picturesque of his dramas, Wilhelm Tell. The name sufficiently announces
the plot, in which well-known incidents are inartificially exhibited.
The characters display all the varieties of moral beauty which harmonize
with the scene, and those virtues which the incidents are likely to call
forth. Throughout there is an exhilarating predominance of good over
evil, which forms a pleasing contrast to the fierce passions and
barbarous themes which attracted the author in his youth. It was the fit
termination of his short career, for it impresses the spectator and
reader with the feeling that the poet ended his labours a happier and
better man than he began. His untimely death while his last work was in
the enjoyment of its fresh popularity, spread a universal sorrow over
Germany, which had never yet beheld so powerful an intellect devoted to
interests of such high morality, and in such perfect harmony, with the
wants and wishes of his age and country.
For a further account, we refer to the life by Thomas Carlyle—Leben von
Döring; and the brief memoir by Körner, prefixed to the edition in
eighteen volumes, Vienna and Stuttgard 1819. Of English translations we
may enumerate, besides two of Wallenstein, The Maid of Orleans, printed,
but not yet published, by Mr. Drinkwater; Maria Stuart, by Mr. Mellish;
and also Don Carlos, and the three prose tragedies by we know not whom.
Translations have also been published of the Ghost Seer, and the two
historical works; and also of a number of the poems in periodical works,
besides several of the ballads, and the Song of the Bell, with
illustrations by Retsch.
[Illustration: [From a bust of Schiller by Dannecker.]]
[Illustration:
_Engraved by J. Posselwhite._
BENTHAM.
_From an Original Picture by J. Watts, in the possession of J.A.
Roebuck. Esq._
Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]
[Illustration]
BENTHAM
The life of Jeremy Bentham was peculiarly that of a student, and,
consequently, in common with the lives of many others who have acquired
extensive celebrity, it presents few passages of a personal kind that
can be separated from the account of his studies and his publications.
Bentham was the son of an eminent solicitor, resident in the city of
London, and was born February 15, 1748. At an early age he was sent to
Westminster School, from which he removed to Queen’s College, Oxford.
Both at school and at the university he is said to have distinguished
himself. At sixteen years of age he took the degree of B.A., and before
he was twenty he took that of M.A. No inference, however, as to the
development of his talents, or the extent of his acquirements, is to be
drawn from the early age at which these degrees were obtained: for it
was the common practice, until towards the end of the last century, for
students to commence and terminate their studies at the universities, at
a very early period of life. While at Oxford, Mr. Bentham subscribed the
Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, under exceedingly painful
feelings of doubt respecting their interpretation. He yielded to the
authority of the university, which requires that subscription from its
graduates; but this compliance in opposition to his judgment was
followed by a sense of bitter regret, which the lapse of time never
removed. During his residence at Oxford he attended the celebrated
lectures delivered by Blackstone upon the English law, and his dissent
to the almost universal panegyric of the lecturer upon every part of the
system of which he treated, was expressed in a work published by him
soon after he left the university, entitled A Fragment upon Government.
In this treatise he exposes, with great force, many of the errors that
are chargeable upon the Commentaries. The style in which it is written
is exceedingly correct, and, like all his earlier works, it is entirely
free from those peculiar expressions which abound in the later writings
of the author,—expressions which, though they have been the subject of
much mirth and ridicule, favoured a precision and accuracy of thought
that excuses their use. This Fragment contains the germ of his later
works, and is remarkable for the mode it introduced of dealing with the
science of government. It was the first philosophic attack upon many of
the distinguishing characteristics of the English constitution.
After leaving Oxford, Mr. Bentham became a member of Lincoln’s Inn, and
in 1772 was called to the bar. The connexions of his father afforded to
him a very favourable prospect of professional advancement, which was
greatly extended by his own extraordinary habits of industry. But he was
repelled from the practice of the law by the moral sacrifices which he
conceived it to require, and by the impossibility of combining it with
speculative pursuits. He continued, however, a member of Lincoln’s Inn,
of which society he became a bencher in 1817. In the year 1785 he left
England for nearly three years, and, after proceeding through France and
part of Italy, went on to Smyrna and Constantinople, through Bulgaria,
Wallachia, and Moldavia, and joined his brother, afterwards Sir Samuel
Bentham, then a lieutenant-colonel in the service of the Emperor of
Russia, at Crichoff, in White Russia. At Crichoff he wrote his
celebrated letters in defence of usury, which very shortly and
accurately expound the principles upon which loans of money are
effected, and the impolicy of laws regulating the amount of interest at
which loans may be made. When these letters were published, the subject
was surrounded with every kind of prejudice, and both judges of our
courts of law and moral writers had treated excessive rates of interest
as highly censurable and immoral. On this question however, as upon
several others, Mr. Bentham preceded his age. Long before he died, his
opinions upon usury were supported by the great body of mercantile men,
the nature of whose business was once considered hostile to any
alteration in the laws regulating rate of interest. His principles have
not as yet been fully adopted by the legislature, but he lived to see
several acts of parliament passed, in which they were very extensively
acted upon. It was also at Crichoff that the letters which subsequently
formed the greater portion of his work entitled Panopticon, proposing a
systematic plan for the construction and general administration of
prisons, were written. The suggestions it contained were afterwards
formally submitted by him to Mr. Pitt, who readily acknowledged their
importance and his willingness to carry them into effect. Difficulties,
however, occurred; and though the Milbank Penitentiary was the result of
Mr. Pitt’s intercourse with Mr. Bentham, its plan is very different from
that which Mr. Bentham proposed; its arrangements are imperfect and have
been found, as was foreseen, very inadequate for its purposes, and it
was erected at a cost enormously exceeding that which would have
accompanied the execution of the original design.
Mr. Bentham died at his residence in Queen Square, Westminster, June 6,
1832, at the advanced age of eighty-five. He had long been possessed of
a handsome patrimony, which afforded him an income considerably
exceeding his own necessities. His studies were pursued without being
affected by any of the interruptions which arise, either from an
insufficient income, or from the occupations or distractions which a
large one invites. His habits were retiring, and the number of his
intimate friends were few, but this arose from no moroseness or
unkindness of disposition. “Had he engaged,” says his friend Dr.
Southwood Smith, “in the active pursuits of life,—money-getting,
power-acquiring pursuits,—he, like other men so engaged, must have had
prejudices to humour, interests to conciliate, friends to serve, and
enemies to subdue; and, therefore, like other men under the influence of
such motives, must sometimes have missed the truth, and sometimes have
concealed or modified it. But he placed himself above all danger of the
kind, by retiring from the practice of the profession for which he had
been educated, and by living in a simple manner on a small income
allowed him by his father: and when, by the death of his father, he at
length came to the possession of a patrimony which secured to him a
moderate competence, from that moment he dismissed from his mind all
further thoughts about his private fortune, and lent the whole power of
his mind, without distraction, to his legislative and moral labours. Nor
was he less careful to keep his benevolent affections fervent, than his
understanding free from a wrong bias. He surrounded himself only with
persons whose sympathies were like his own, and whose sympathies he
might direct to their appropriate objects in the active pursuits of
life.”
Though his frame of body was weak, he enjoyed remarkable health. For
upwards of sixty years he never suffered from any serious indisposition;
and at eighty, his appearance by no means indicated his advanced age.
For upwards of fifty years, he devoted eight, and often ten hours,
daily, to study, and he adhered with punctilious regularity, to a
certain fixed distribution of his time and employments.
The works published during his life, though very numerous, formed but a
small part of his manuscripts. Those that were published were chiefly
edited by friends, who, in most instances, performed the task with great
ability and fidelity. Some of his best treatises were published first in
France, and in the French language, by his friend M. Dumont, who was
also the well-known friend of Romilly and Mirabeau. Through them Mr.
Bentham obtained a very extensive reputation in foreign countries,
before his name was generally known in England. His admirable book upon
Fallacies was also edited in a similar manner; and his masterly treatise
upon the Rationale of Evidence was prepared for the press by Mr. John
Mill, with more correctness, and a more careful regard for the
expressions of Mr. Bentham, than most of his other works. It exhausts
its subject, and most thoroughly investigates the doctrines of the
English law of evidence. The leading principle which it establishes is,
that objections may be made to the _credibility_ of witnesses, but that
none should be admitted to their _competence_. The manuscripts of Mr.
Bentham were generally in a state requiring great trouble and labour to
render them fit for the press. He often wrote upon the same branch of a
subject at different times, adding to and repeating what he had before
written. In order, therefore, to bring together all his remarks upon the
same subject, much discrimination was required. The temptation to
neglect the words of the author, under such circumstances, is
necessarily great, and that some of his writings should be published
with less attention to them than those above-mentioned, can excite no
surprise. He ordered by his will, that his manuscripts should be
published by his executors, and left a considerable sum of money for the
purpose. One posthumous publication has already shown the difficulty
that attends the fulfilment of his directions.
The chief merits of Bentham have been thus stated by Mr. Mill in the
Appendix to Mr. E. L. Bulwer’s work, entitled England and the English,
in the following words:—“Mr. Bentham, unlike Bacon, did not merely
prophesy a science; he made large strides towards the creation of one.
He was the first who conceived, with anything approaching to precision,
the idea of a Code, or complete body of law; and the distinctive
characters of its essential parts,—the Civil Law, the Penal Law, and the
Law of Procedure. On the first of these three departments, he rendered
valuable service; the third, he actually created. Conformably to the
habits of his mind, he set about investigating, _ab initio_, a
philosophy, or science, for each of the three branches. He did, with the
received principles of each, what a good code would do with the laws
themselves;—extirpating the bad; substituting others; re-enacting the
good, but in so much clearer and more methodical a form, that those who
were most familiar with them before, scarcely recognised them as the
same. Even upon old truths, when they pass through his hands, he leaves
so many of his marks, that often he almost seems to claim the discovery
of what he only systematized.
“In erecting the philosophy of the civil law, he proceeded not much
beyond establishing upon its proper basis some of its most general
principles, and cursorily discussing some of the most interesting of its
details. Nearly the whole of what he has published upon this branch of
the law is contained in the _Traités de Législation_, edited by M.
Dumont. To the most difficult part, and that which needed a master-hand
to clear away its difficulties, the nomenclature and arrangement of the
civil code, he contributed little, except detailed observations and
criticisms upon the errors of his predecessors. The “Vue Générale d’un
corps complet de Législation,” included in the work just cited, contains
almost all that he has given to us upon this subject. In the department
of the penal law, he is the author of the best attempt yet made towards
a philosophical classification of offences. The theory of punishments
(for which, however, more had been done by his predecessors than for any
other part of the science of law), he left nearly complete. The theory
of procedure (including that of the constitution of the courts of
justice), he found in a more utterly barbarous state than even either of
the other branches; and he left it incomparably the most perfect. There
is scarcely a question of practical importance in the most important
department which he has not settled. He has left next to nothing for his
successors.”
His work on Judicial Establishments, is one of the best and the most
important of those he published; and it will afford the great tests that
must hereafter be applied to ascertain the progress of principles which
he first expounded. His labours were so much a series of attacks upon
the faults of existing institutions, accompanied at the same time with
the specific reforms that should follow their correction, and related to
matters generally so far removed from the studies of the great body of
readers, that they could not be expected to obtain, for many years, that
popularity for their writer which he deserved. It is, however, not
difficult already to trace the progress of opinions which he was the
first to advance, and we may already observe changes suggested and
adopted by the legislature, which he many years since proposed. The same
reasons which have secured to Bacon a reputation upon questions of
physical science, which his contemporaries refused to award to him,
will, in legislative science, secure a similar reputation to Bentham.
The talents of the latter will appear not less important than those of
the former, when their effects shall, in the progress of time, be traced
upon the opinions and the institutions of the people of this and of
other countries.
[Illustration:
_Engraved by R. Woodman._
CATHERINE.
_From a Print by Caroline Watson, after a Picture by Rosselin._
Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.
_London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]
[Illustration]
CATHERINE II.
After the death of Peter I., the sceptre of Russia passed into hands
incompetent to carry on the great scheme of national aggrandizement and
civilization which he had originated. Nearly forty years elapsed before
there appeared a worthy successor to that remarkable prince: and at last
it was a German woman, who, under the title of CATHERINE II.,
established Russia in that lofty position which she now occupies among
the powers of Europe.
This masculine-minded woman was the daughter of Christian Frederic,
prince of Anhalt Zerbst Dornberg, and major-general in the Prussian
service. She was born at Stettin, May 2, 1729, and was named at her
baptism Sophia Augusta Frederica. In her sixteenth year she was selected
by the Empress Elizabeth to become the wife of the Grand-Duke,
afterwards Peter III.; and their marriage was solemnized, September 1,
1745, after the bride had made public profession of the faith of the
Greek church, and received the name of Catherina Alexiewna. On the
events of her life during the next sixteen years, until the death of
Elizabeth, it is not necessary to dwell: she then exercised no influence
in affairs of state. The example of a most corrupt court, and a
sovereign sunk in the grossest sensuality, exerted their natural effect
upon her youthful mind: and if she brought principles of morality and
chastity from Germany, they were soon extinguished by the evil influence
of all around her, and the disgust inspired by an ignorant and besotted
husband; during whose life, as well as after her own accession to the
throne, she bestowed her favour on a succession of paramours. Her
behaviour was less revolting, but her rule of life was hardly more
strict than that of the Empress Elizabeth.
The history of Russia gave encouragement to an able, ambitious spirit,
like that of Catherine, to shape for itself a more brilliant prospect
than that which lay before her as the wife of a despotic prince, whom
she hated, and had reason to fear. Even before the death of Elizabeth,
which took place January 2, 1762, N. S., she had intrigued to supplant
her husband on the throne; and he had hardly occupied it six months,
before she organized the revolution which conducted him to a prison and
a grave. The only extenuation of her conduct in this crisis, is the
probability, we might almost say certainty, that a similar fate would
otherwise have befallen herself. Early on the morning of the 9th of
July, Catherine quitted the palace of Peterhoff, on the Neva, to invoke
the affection of the regiments of guards at St. Petersburg, who, like
the Prætorian troops of Rome, had often bestowed the crown at their free
pleasure. Her ready attention to Russian habits and prejudices, her
assumed devotion to the Greek church, and the arts of her accomplices,
had disposed, not only the soldiers, but a large portion of the
citizens, to declare in her favour: and when she applied for protection,
and told them “that her danger had driven her to the necessity of coming
to ask their assistance, that the Czar had intended to put her to death
that very night, together with her son; that she had no other means than
by flight of escaping death, and that she had so much confidence in
their dispositions as to put herself entirely in their hands,” the
assembled crowd was not slow to hail her as their prince, and before the
end of the day she had been crowned and proclaimed sovereign of all the
Russias, by the title of Catherine II., had been acknowledged by crowds
of citizens, and saw herself at the head of 15,000 picked soldiers. The
Czar, confused and affrighted, consulted neither his safety nor his
honour. On the following day, after some futile demonstrations of
resistance, he surrendered his person unconditionally; and on the 17th
he perished by a violent death, with the concurrence, no doubt, if not
by the command of Catherine.
Nevertheless her situation for some time was critical. The common people
reverenced the blood of Peter the Great, and lamented, with anger, the
cruel fate which had befallen his grandson. The priests, whose favour
Catherine had courted while Grand-Duchess, were disappointed and
indignant to find her resolved to cast them off, when they had served
her turn, and to limit as much as possible their influence, which had
often been troublesome to her predecessors. The courtiers, many of them,
were indignant at the sudden elevation of the daring adventurers who had
won Catherine her throne. But her promptitude and sagacity overcame
these troubles and difficulties; and without any very alarming
commotions, she gradually acquired that prescriptive right to the
throne, which does so much for princes of doubtful title.
The power thus acquired by fraud and murder, Catherine used, on the
whole, to the benefit of her subjects, with liberal intentions and with
a judicious and enlightened policy. Abroad her views were directed to
conquest, with the usual disregard of the common rules of honour and
justice, as they are recognised between man and man. This fault she
shares with the majority of princes: but the dismemberment of Poland
pollutes her memory with one of the foulest stains recorded in history.
Without proceeding seriatim through the multifarious events of her long
reign, we shall attempt a short sketch of the leading features of her
domestic policy and meditated improvements; and conclude with an equally
concise outline of its foreign relations.
Her earliest cares and her zealous attention were directed to the
fostering of commerce, and the encouragement of national industry in all
its important branches: and it ought not to detract from her credit,
that some of her measures, in accordance with the system of the age,
were not such as modern economical science approves. But we may mention
with unmixed praise, as indicative of a far-sighted and disinterested
policy, the abolition of numerous monopolies, as well belonging to the
crown, as granted to trading companies and private persons. Among these
were the caravan-trade between Russia and China, several branches of
fisheries, the manufacture of chintzes, the preparation of sugar, the
tobacco-trade, and other things which were freely thrown open to
individual competition. In promoting agriculture she was no less
zealous. She established an experimental school of farming at her
country-palace of Tzarsko-Tzelo, at which the most improved system of
English agriculture was introduced, and gratuitous instruction was given
to persons from all parts of the empire. One of her schemes was the
establishment of numerous colonies over the uncultivated steppes of her
vast empire: and thousands of families were allured from Poland,
Germany, and even France, by the advantages which she held out, not
merely to agricultural settlers, but to artificers, merchants, and all
who were willing to aid in developing by their industry the unknown
resources of the Russian empire. She sought to amend the administration
of justice, and, to her high honour, put an end to the use of torture
for extracting the truth in criminal proceedings. She abolished an
odious tribunal, established by Peter I., called the Secret Inquisition
Chancery, a kind of Star-Chamber, which gave facility to the most
frivolous and malicious investigations, and had recourse to the most
intolerable severities in conducting its inquiries. Aspiring to the
glory of reforming the government, and giving a new code of laws to the
empire, she summoned, in 1767, deputies to Moscow from every part and
nation of her dominions, for whose consideration she had previously
drawn up a body of instructions, of which the original manuscript,
written in her own hand, is preserved in the library of the Academy of
Petersburg. The work was greatly needed; for not merely were the general
laws of the empire voluminous, insufficient, perplexed, and
contradictory, but the particular laws of different provinces were
confused and conflicting, and the difficulties arising out of this state
of things were increased in a tenfold degree by the venality of the
judges. But Catherine wanted perseverance and vigour to work out her
scheme through the vexations of conflicting interests and tedious
details. The history of this meeting of legislators illustrates the fate
of most of her mighty undertakings. In their early sittings anger rose
so high on the question of emancipating the serfs, that Catherine
dismissed them, never to be recalled. She had acquired the glory of
propounding a new code, not of laws, but of instructions for
legislators; and the restless activity of her mind was satisfied, and
passed to spend itself in some other channel. The instructions abound in
philanthropic and wise suggestions; and satisfactorily show that it is
much easier to talk than to perform. They are printed under the title
“Instructions de Catherine II., pour la Commission chargée de dresser le
projet d’un nouveau code des Loix.”