? — the injured creditor is fined 4^. per day for keeping him there ; and he must submit to this ad- ditional loss, or forego whatsoever chance there may be of recovering any part of his original loss." ^ To the student of politics Bentham's speculations are of considerable interest, though the most cursory reader may see that his examination of political prob- lems is, generally, less exhaustive than his treatment of legal topics. We have already referred to his writings on such subjects as Free Trade, Colonial Expansion, and Parliamentary Reform. In dealing with the question of Constitutional Government, he confines himself, for the most part, to a consideration of the means best adapted to check abuses of power. The individual, he said, ought to be left to provide for his own ^ Bow., vi. pp. 182, 183. 234 JEREMY BENTHAM enjoyments ; the principal function of government being to protect him from sufferings. This office it fulfils by creating rights which it confers upon individuals — rights with their corresponding obligations ; rights of personal security, and of protection for honour ; rights of pro- perty ; rights of assistance in case of need. He rested his investigations on the assumption that a people should be controlled by a numerical majority among themselves ; that, in fact, it is the proper con- dition of man, in a well-governed state, to be under the sway of Public Opinion. He justified his assump- tion in this way : to afford security against misrule, the controlling authority must consist of persons whose interests accord with the end in view ; that is, the attainment of good government. In other words, there must be identity of interest between the controlling authority — the trustees — and the community for whom the power of control is held in trust.^ Where, then, is this identity of interest to be found ? Only, says Bentham, in the numerical majority of the people. He perceived, of course, that the majority, if it were to be thus recognised as the paramount power in society, must, in the case of large communities, exercise rule by an artificial arrangement of Representative Government. He contended that, among modern European nations, although public opinion might impose some partial check on abuses, the rulers were really guided by sinister influences, especially by what he called " interest-begotten prejudice," the inherent ten- dency of men — probably quite unconsciously — to make ^ Mill's Early Essays, by Gibbs, p. 373. BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 235 a virtue of following their own self-interest. The only species of government which has, or can have, in view the greatest happiness of the greatest number is, he accordingly declares, a democracy ; and if the com- munity be large, there must be some arrangement for representative government. " A democracy, then, has for its characteristic object and effect the securing its members against oppression and depredation at the hands of those functionaries which it employs for its defence, against oppression and depredation at the hands of foreign adversaries, and against such internal adversaries as are not functionaries." ^ He carefully examined the risks of abuse of power by the governing functionaries, which can only be minimised, he says, by a system of direct personal responsibility to the numerical majority. He was astute to perceive how the wishes of this majority might be defeated, alert to provide the necessary safeguards, and eager to devise means for rescuing the members of the community from oppression, and for enabling them to obtain the redress of grievances. But he failed, as John Mill points out, to recognise the necessity for maintaining, as a correc- tive to partial views, some standing opposition to the will of the majority. No country, says Mill, long continues progressive without some such organised opposition to the ruling power — plebeians to patricians, clergy to kings, freethinkers to clergy, kings to barons, commons to king and aristocracy. Now Bentham, he maintains, exhausted all the resources of his vast in- genuity " in riveting the yoke of public opinion closer ^ Bow., ix. p. 47. 236 JEREMY BENTHAM and closer round the necks of all public functionaries," and in excluding the possibility of any exercise of influence by a minority or by the functionary's own notion of right. He had been better employed in pointing out the means by which " institutions funda- mentally democratic " might best be adapted to the pre- servation and strengthening of individual rights, and of "reverence for the superiority of cultivated intelligence." It is now more than threescore years and ten since Bentham died, and yet it is not easy to assign his place among the illustrious benefactors of mankind, nor even to determine his rank among English men of letters. During lifetime his fame spread throughout the civilised world, though, as we have already seen, he was left almost " a stranger in his father's house." His name, wrote Hazlitt, is little known in England, better in Europe, best of all in the plains of Chili and the mines of Mexico ; ^ but, though neglected by a great part of his countrymen, declared Rowland Hill in 1822, he is held in the highest esteem by the enlightened and honest.2 " A great man has gone from among us, full of years, of good works and of deserved honours. In some of the highest departments in which the human intellect can exert itself, he has not left his equal or his second behind him." Such was the verdict of the critical Edinburgh, perhaps the most influential periodical of his time : " He has had blind flatterers and blind detractors, flatterers who could see nothing but per- fection in his style, detractors who could see nothing 1 spirit of the Age (1824), p. i. '•^ Life of R. Hill, by G. B. Hill ; {Journal, August 4th, 1822.) BENTHAM'S CREED AND AIMS 237 but nonsense in his matter. He will now have judges. Posterity will pronounce its calm and impartial de- cision ; and that decision will, we firmly believe, place in the same rank with Galileo and with Locke the man who found Jurisprudence a gibberish and left it a science." ^ There is, even to this day, no great writer of our language, bearing a name so familiar as that of Jeremy Bentham, whose aims and achievements are more variously esteemed. Admirers of his genius claim that scarce a possible subject of discussion can arise which may not be illumined by words of wisdom enshrined, here or there, among his many writings : others, again, who dislike his manner and have little relish for his matter, insist that he told " a tale of little meaning though the words are strong." .Critics of every school will, however, recognise the vastness of his labours and his singleness of purpose. Whether his standard of morals, his rules of conduct, his principles in politics be approved or condemned, we hope that readers of the foregoing pages will, at least, account him one who loved his fellowmen — as rich a guerdon, perhaps, as man need desire or deserve. ^ Edin. Rev., vol. Iv. p. 552, in a review of Dumont's Souvenirs sur Mirabeau. INDEX Abbot, Charles (Lord Colchester), 21, 117, 136 — Hints on Census Bill addressed to, 136 — Chairman of Committee on Panopticon scheme, 117 Accused persons, evidence of, 228 Advocate. See Counsel Albee's, Dr., History of Utilitarian- ism, cited, 30, 215, 217 Alexander I., Emperor of Russia, correspondence with, on codifi- cation, 199 America, United States of, reference to Government of, 99, 196 Correspondence with Madison, President of, 199 American Revolution, Bentham's views as to, 23, 34 Anarchical Fallacies, publication of, no Ancestors, fallacies as to wisdom of, 185-6 Animals, Bentham's humanity to, 8, 90, 146 — Cruelty to, should be made a crime, 145 Annual Parliaments, 162 Annuity notes, plan as to, 137 Anti-Machiavel, letters of, 89 Aristocracy, government by, 37, 234 Articles, the Thirty-nine, Bentham's subscription at Oxford, 174 Ashburton, Lord. See Dunning Ashburton, Lady (Mrs. Dunning), 56, 57 Ashhurst, Sir William : his charge to Grand Jury, 127 Assigners in Bankruptcy, frauds by, 230 Auckland, Lord. See Eden, Wil- liam Bailey, Mr. Justice, 39. Ballot, voting by, advocated by Bentham, 162, 176 — denounced in Edinbttrgh Review, 162 Banks, Savings or Frugality, plan for, 135 Bankruptcy, defects in law of, 230 Bankrupts, secretary of, emoluments of, 193 Bankruptcy Court Bill, criticism of Brougham's, 184 Baring, Sir Francis, 57, 137 Barre, Colonel, 65-68, 113 Barrow Green, Bentham's residence at, 153 Beccaria : his Crimes and Punish- ments, 36, 79, 140 — comparison of, with Bentham, 144 239 240 JEREMY BENTHAM Beccaria : quctre whether he sug- gested "greatest happiness" to Bentham, 30, 36 Beckford, author of Vathek, refer- ence to, 51 Bentham, Alicia, mother of Jeremy, I, 2, 5 Bentham, George, nephew of Jeremy, 3 Bentham, Jeremiah, father of Jeremy, I, 22, 24, 26, 38, 41, 73, 89, 120 Bentham, Jeremy. See Table of Contents Bentham, Sir Samuel, brother of Jeremy, 2, 75, 79, 100, 112, 117, 118 Bentham, Dr., of Christ Church, Oxford, 13, 14, 20 Bickersteth, Henry (Lord Langdale), 17s Bingham edits Book of Fallacies, 185 Blackstone, Sir William, Bentham's attack on Commentaries o'i, 17, 23, 35 — friendship with I.^rd Shelburne, 43 — his Hard Labour Bill, 37, 38, 70, 72 — feud with Mansfield, 60 Blaqui^re, Lieut., 189 Borrow's Bible in Spain, cited, 150 Bowood, Bentham's visits to, 45, 122, 125 Bowring, Sir John, biographer of Bentham, 3, 46, 189, 190 Brissot, Bentham's acquaintance with, 25, 86, 100, 108 Bristol, Lord, a visitor at Bowood, SI Brougham, Henry (Lord), friend- ship with Bentham, 149, 159, 182, 188, 225 Brougham, Bentham's attacks on, 184 — opposes Burdett's Reform motion, 177 Browning Hill, Bentham's attach- ment to, 7 Burdett, Sir Francis, his friendship with Bentham, 160, 188 election for Westminster, 156, 178 — — motion for Parliamentary Reform, 176 Burke, Edmund, 86, 192 Burton, Hill, edxioxoi Bettthamiana, 21, 43, 135 Buxton visited by Bentham, 18 Camden, Charles Pratt, Earl of, 41, 53, 54, 62, 63 Capital, trade and production limited by, 107 Capital Punishment opposed by Bentham, 144 Carew, Sir Reginald Pole-, 117 Carlile, Richard, letter to, from Bentham, 198 Caroline, Queen, picture of her "trial," 205 Cartwright, Major, 161 Cats, Bentham's fondness for, 91 Catechism of Parliamentary Reform, 160 Catherine H. of Russia, 76 Catholics, Roman, Bentham advo- cates emancipation of, 198 Census, suggestions as to taking the, 136 Certainty of punishment, necessity for, 145 Chancery, delays in Court of, 1 28, 1 93 Chambre, Mr. Justice, 39 Chaplains, Bentham's view as to Prison, 210 INDEX 241 Chatham, Earl of, 45 — Second Earl of, 52 Chemistry, Bentham's fondness for study of, 31, 74 Chrtstomathia, Bentham's book on Education, 172 Christianity, Bentham's views as to, 210 Church of England, Bentham's writings on the, 211 Citizen, Bentham made a French, 100 Civil Code, Bentham's work upon, 138 Clarke, Chamberlain, a friend of Bentham, 19, 22, 169 Cobbett, William, 136, 157, 161 Cochrane, Lord, member for West- minster, 159 Cock-fighting, cruelty of, 146 Codification, Bentham's advocacy of, 76, 199 Codification Proposal, 200 Colonies, Bentham's views as to the acquisition of, 106, 171 Colquhoun, Patrick, a friend of Bentham, 136 Competency of witnesses, 226 Confusion, fallacies of, 185 Constantinople, Bentham's visit to, 78 Constitution, the British, Bentham's views as to, 36, 104, 196 Constitutional Code, publication of, 204 Coronation Oath, George III.'s ex- cuse as to, 174 Counsel in criminal cases, 227 Courts - martial, reference to, by Bentham, 203 Cow, three acres and a, 134 CrichofF, Bentham's stay at, 78, 88 Crime, vagueness of word, 145 Davy, Sir Humphrey, 205 Debates in Legislative Assemblies, 97 Debt, imprisonment for, 231 Debtors, treatment of, 233 Declaration of Rights, Bentham's attack upon the, 108, 109, III Defences of Economy against Burke and Rose, 192 Defence of Usury, 82 Defendant formerly not allowed to testify, 226 Democracy, government by, 234 Denman, Lord, 188 Deodands, paper on, by Bentham, 66 Deontology , 215 Deputy, payment to, indicative of proper salary for an office, 52 Derry, Bishop of. See Bristol Dispatch Court Bill, 203 Dividends on stock, plan for re- ceiving, 137 Dogmas, religious, uses of, 210 Draught of a Code for Organisation of Judicial Establishment, 99, 102 Duel, Wellington's, 203 — Burdett's, 156 Dumont, Bentham's relations with, 74. 91-93. 94. 96, 98. 124, 127, I37> 149 Dundas, Henry, Lord Melville, 108 Dunning, John, Lord Ashburton, 42, 54, 64, 88 Duty, interest should be united with, 85, 135, 176, 234 Economy, Political, Bentham's writ- ings on, 170 Eden, Sir F. M., 148 Eden, William, Lord Auckland, 37, 70 Edgeworth, Lovell, 187 242 JEREMY BENTHAM Education, the Chrestomathic Sys- tem of, 173 Egypt, occupation of, 108 Eldon, Lord, 192-194 Indications respecting, 192 Elections, Bentham's proposals as to, 162 Electoral districts, 162 Elements of Art of Packing Special Juries, 157 Ellenborough, Lord, i57) 158 Ellice, Lady Hannah, 209 Emancipate your Colonies, 106 Equality, Bentham's views as to, 105 Equity Courts, delays and abuses of, 128, 193 Escheat \iCQ Taxation, 131 Established Religion, Bentham op- posed to, 210 Evidence, The Rationale of, 224 Evidence of defendant, 226 — of accused persons, 228 — exclusion of, 227 Exchequer Bills, 137 Expectation, disappointment of, 131 Fact, issues of. Code cannot dispose of, 200 Fallacies, Book of, 185 Fallacies, Anarchical, 109 Fees, exaction of exorbitant or illegal, 193, 231 Felicific calculus, 213 Fishing, Bentham's objection to, 8 Fitzherbert. See St. Helen's Fitzmaurice, Lord (Earl of Wy- combe). See Wycombe. Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond, Life of Shelbnrne by, cited passim. And see Shelbnrne Ford Abbey, Bentham's residence at, 163, 180 Fordyce, Dr., Bentham attends lectures of, 31, 37 Forgery, prevention of, 136 Fox, Charles James, 147 Fox, Hon. Caroline, Bentham's attachment to, 49, 50, 77, 117, 119, 123, 151, 158 Fragment on Government, 35-37, 40, 69, 72, 73 France, era of Revolution in, 95 — Bentham made a citizen of, lOO Free Trade, Bentham's advocacy of, 171, 195 French language, Bentham's know- ledge of, I I writings in the, 79, 92 Frigidarium, plan of a, 136 Frugality Banks suggested by Ben- tham, 13s Gabbett, Anne, wife of Romilly, 148 George H., ode on death of, 16, 89 George HL said to have replied to Anti-Machiavel, 89 — resistance to Catholic emancipa- tion, 156, 174 — hostility to Panopticon project, 86, 90 — religious attitude of, loi Gibbs, J. W. M., J. S. Mill's Early Essays, edited by, cited passim Gibbs, Vicary, 158 Government, Bentham's theory of, 232-236. See Fragment on Graham, Sir James, letter from, 194 Grammar, Frag/nents on Universal, 173 Greek Committee, 189 Grenville, Lord, 152, 156 G[reville], Lady E., 118 Grote, George, 206, 211 Grove, Alicia, mother of Bentham, 2 INDEX 243 Halevy, E. , his La Formation du Kadicalismc philosophique, cited passim Happiness, principle of Greatest, 20, 29, 30, 31, 36, 212-216 Hard Labour Bill, Viezvoftke, 37, 71 Harris, Sir James (Earl of Malmes- bury), 88 Hastings, Warren, Lord Lans- downe's support of, 75 Helvetius, Bentham's acquaintance with works of, 10, 36, 78 Hendon, Bentham's residence near, 88, 112 Hill, Rowland, opinion of Bentham, 236 Hobgoblin Argument, fallacyof, 185 Hobhouse, J. C. (Lord Broughton), 185 Hodgskin, Thomas, 162, 166, 206 Hogarth, 147 Holland, Lord, 45, 47, 147, 160 Horner, Francis, 103 House of Lords. See Peers Howard, John, 38, 84 Hulks, punishment of the, 39 Hume, David, principle of utility taken by Bentham from, 30 Hume, Joseph, noticed, 167, 188 Humphreys, real property code of, 191 Imports, restrictions on, 171, 195 Imprisonment for debt, 230 India, influence of Bentham on Code for, 201 — Mill's History of British, 153, 155, 165 Indications respecting Lord Eldoii, 192 Innocent persons, conviction of, 229 Innovation, Bentham's love of, 23 Insane, exercise of franchise by the, 177 Insolvency and Bankruptcy, 230 Insolvent Debtors, Acts for relief of, 231 Interest-begotten-prejudice, 234 Interest should be united to duty, 85, 135, 176, 234 International, word coined by Ben- tham, 27 International Law, 88 Intolerance, Bentham's dislike of, 20s, 211 Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 53, 94 Inventors, encouragement of, 8 1 , 1 72 Irenseus, letters to Gazetteer under name of, 26 Jacobins, Bentham's attitude to- wards the, 105, 108 Jeffrey, Lord, 16, 149, 152 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 16, 42 Judges, election of, 102 — removal of, ib. Judicial Establishment in France, 99 Judicial Oaths, 174 Juries, the packing of Special, 157 Justice and Codification Petitions, 202 La Combe, Bentham's French tutor, II Lafayette, 206 Lamb, George, 228 Lancasterian system of Education, 173 Language, Essay on, 173 Lansdowne, Marquis of. See Shel- burne Lansdowne, Henry Marquis of, 47, 125, 152 H4 JEREMY BENTHAM Law, Bentham's dislike of profes- sion of, 22, 24, 25 Law Reform, Bentham's work on, 29, 30, 102, 223 Law Taxes, 129 Leading Principles of the Constitu- tional Code, 204 Lecky, references to Bentham by, 83> 144 Leeds, Duke of, 15 Legislation, science of, 152 Legislative Assemblies, Essay on Tactics of, 97 Liancourt, Duke of, 92 Libel, writings on Law of, 157 Liberty, Bentham's view of, 106, 197 Liberty of the Press, 157, 197 Lincoln's Inn, 17, 24 Lind, John, a friend of Bentham, 32, 33 Loans, restrictions on, 80 Local Courts, suggestion of, 102 Logic, Essay on, 173 Long, Charles (Secretary of Trea- sury), 130 Lords, House of. See Peers Loughborough. See Wedderburn Lytton, Bulwer, cited 157 Macaulay, Lord, references to Bentham's works by, 93, no Mackintosh, Sir James, 160, 188 Mackreth, Sir Robert, 18, 19 Madison, James, President of United States, 199 Mansfield (William Murray, Earl of), 18, 26, 34, 41, 60-62 Manual of Political Economy, 1 72 Markets, free, 171 Markham, Dr. (Archbishopof York), 10, 12 Martin, portrait of Lord Mansfield by, 61 Maseres, Baron, 44 Masters in Chancery, fictitious at- tendances of, 128, 193 Matlock, Bentham's visit to, 18 Melville. See Dundas Mesne process, arrest on, 232 Method, John Mill's commendation of Bentham's, 31 Mill, James, 29, 149, 153, 157, 162, 165-169, 185, 188, 191, 223 Mill, John Stuart, 30, 31, 82, 165, 168, 218, 222, 235 Milton, house of, in Bentham's garden, 121 Mirabeau, 47, 96, 98 Mitford,schoolfellowof Bentham, 13 Mitford, William, the historian, 8 Mitford. See Redesdale Modvinoff, Admiral, 150 Monarchy. See Fragment on Government Money, Aristotle on barrenness of, 83 Monopolies, colonial, 107 Montague, F. C, edition of Frag- ment on Government by, cited, 20, 106, 144, 201, 208 Montesquieu, 36, 37, 140 Moral Arithmetic, 144, 213 Morals and Legislation, Introduc- tion to the Principles of, 94 Morellet, the Abbe, 79, 97, 98 Music, Bentham's fondness for, 10, 49, 165 Natural rights, mischief of the ex- pression, 109 Nemo te7ietur se ipsum accusare, 228 Nepean, Sir Evan, 68 New Lanark, Bentham's interest in establishment at, 163 North, Lord, 33 North, Brownlow, 33 Note Annuities, project as to, 137 INDEX 245 Oaths, Bentham's views as to, 173 Observations on Mr. Secretary PeeV s Speech, 192 Observations on Pittas Poor Law Bill, 134 O'Connell, Daniel, 198, 203 Official Aptitude Maximised, 1 92 Ontology, Fragment on, 173 Oxford University (Queen's College), 13, 16, 19, 20 Pains, measurement of, 213 Paley, Archdeacon, 87, 229 Pannomion, 200 Panopticon, scheme for Peniten- tiary, 84-87, 118, 124, 126 Paper money, monopoly of, 137 Paris, Bentham's visits to, 18, 61, 206 Parliament, Bentham's desire to enter, 113-116 Parliamentary Reform, 160, 175 Parr, Dr. Samuel, 86, 147, 205 Passive obedience, 35 Patents for inventions, 172 Pauper management, 135 Peace, Bentham an advocate of, loo Pecuniary interest as a motive, 135 Peel, Sir Robert, 183, 184, 192 Peers, Chambers of, and Senates, 1 96 — trial of, by their own body, 103 Pembroke, Earl of, 51 Penal Code, 138 Penal law, limits of, 141 Penitentiary system, 38, 84 Perjury. See Oath Persecution, religious, 198, 211 Petitions, Justice and Codification, 201, 202 Petty, Lord Henry. See Lansdowne Physical sanction, 219 Pitt, William, the younger, 47, 52, 75> 80 Place, Francis, notices of, 29, 162, 165, 185, 210 Pleading, system of, 152 Pleasure, measurements of, 213 Poetry, Bentham's distaste for, 205 Poland, Letters on State of, 33 Police magistrates, Bill as to salaries of, 192 Political Economy. See Economy Politics, Bentham's, 23, 102, 104, 196 Poniatowski, Stanislaus, 33 Poor Laws, 132 Popular (or moral) sanction, 219 Pratt. See Camden Pratt, Lady Elizabeth, 50, 55, 56,63 Prejudice, interest-begotten, 234 Press, liberty of the, 157, 197 Priestley, Dr., 20, 30, 47, loi Prisons, views as to, 38, 84 Prohibitory Commercial Systems, 19s Promissory Oaths, 173 Property, rights of, 105, 109, 197 Property, laws as to, 132, 191, 196 Protest against Law Taxes, 128 Public Opinion, influence of, 234 Publicity, importance of, in legal procedure, 229 Punishment, principles of, 140-145 Queen's Square Place, Westminster, Bentham's residence in, 120, 156, 180 Radicalism not Dangerous, 195 Radical Reform Bill, 195 Rapin's History of England, 9 Rationale of Evidence, 224 Rationale of Reward, 79, 172 Real Property, law as to, 191, 196 Redesdale,Lord(J. F. Mitford), 194 Redlich and Hirst's English Local Government, cited passim 246 JEREMY BENTHAM Reform. See Law, Parliamentary Register, General, of Real Property, 191 Religion, Bentham's, 210 Religious establishments, 210 Religious sanction, 219 Republic, Bentham's opinion as to, loi, 108, 196, 234 Resistance to Government, 36 Responsibility, 235 Restrictive punishments, 142 Restrictive Commercial Systems, 195 Retaliation, 195 Revenge, a barbarous motive for punishment, 140 Revolution, French, Bentham's atti- tude towards the, 104 Reward, Rationale of , 79, 172 Ricardo, David, 169, 188 Rich, the property of the, 197 Richmond, Duke of, 187 Rights, Declaration of, 108 Rochefoucauld, Due de la, 98, lOO, 122 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 32, 90, 96, 97, 124, 127, 137, 139, 148, 152, 158, 164, 178, 193, 226, 229 Rose, Sir George, 130, 137, 192 Rosslyn. See IVeddcrburn Rotten Boroughs, proposed Defence of, by Bentham, 109 Ruggles, Poor Law projects of Mr., 134 Rush, residence in court of London by, cited 180, 209 Russia, Bentham's visit to, 75-88 — reception of Bentham's writings in, 149 Sablonkoff, General, 149 Sanctions, operation of the, 143, 219 Schools, Chrestomathic, 173 Scotch Law Reform, 151 Scriveners' Company, i Second Chamber, 196 Secrecy of suffrage, necessity for the, 162, 176 Security, main object of civil law, 105 Self-preference principle, 213 Sentences, severity of, in Bentham's time, 145, 231 Session, Court of, reforms in prac- tice of, 152 Shelburne, Lord (first Marquis of Lansdowne), 43, 45-53> 74) 75) 77> 89, 100, 121, 122, 147, 151 Shelburne, Lady, 45-49, 95, 9^, 100, 113 Smith, Adam, remarks on Usury, 80-82 views on political economy, 170 Smith, Richard, editor of several works of Bentham, 172 Smith, the Rev. Sydney, 186, 227 Smyrna, visited by Bentham, 77 Snail's pace argument, fallacy of, 185 Somerset, Duke of, and George IL, 114 Southey, Robert, 205 Spain, Bentham's interest in the affairs of, 190 Special Juries. Ste/uries Speranski, noticed, 170 Springs of Action, Table of the, 217 St. Helens, Lord, 100, 11 1 St. Leonards, Lord, 160 Stael, Madame de, 187 Stanislaus, King of Poland, 33 Stephen, Sir Leslie, Utilitarians, cited passim Stephen, Mr. Justice, reference to Bentham by, 155 Stewart, Dugald, reference to Ben- tham by, 83 Style, variations in Bentham's, 27- 29 INDEX 247 Subdivisions, Bentham's minute, 94, 222 Succession, taxes on, 131 Suffrage, Bentham's approval of universal, 162, 176 Siipply without Burden, 131 Swear not at all, 173 Sydney, Lord, 187 Sympathy as a sanction, 219 Tactics, Political, Essay on, 97 Talleyrand, his appreciation of Ben- tham, 207 Taxes on justice denounced, 129 Telemachus, influence of, in Ben- tham, II Testimony, improper rejection of, 226 Thompson, W., of Cork, letter to, 182 Thompson, Col. Perronet, notices of, 191, 214 Three Tracts on Spanish and Portu- guese Affairs, 190 Tooke, Home, reference to, 54, 194 Townsend, the Rev. Joseph, 212 Trade, how regulated, 107, 195 Trail, James, 96, 132 Traittis de Legislation, 137 Transplanting laws, 202 Transportation as a punishment, 39 Truth versus Ashhurst, 127 Uncertainty in punishments, 145 Universal Gramtnar, 173 Universal Suffrage, 162, 176 University of Oxford, 13, 174 Usury, defence of, 82 Usury laws, account of the, 80 Utility, the principle of, 20, 29, 30, 31, 36, 141, 212, 216 Vagrants, treatment of, 133 Valuation of pleasure and pain, 213 Venezuela, proposal of Bentham to visit, 168 Vengeance, avoidance of, in punish- ment, 140 Vernon, Miss, 45, 117 Voltaire : translation of his Taureau Blanc, by Bentham, 34 Voltaire, influence of, on Bentham's style, 35 Voting. See Suffrage Wallas, Graham, Life of Francis Place by, cited passim War, Bentham's hatred of, 100 Warwick, Bentham's visit to Castle of, 118 Wedderburn, Alex. (Lord Lough- borough, afterwards Earl of Ross- lyn), 40, 41, 58-60 Wellington, Duke of, 202, 203 Westminster School, 12, 13 Westminster Elections. See Biudett Westminster lieview, 191 White, Blanco, 150 Wilberforce, William, 86, loi, no Wilkes, John, 17, 18, 23 Wilson, George, 26, 31, 32, 40, 79, 87, 94, 96 Wisdom of our Ancestors, the fallacy as to the, 185 Witnesses, rules as to, 226 Words, coined by Bentham, 27 Workhouses, suggestion as to, 135 Wycombe, Lord, 47, 94, 95, 97 Yewhurst, Bentham's visit to, 18 Young, Arthur, his Annals of Agri- culture, 135 PLYMOUTH WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LIMITED PRINTERS I University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. MAY 1 2002 kti f UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 463 478