CHAPTER V

BENTHAM'S LIFE

I. EARLY LIFE

Jeremy Bentham,[201] the patriarch of the English Utilitarians, sprang

from the class imbued most thoroughly with the typical English

prejudices. His first recorded ancestor, Brian Bentham, was a

pawnbroker, who lost money by the stop of the Exchequer in 1672, but was

neither ruined, nor, it would seem, alienated by the king's dishonesty.

He left some thousands to his son, Jeremiah, an attorney and a strong

Jacobite. A second Jeremiah, born 2nd December 1712, carried on his

father's business, and though his clients were not numerous, increased

his fortune by judicious investments in houses and lands. Although

brought up in Jacobite principles, he transferred his attachment to the

Hanoverian dynasty when a relation of his wife married a valet of George

II. The wife, Alicia Grove, was daughter of a tradesman who had made a

small competence at Andover. Jeremiah Bentham had fallen in love with

her at first sight, and wisely gave up for her sake a match with a

fortune of L10,000. The couple were fondly attached to each other and to

their children. The marriage took place towards the end of 1744, and the

eldest son, Jeremy, was born in Red Lion Street, Houndsditch, 4th

February 1747-48 (o.s.) The only other child who grew up was Samuel,

afterwards Sir Samuel Bentham, born 11th January 1757. When eighty years

old, Jeremy gave anecdotes of his infancy to his biographer, Bowring,

who says that their accuracy was confirmed by contemporary documents,

and proved his memory to be as wonderful as his precocity. Although the

child was physically puny, his intellectual development was amazing.

Before he was two he burst into tears at the sight of his mother's

chagrin upon his refusal of some offered dainty. Before he was

'breeched,' an event which happened when he was three and a quarter, he

ran home from a dull walk, ordered a footman to bring lights and place a

folio _Rapin_ upon the table, and was found plunged in historical

studies when his parents returned to the house. In his fourth year he

was imbibing the Latin grammar, and at the age of five years nine months

and nineteen days, as his father notes, he wrote a scrap of Latin,

carefully pasted among the parental memoranda. The child was not always

immured in London. His parents spent their Sundays with the grandfather

Bentham at Barking, and made occasional excursions to the house of Mrs.

Bentham's mother at Browning Hill, near Reading. Bentham remembered the

last as a 'paradise,' and a love of flowers and gardens became one of

his permanent passions.

Jeremy cherished the memory of his mother's tenderness. The father,

though less sympathetic, was proud of his son's precocity, and

apparently injudicious in stimulating the unformed intellect. The boy

was almost a dwarf in size. When sixteen he grew ahead,[202] and was so

feeble that he could scarcely drag himself upstairs. Attempts to teach

him dancing failed from the extreme weakness of his knees.[203] He

showed a taste for music, and could scrape a minuet on the fiddle at six

years of age. He read all such books as came in his way. His parents

objected to light literature, and he was crammed with such solid works

as _Rapin_, Burnet's _Theory of the Earth_, and Cave's _Lives of the

Apostles_. Various accidents, however, furnished him with better food

for the imagination. He wept for hours over _Clarissa Harlowe_, studied

_Gulliver's Travels_ as an authentic document, and dipped into a variety

of such books as then drifted into middle-class libraries. A French

teacher introduced him to some remarkable books. He read _Telemaque_,

which deeply impressed him, and, as he thought, implanted in his mind

the seeds of later moralising. He attacked unsuccessfully some of

Voltaire's historical works, and even read _Candide_, with what emotions

we are not told. The servants meanwhile filled his fancy with ghosts and

hobgoblins. To the end of his days he was still haunted by the imaginary

horrors in the dark,[204] and he says[205] that they had been among the

torments of his life. He had few companions of his own age, and though

he was 'not unhappy' and was never subjected to corporal punishment, he

felt more awe than affection for his father. His mother, to whom he was

strongly attached, died on 6th January 1759.

Bentham was thus a strangely precocious, and a morbidly sensitive child,

when it was decided in 1755 to send him to Westminster. The headmaster,

Dr. Markham, was a friend of his father's. Westminster, he says,

represented 'hell' for him when Browning Hill stood for paradise. The

instruction 'was wretched,' The fagging system was a 'horrid despotism.'

The games were too much for his strength. His industry, however, enabled

him to escape the birch, no small achievement in those days,[206] and he

became distinguished in the studies such as they were. He learned the

catechism by heart, and was good at Greek and Latin verses, which he

manufactured for his companions as well as himself. He had also the

rarer accomplishment, acquired from his early tutor, of writing more

easily in French than English. Some of his writings were originally

composed in French. He was, according to Bowring, elected to one of the

King's scholarships when between nine and ten, but as 'ill-usage was

apprehended' the appointment was declined.[207] He was at a

boarding-house, and the life of the boys on the foundation was probably

rougher. In June 1760 his father took him to Oxford, and entered him as

a commoner at Queen's College. He came into residence in the following

October, when only twelve years old. Oxford was not more congenial than

Westminster. He had to sign the Thirty-nine Articles in spite of

scruples suppressed by authority. The impression made upon him by this

childish compliance never left him to the end of his life.[208] His

experience resembled that of Adam Smith and Gibbon. Laziness and vice

were prevalent. A gentleman commoner of Queen's was president of a

'hellfire club,' and brutal horseplay was still practised upon the

weaker lads. Bentham, still a schoolboy in age, continued his schoolboy

course. He wrote Latin verses, and one of his experiments, an ode upon

the death of George II., was sent to Johnson, who called it 'a very

pretty performance for a young man.' He also had to go through the form

of disputation in the schools. Queen's College had some reputation at

this time for teaching logic.[209] Bentham was set to read Watt's

_Logic_ (1725), Sanderson's _Compendium artis Logicae_ (1615), and

Rowning's _Compendious System of Natural Philosophy_ (1735-42). Some

traces of these studies remained in his mind.

In 1763 Bentham took his B.A. degree, and returned to his home. It is

significant that when robbed of all his money at Oxford he did not

confide in his father. He was paying by a morbid reserve for the

attempts made to force him into premature activity. He accepted the

career imposed by his father's wishes, and in November 1763 began to eat

his dinners in Lincoln's Inn. He returned, however, to Oxford in

December to hear Blackstone's lectures. These lectures were then a

novelty at an English university. The Vinerian professorship had been

founded in 1758 in consequence of the success of a course voluntarily

given by Blackstone; and his lectures contained the substance of the

famous Commentaries, first published 1765-1769. They had a great effect

upon Bentham. He says that he 'immediately detected Blackstone's fallacy

respecting natural rights,' thought other doctrines illogical, and was

so much occupied by these reflections as to be unable to take notes.

Bentham's dissatisfaction with Blackstone had not yet made him an

opponent of the constituted order. He was present at some of the

proceedings against Wilkes, and was perfectly bewitched by Lord

Mansfield's '_Grim-gibber_,' that is, taken in by his pompous

verbiage.[210]

In 1765 his father married Mrs. Abbot, the mother of Charles Abbot,

afterwards Lord Colchester. Bentham's dislike of his step-mother

increased the distance between him and his father. He took his M.A.

degree in 1766 and in 1767 finally left Oxford for London to begin, as

his father fondly hoped, a flight towards the woolsack. The lad's

diffidence and extreme youth had indeed prevented him from forming the

usual connections which his father anticipated as the result of a

college life. His career as a barrister was short and grievously

disappointing to the parental hopes. His father, like the Elder Fairford

in _Redgauntlet_, had 'a cause or two at nurse' for the son. The son's

first thought was to 'put them to death,' A brief was given to him in a

suit, upon which L50 depended. He advised that the suit should be

dropped and the money saved. Other experiences only increased his

repugnance to his profession.[211] A singularly strong impression had

been made upon him by the _Memoirs_ of Teresa Constantia Phipps, in

which there is an account of vexatious legal proceedings as to the

heroine's marriage. He appears to have first read this book

in 1759. Then, he says, the 'Demon of Chicane appeared to me

in all his hideousness. I vowed war against him. My vow has been

accomplished!'[212] Bentham thus went to the bar as a 'bear to the

stake.' He diverged in more than one direction. He studied chemistry

under Fordyce (1736-1802), and hankered after physical science. He was

long afterwards (1788) member of a club to which Sir Joseph Banks, John

Hunter, R. L. Edgeworth, and other men of scientific reputation

belonged.[213] But he had drifted into a course of speculation, which,

though more germane to legal studies, was equally fatal to professional

success. The father despaired, and he was considered to be a 'lost

child.'

NOTES:

[201] The main authority for Bentham's Life is Bowring's account in the

two last volumes of the _Works_. Bain's _Life of James Mill_ gives some

useful facts as to the later period. There is comparatively little

mention of Bentham in contemporary memoirs. Little is said of him in

Romilly's _Life_. Parr's _Works_, i. and viii., contains some letters.

See also R. Dale Owen's _Threading my Way_ pp. 175-78. A little book

called _Utilitarianism Unmasked_, by the Rev. J. F. Colls, D.D. (1844),

gives some reminiscences by Colls, who had been Bentham's amanuensis for

fourteen years. Colls, who took orders, disliked Bentham's religious

levity, and denounces his vanity, but admits his early kindness.

Voluminous collections of the papers used by Bowring are at University

College, and at the British Museum.

[202] _Works_, x. 33.

[203] _Ibid._ x. 31.

[204] _Ibid._ ix. 84.

[205] _Ibid._ x. 18.

[206] Southey was expelled from Westminster in 1792 for attacking the

birch in a schoolboy paper.

[207] _Works_, x. 38. Bowring's confused statement, I take it, means

this. Bentham, in any case, was not on the foundation. See Welsh's

_Alumni West_.

[208] _Works_, x. 37.

[209] _Ibid._ viii. 113, 217.

[210] _Works_, x. 45.

[211] _Ibid._ x. 51, 78, 83.

[212] _Works_, x. 35, 77. References are given to this book in _Works_,

vii. 219-20 ('Rationale of Evidence'). Several editions appeared from

1725 to 1761. See _Works_, vi. 465, for a recollection of similar

experiences.

[213] _Ibid._ viii. 148 _n._; x. 183.

II. FIRST WRITINGS

Though lost to the bar, he had really found himself. He had taken the

line prescribed by his idiosyncrasy. His father's injudicious forcing

had increased his shyness at the bar, and he was like an owl in

daylight. But no one, as we shall see, was less diffident in

speculation. Self-confidence in a philosopher is often the private

credit which he opens with his imagination to compensate for his

incapacity in the rough struggles of active life. Bentham shrank from

the world in which he was easily browbeaten to the study in which he

could reign supreme. He had not the strong passions which prompt

commonplace ambition, and cared little for the prizes for which most men

will sacrifice their lives. Nor, on the other hand, can he be credited

with that ardent philanthropy or vehement indignation which prompts to

an internecine struggle with actual wrongdoers. He had not the ardour

which led Howard to devote a life to destroy abuses, or that which

turned Swift's blood to gall in the struggle against triumphant

corruption. He was thoroughly amiable, but of kindly rather than

energetic affections. He, therefore, desired reform, but so far from

regarding the ruling classes with rancour, took their part against the

democrats. 'I was a great reformist,' he says, 'but never suspected that

the "people in power" were against reform. I supposed they only wanted

to know what was good in order to embrace it.'[214] The most real of

pleasures for him lay in speculating upon the general principles by

which the 'people in power' should be guided. To construct a general

chart for legislation, to hunt down sophistries, to explode mere noisy

rhetoric, to classify and arrange and re-classify until his whole

intellectual wealth was neatly arranged in proper pigeon-holes, was a

delight for its own sake. He wished well to mankind; he detested abuses,

but he hated neither the corrupted nor the corruptors; and it might

almost seem that he rather valued the benevolent end, because it gave

employment to his faculties, than valued the employment because it led

to the end. This is implied in his remark made at the end of his life.

He was, he said, as selfish as a man could be; but 'somehow or other'

selfishness had in him taken the form of benevolence.[215] He was at any

rate in the position of a man with the agreeable conviction that he has

only to prove the wisdom of a given course in order to secure its

adoption. Like many mechanical inventors, he took for granted that a

process which was shown to be useful would therefore be at once adopted,

and failed to anticipate the determined opposition of the great mass of

'vested interests' already in possession.

At this period he made the discovery, or what he held to be the

discovery, which governed his whole future career. He laid down the

principle which was to give the clue to all his investigations; and, as

he thought, required only to be announced to secure universal

acceptance. When Bentham revolted against the intellectual food provided

at school and college, he naturally took up the philosophy which at that

period represented the really living stream of thought. To be a man of

enlightenment in those days was to belong to the school of Locke. Locke

represented reason, free thought, and the abandonment of prejudice.

Besides Locke, he mentions Hume, Montesquieu, Helvetius, Beccaria, and

Barrington. Helvetius especially did much to suggest to him his leading

principle, and upon country trips which he took with his father and

step-mother, he used to lag behind studying Helvetius' _De

l'Esprit_.[216] Locke, he says in an early note (1773-1774), should give

the principles, Helvetius the matter, of a complete digest of the law.

He mentions with especial interest the third volume of Hume's _Treatise

on Human Nature_ for its ethical views: 'he felt as if scales fell from

his eyes' when he read it.[217] Daines Barrington's _Observations on the

Statutes_ (1766) interested him by miscellaneous suggestions. The book,

he says,[218] was a 'great treasure.' 'It is everything, _a propos_ of

everything; I wrote volumes upon this volume.' Beccaria's treatise upon

crimes and punishments had appeared in 1764, and had excited the

applause of Europe. The world was clearly ready for a fundamental

reconstruction of legislative theories. Under the influence of such

studies Bentham formulated his famous principle--a principle which to

some seemed a barren truism, to others a mere epigram, and to some a

dangerous falsehood. Bentham accepted it not only as true, but as

expressing a truth of extraordinary fecundity, capable of guiding him

through the whole labyrinth of political and legislative speculation.

His 'fundamental axiom' is that 'the greatest happiness of the greatest

number is the measure of right and wrong.'[219] Bentham himself[220]

attributes the authorship of the phrase to Beccaria or Priestley. The

general order of thought to which this theory belongs was of course not

the property of any special writer or any particular period. Here I need

only observe that this embodiment of the general doctrine of utility or

morality had been struck out by Hutcheson in the attempt (as his title

says) 'to introduce a mathematical calculation on subjects of morality.'

This defines the exact reason which made it acceptable to Bentham. For

the vague reference to utility which appears in Hume and other writers

of his school, he substituted a formula, the terms of which suggest the

possibility of an accurate quantitative comparison of different sums of

happiness. In Bentham's mind the difference between this and the more

general formula was like the difference between the statement that the

planets gravitate towards the sun, and the more precise statement that

the law of gravitation varies inversely as the square of the distance.

Bentham hoped for no less an achievement than to become the Newton of

the moral world.

Bentham, after leaving Oxford, took chambers in Lincoln's Inn. His

father on his second marriage had settled some property upon him, which

brought in some L90 a year. He had to live like a gentleman upon this,

and to give four guineas a year to the laundress, four to his barber,

and two to his shoeblack. In spite of Jeremy's deviation from the path

of preferment, the two were on friendly terms, and when the hopes of the

son's professional success grew faint, the father showed sympathy with

his literary undertakings. Jeremy visited Paris in 1770, but made few

acquaintances, though he was already regarded as a 'philosopher.' In

1778 he was in correspondence with d'Alembert, the abbe Morellet, and

other philanthropic philosophers, but it does not appear at what time

this connection began.[221] He translated Voltaire's _Taureau

Blanc_[222]--a story which used to 'convulse him with laughter.' A

reference to it will show that Bentham by this time took the Voltairean

view of the Old Testament. Bentham, however, was still on the side of

the Tories. His first publication was a defence of Lord Mansfield in

1770 against attacks arising out of the prosecution of Woodfall for

publishing Junius's letter to the king. This defence, contained in two

letters, signed Irenaeus, was published in the _Gazetteer_. Bentham's

next performance was remarkable in the same sense. Among the few friends

who drifted to his chambers was John Lind (1737-1781), who had been a

clergyman, and after acting as tutor to a prince in Poland, had returned

to London and become a writer for the press. He had business relations

with the elder Bentham, and the younger Bentham was to some extent his

collaborator in a pamphlet[223] which defended the conduct of ministers

to the American colonies. Bentham observes that he was prejudiced

against the Americans by the badness of their arguments, and thought

from the first, as he continued to think, that the Declaration of

Independence was a hodge-podge of confusion and absurdity, in which the

thing to be proved is all along taken for granted.[224] Two other

friendships were formed by Bentham about this time: one with James

Trail, an unsuccessful barrister, who owed a seat in Parliament and

some minor offices to Lord Hertford, and is said by Romilly to have been

a man of great talent; and one with George Wilson, afterwards a leader

of the Norfolk circuit, who had become known to him through a common

interest in Dr. Fordyce's lectures upon chemistry. Wilson became a bosom

friend, and was one of Bentham's first disciples, though they were

ultimately alienated.[225]

At this time, Bentham says, that his was 'truly a miserable life.'[226]

Yet he was getting to work upon his grand project. He tells his father

on 1st October 1776 that he is writing his _Critical Elements of

Jurisprudence_, the book of which a part was afterwards published as the

_Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation_.[227] In the

same year he published his first important work, the _Fragment on

Government_. The year was in many ways memorable. The Declaration of

Independence marked the opening of a new political era. Adam Smith's

_Wealth of Nations_ and Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_ formed landmarks in

speculation and in history; and Bentham's volume, though it made no such

impression, announced a serious attempt to apply scientific methods to

problems of legislation. The preface contained the first declaration of

his famous formula which was applied to the confutation of Blackstone.

Bentham was apparently roused to this effort by recollections of the

Oxford lectures. The _Commentaries_ contained a certain quantity of

philosophical rhetoric; and as Blackstone was much greater in a literary

than in a philosophical sense, the result was naturally unsatisfactory

from a scientific point of view. He had vaguely appealed to the sound

Whig doctrine of social compact, and while disavowing any strict

historical basis had not inquired too curiously what was left of his

supposed foundation. Bentham pounced upon the unfortunate bit of

verbiage; insisted upon asking for a meaning when there was nothing but

a rhetorical flourish, and tore the whole flimsy fabric to rags and

tatters. A more bitter attack upon Blackstone, chiefly, as Bowring says,

upon his defence of the Jewish law, was suppressed for fear of the law

of libel.[228] The _Fragment_ was published anonymously, but Bentham had

confided the secret to his father by way of suggesting some slight

set-off against his apparent unwillingness to emerge from obscurity. The

book was at first attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden, and to

Dunning. It was pirated in Dublin; and most of the five hundred copies

printed appear to have been sold, though without profit to the author.

The father's indiscretion let out the secret; and the sale, when the

book was known to be written by a nobody, fell off at once, or so

Bentham believed. The anonymous writer, however, was denounced and

accused of being the author of much ribaldry, and among other

accusations was said to be not only the translator but the writer of the

_White Bull_.[229]

Bentham had fancied that all manner of 'torches from the highest

regions' would come to light themselves at his 'farthing candle.' None

of them came, and he was left for some years in obscurity, though still

labouring at the great work which was one day to enlighten the world.

At last, however, partial recognition came to him in a shape which

greatly influenced his career. Lord Shelburne, afterwards marquis of

Lansdowne, had been impressed by the _Fragment_, and in 1781 sought out

Bentham at his chambers. Shelburne's career was to culminate in the

following year with his brief tenure of the premiership (3rd July 1782

to 24th February 1783). Rightly or wrongly his contemporaries felt the

distrust indicated by his nickname 'Malagrida,' which appears to have

been partly suggested by a habit of overstrained compliment. He incurred

the dislike not unfrequently excited by men who claim superiority of

intellect without possessing the force of character which gives a

corresponding weight in political affairs. Although his education had

been bad, he had something of that cosmopolitan training which enabled

many members of the aristocracy to look beyond the narrow middle-class

prejudices and share in some degree the wider philosophical movements of

the day. He had enjoyed the friendship of Franklin, and had been the

patron of Priestley, who made some of his chemical discoveries at

Bowood, and to whom he allowed an annuity. He belonged to that section

of the Whigs which had most sympathy with the revolutionary movement.

His chief political lieutenants were Dunning and Barre, who at the time

sat for his borough Calne. He now rapidly formed an intimacy with

Bentham, who went to stay at Bowood in the autumn of 1781. Bentham now

and then in later years made some rather disparaging remarks upon

Shelburne, whom he apparently considered to be rather an amateur than a

serious philosopher, and who in the House of Lords talked 'vague

generalities'--the sacred phrase by which the Utilitarians denounced all

preaching but their own--in a way to impose upon the thoughtless. He

respected Shelburne, however, as one who trusted the people, and was

distrusted by the Whig aristocracy. He felt, too, a real affection and

gratitude for the patron to whom he owed so much. Shelburne had done him

a great service.[230] 'He raised me from the bottomless pit of

humiliation. He made me feel I was something.' The elder Bentham was

impressed by his son's acquaintance with a man in so eminent a position,

and hoped that it might lead by a different path to the success which

had been missed at the bar. At Bowood Bentham stayed over a month upon

his first visit, and was treated in the manner appropriate to a

philosopher. The men showed him friendliness, dashed with occasional

contempt, and the ladies petted him. He met Lord Camden and Dunning and

young William Pitt, and some minor adherents of the great man. Pitt was

'very good-natured and a little raw.' I was monstrously 'frightened at

him,' but, when I came to talk with him, he seemed 'frightened at

me.'[231] Bentham, however, did not see what ideas they were likely to

have in common. In fact there was the usual gulf between the speculative

thinker and the practical man. 'All the statesmen,' so thought the

philosopher, 'were wanting in the great elements of statesmanship': they

were always talking about 'what was' and seldom or never about 'what

ought to be.'[232] Occasionally, it would seem, they descended lower,

and made a little fun of the shy and over-sensitive intruder.[233] The

ladies, however, made it up to him. Shelburne made him read his 'dry

metaphysics' to them,[234] and they received it with feminine docility.

Lord Shelburne had lately (1779) married his second wife, Louisa,

daughter of the first earl of Upper Ossory. Her sister, Lady Mary

Fitz-Patrick, married in 1766 to Stephen Fox, afterwards Lord Holland,

was the mother of the Lord Holland of later days and of Miss Caroline

Fox, who survived till 1845, and was at this time a pleasant girl of

thirteen or fourteen. Lady Shelburne had also two half-sisters,

daughters of her mother's second marriage to Richard Vernon. Lady

Shelburne took a fancy to Bentham, and gave him the 'prodigious

privilege' of admission to her dressing-room. Though haughty in manner,

she was mild in reality, and after a time she and her sister indulged in

'innocent gambols.' In her last illness, Bentham was one of the only two

men whom she would see, and upon her death in 1789, he was the only male

friend to whom her husband turned for consolation. Miss Fox seems to

have been the only woman who inspired Bentham with a sentiment

approaching to passion. He wrote occasional letters to the ladies in the

tone of elephantine pleasantry natural to one who was all his life both

a philosopher and a child.[235] He made an offer of marriage to Miss Fox

in 1805, when he was nearer sixty than fifty, and when they had not met

for sixteen years. The immediate occasion was presumably the death of

Lord Lansdowne. She replied in a friendly letter, regretting the pain

which her refusal would inflict. In 1827 Bentham, then in his eightieth

year, wrote once more, speaking of the flower she had given him 'in the

green lane,' and asking for a kind answer. He was 'indescribably hurt

and disappointed' by a cold and distant reply. The tears would come into

the old man's eyes as he dealt upon the cherished memories of

Bowood.[236] It is pleasant to know that Bentham was once in love;

though his love seems to have been chiefly for a memory associated with

what he called the happiest time of his life.

Shelburne had a project for a marriage between Bentham and the widow of

Lord Ashburton (Dunning), who died in 1783.[237] He also made some

overtures of patronage. 'He asked me,' says Bentham,[238] 'what he could

do for me? I told him, nothing,' and this conduct--so different from

that of others, 'endeared me to him.' Bentham declined one offer in

1788; but in 1790 he suddenly took it into his head that Lansdowne had

promised him a seat in parliament; and immediately set forth his claims

in a vast argumentative letter of sixty-one pages.[239] Lansdowne

replied conclusively that he had not made the supposed promise, and had

had every reason to suppose that Bentham preferred retirement to

politics. Bentham accepted the statement frankly, though a short

coolness apparently followed. The claim, in fact, only represented one

of those passing moods to which Bentham was always giving way at odd

moments.

Bentham's intimacy at Bowood led to more important results. In 1788 he

met Romilly and Dumont at Lord Lansdowne's table.[240] He had already

met Romilly in 1784 through Wilson, but after this the intimacy became

close. Romilly had fallen in love with the _Fragment_, and in later

life he became Bentham's adviser in practical matters, and the chief if

not the sole expounder of Bentham's theories in parliament.[241] The

alliance with Dumont was of even greater importance. Dumont, born at

Geneva in 1759, had become a Protestant minister; he was afterwards

tutor to Shelburne's son, and in 1788 visited Paris with Romilly and

made acquaintance with Mirabeau. Romilly showed Dumont some of Bentham's

papers written in French. Dumont offered to rewrite and to superintend

their publication. He afterwards received other papers from Bentham

himself, with whom he became personally acquainted after his return from

Paris.[242] Dumont became Bentham's most devoted disciple, and laboured

unweariedly upon the translation and condensation of his master's

treatise. One result is odd enough. Dumont, it is said, provided

materials for some of Mirabeau's 'most splendid' speeches; and some of

these materials came from Bentham.[243] One would like to see how

Bentham's prose was transmuted into an oratory by Mirabeau. In any case,

Dumont's services to Bentham were invaluable. It is painful to add that

according to Bowring the two became so much alienated in the end, that

in 1827 Bentham refused to see Dumont, and declared that his chief

interpreter did 'not understand a word of his meaning.' Bowring

attributes this separation to a remark made by Dumont about the

shabbiness of Bentham's dinners as compared with those at Lansdowne

House--a comparison which he calls 'offensive, uncalled-for, and

groundless.'[244] Bentham apparently argued that a man who did not like

his dinners could not appreciate his theories: a fallacy excusable only

by the pettishness of old age. Bowring, however, had a natural dulness

which distorted many anecdotes transmitted through him; and we may hope

that in this case there was some exaggeration.

Bentham's emergence was, meanwhile, very slow. The great men whom he met

at Lord Lansdowne's were not specially impressed by the shy philosopher.

Wedderburn, so he heard, pronounced the fatal word 'dangerous' in regard

to the _Fragment_.[245] How, thought Bentham, can utility be dangerous?

Is this not self-contradictory? Later reflection explained the puzzle.

What is useful to the governed need not be therefore useful to the

governors. Mansfield, who was known to Lind, said that in some parts the

author of the _Fragment_ was awake and in others was asleep. In what

parts? Bentham wondered. Awake, he afterwards considered, in the parts

where Blackstone, the object of Mansfield's personal 'heart-burning,'

was attacked; asleep where Mansfield's own despotism was threatened.

Camden was contemptuous; Dunning only 'scowled' at him; and Barre, after

taking in his book, gave it back with the mysterious information that he

had 'got into a scrape.'[246] The great book, therefore, though printed

in 1781,[247] 'stuck for eight years,'[248] and the writer continued his

obscure existence in Lincoln's Inn.[249] An opinion which he gave in

some question as to the evidence in Warren Hastings's trial made, he

says, an impression in his favour. Before publication was achieved,

however, a curious episode altered Bentham's whole outlook. His brother

Samuel (1757-1831), whose education he had partly superintended,[250]

had been apprenticed to a shipwright at Woolwich, and in 1780 had gone

to Russia in search of employment. Three years later he was sent by

Prince Potemkin to superintend a great industrial establishment at

Kritchev on a tributary of the Dnieper. There he was to be

'Jack-of-all-trades--building ships, like Harlequin, of odds and ends--a

rope-maker, a sail-maker, a distiller, brewer, malster, tanner,

glass-man, glass-grinder, potter, hemp-spinner, smith, and

coppersmith.'[251] He was, that is, to transplant a fragment of

ready-made Western civilisation into Russia. Bentham resolved to pay a

visit to his brother, to whom he was strongly attached. He left England

in August 1785, and stayed some time at Constantinople, where he met

Maria James (1770-1836), the wife successively of W. Reveley and of John

Gisborne, and the friend of Shelley. Thence he travelled by land to

Kritchev, and settled with his brother at the neighbouring estate of

Zadobras. Bentham here passed a secluded life, interested in his

brother's occupations and mechanical inventions, and at the same time

keeping up his own intellectual labours. The most remarkable result was

the _Defence of Usury_, written in the beginning of 1787. Bentham

appends to it a respectful letter to Adam Smith, who had supported the

laws against usury inconsistently with his own general principles. The

disciple was simply carrying out those principles to the logical

application from which the master had shrunk. The manuscript was sent to

Wilson, who wished to suppress it.[252] The elder Bentham obtained it,

and sent it to the press. The book met Bentham as he was returning. It

was highly praised by Thomas Reid,[253] and by the _Monthly Review_; it

was translated into various languages, and became one of the sacred

books of the Economists. Wilson is described as 'cold and cautious,' and

he suppressed another pamphlet upon prison discipline.[254] In a letter

to Bentham, dated 26th February 1787, however, Wilson disavows any

responsibility for the delay in the publication of the great book. 'The

cause,' he says, 'lies in your constitution. With one-tenth part of your

genius, and a common degree of steadiness, both Sam and you would long

since have risen to great eminence. But your history, since I have known

you, has been to be always running from a good scheme to a better. In

the meantime life passes away and nothing is completed.' He entreated

Bentham to return, and his entreaties were seconded by Trail, who

pointed out various schemes of reform, especially of the poor-laws, in

which Bentham might be useful. Wilson had mentioned already another

inducement to publication. 'There is,' he says, on 24th September 1786,

'a Mr. Paley, a parson and archdeacon of Carlisle, who has written a

book called _Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy_, in quarto,

and it has gone through two editions with prodigious applause.' He fears

that Bentham will be charged with stealing from Paley, and exhorts him

to come home and 'establish a great literary reputation in your own

language, and in this country which you despise.'[255] Bentham at last

started homewards. He travelled through Poland, Germany, and Holland,

and reached London at the beginning of February 1788. He settled at a

little farmhouse at Hendon, bought a 'superb harpsichord,' resumed his

occupations, and saw a small circle of friends. Wilson urged him to

publish his _Introduction_ without waiting to complete the vast scheme

to which it was to be a prologue. Copies of the printed book were

already abroad, and there was a danger of plagiarism. Thus urged,

Bentham at last yielded, and the _Introduction to the Principles of

Morals and Legislation_ appeared in 1789. The preface apologised for

imperfections due to the plan of his work. The book, he explained, laid

down the principles of all his future labours, and was to stand to him

in the relation of a treatise upon pure mathematics to a treatise upon

the applied sciences. He indicated ten separate departments of

legislation, each of which would require a treatise in order to the

complete execution of his scheme.

The book gives the essence of Bentham's theories, and is the one large

treatise published by himself. The other works were only brought to

birth by the help of disciples. Dumont, in the discourse prefixed to the

_Traites_, explains the reason. Bentham, he says, would suspend a whole

work and begin a new one because a single proposition struck him as

doubtful. A problem of finance would send him to a study of Political

Economy in general. A question of procedure would make him pause until

he had investigated the whole subject of judicial organisation. While at

work, he felt only the pleasure of composition. When his materials

required form and finish, he felt only the fatigue. Disgust succeeded to

charm; and he could scarcely be induced to interrupt his labours upon

fresh matter in order to give to his interpreter the explanations

necessary for the elucidation of his previous writings. He was without

the literary vanity or the desire for completion which may prompt to

premature publication, but may at least prevent the absolute waste of

what has been already achieved. His method of writing was

characteristic. He began by forming a complete logical scheme for the

treatment of any subject, dividing and subdividing so as to secure an

exhaustive classification of the whole matter of discussion. Then taking

up any subdivision, he wrote his remarks upon sheets, which were put

aside after being marked with references indicating their place in the

final treatise. He never turned to these again. In time he would exhaust

the whole subject, and it would then be the duty of his disciples simply

to put together the bricks according to the indications placed upon each

in order to construct the whole edifice.[256] As, however, the plan

would frequently undergo a change, and as each fragment had been written

without reference to the others, the task of ultimate combination and

adaptation of the ultimate atoms was often very perplexing. Bentham, as

we shall see, formed disciples ardent enough to put together these

scattered documents as the disciples of Mahomet put together the Koran.

Bentham's revelation was possibly less influential than Mahomet's; but

the logical framework was far more coherent.

Bentham's mind was for the present distracted. He had naturally returned

full of information about Russia. The English ministry were involved in

various negotiations with Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, the purpose of

which was to thwart the designs of Russia in the East. Bentham wrote

three letters to the _Public Advertiser_, signed Anti-Machiavel,[257]

protesting against the warlike policy. Bentham himself believed that the

effect was decisive, and that the 'war was given up' in consequence of

his arguments. Historians[258] scarcely sanction this belief, which is

only worth notice because it led to another belief, oddly characteristic

of Bentham. A letter signed 'Partizan' in the _Public Advertiser_

replied to his first two letters. Who was 'Partizan'? Lord Lansdowne

amused himself by informing Bentham that he was no less a personage than

George III. Bentham, with even more than his usual simplicity, accepted

this hoax as a serious statement. He derived no little comfort from the

thought; for to the antipathy thus engendered in the 'best of kings' he

attributed the subsequent failure of his Panopticon scheme.[259]

NOTES:

[214] _Works_, x. 66.

[215] _Ibid._ xi. 95.

[216] _Works_, x. 54.

[217] _Ibid._ i. 268 _n._

[218] _Works_, x. 121.

[219] _Ibid._ i. 227.

[220] _Ibid._ x. 79, 142. See also _Deontology_, i. 298-302, where

Bentham speaks of discovering the phrase in Priestley's _Essay on

Government_ in 1768. Priestley says (p. 17) that 'the good and happiness

of the members, that is of the majority of the members, of any state is

the great standard by which everything relating to that state must be

finally determined.' So Le Mercier de la Riviere says, in 1767, that the

ultimate end of society is _assurer le plus grand bonheur possible a la

plus grande population possible_ (Daire's _Economistes_, p. 470).

Hutcheson's _Enquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil_, 1725, see iii. Sec.

8, says 'that action is best which secures the greatest happiness of the

greatest number.' Beccaria, in the preface to his essay, speaks of _la

massima felicita divisa nel maggior numero_. J. S. Mill says that he

found the word 'Utilitarian' in Galt's _Annals of the Parish_, and gave

the name to the society founded by him in 1822-1823 (_Autobiography_, p.

79). The word had been used by Bentham himself in 1781, and he suggested

it to Dumont in 1802 as the proper name of the party, instead of

'Benthamite' (_Works_, x. 92, 390). He afterwards thought it a bad name,

because it gave a 'vague idea' (_Works_, x. 582), and substituted

'greatest happiness principle' for 'principle of utility' (_Works_, i.

'Morals and Legislation').

[221] A letter in the Additional MSS. 33, 537, shows that Bentham sent

his 'Fragment' and his 'Hard Labour' pamphlet to d'Alembert in 1778,

apparently introducing himself for the first time. Cf. _Works_, x.

87-88, 193-94.

[222] The translation of 1774. See Lowndes' _Manual_ under Voltaire,

_Works_, x. 83 _n._

[223] _Review of the Acts of the Thirteenth Parliament, etc._ (1775).

[224] _Works_, x. 57, 63.

[225] _Works_, x. 133-35.

[226] _Ibid._ x. 84.

[227] _Ibid._ x. 77.

[228] _Works_, x. 82.

[229] _Works_, x. 77-82. Blackstone took no notice of the work, except

by some allusions in the preface to his next edition. Bentham criticised

Blackstone respectfully in the pamphlet upon the Hard Labour Bill

(1778). Blackstone sent a courteous but 'frigidly cautious' reply to the

author.--_Works_, i. 255.

[230] _Works_, x. 115-17, 186

[231] _Ibid._ x. 100.

[232] _Ibid._ x. 122.

[233] _Ibid._ x. 118; i. 253.

[234] _Works_, x. 97; i. 252.

[235] _Ibid._ x. 219, 265.

[236] _Works_, x. 118, 419, 558.

[237] _Ibid._ i. 253.

[238] _Ibid._ x. 116, 182.

[239] _Ibid._ x. 228-42.

[240] _Ibid._ x. 186.

[241] _Works_, v. 370.

[242] _Souvenirs sur Mirabeau_ (preface).

[243] _Works_, x. 185.

[244] _Works_, x. 185. Colls (p. 41) tells the same story.

[245] _Works_ ('Fragment, etc.'), i. 245, and _Ibid._ ii. 463 _n._

[246] _Ibid._ i. 246, 250, 251.

[247] _Ibid._ i. 252.

[248] _Ibid._ x. 185.

[249] Bentham says (_Works_, i. 240) that he was a member of a club of

which Johnson was the despot. The only club possible seems to be the

Essex Street Club, of which Daines Barrington was a member. If so, it

was in 1783, though Bentham seems to imply an earlier date.

[250] _Works_, x. 77.

[251] _Ibid._ x. 147.

[252] _Works_, x. 176.

[253] Reid's _Works_ (Hamilton), p. 73.

[254] _Works_, x. 171.

[255] _Works_, x. 163-64. Cf. _Ibid._ x. 195, where Wilson is often

'tempted to think'--erroneously, of course--that Paley must have known

something of Bentham's work. Paley's chief source was Abraham Tucker.

[256] See J. H. Burton in _Works_, i. 11.

[257] Given in _Works_, x. 201-12.

[258] See Lecky's _Eighteenth Century_, x. 210-97, for an account of

these transactions.

[259] Bowring tells this gravely, and declares that George III. also

wrote letters to the _Gazette de Leyde_. George III. certainly

contributed some letters to Arthur Young's _Annals of Agriculture_, and

is one of the suggested authors of Junius.

III. THE PANOPTICON

The crash of the French revolution was now to change the whole course of

European politics, and to bring philosophical jurists face to face with

a long series of profoundly important problems. Bentham's attitude

during the early stages of the revolution and the first war period is

significant, and may help to elucidate some characteristics of the

Utilitarian movement. Revolutions are the work of passion: the product

of a social and political condition in which the masses are permeated

with discontent, because the social organs have ceased to discharge

their functions. They are not ascribable to the purely intellectual

movement alone, though it is no doubt an essential factor. The

revolution came in any case because the social order was out of joint,

not simply because Voltaire or Rousseau or Diderot had preached

destructive doctrines. The doctrines of the 'rights of man' are obvious

enough to have presented themselves to many minds at many periods. The

doctrines became destructive because the old traditions were shaken, and

the traditions were shaken because the state of things to which they

corresponded had become intolerable. The French revolution meant (among

other things) that in the mind of the French peasant there had

accumulated a vast deposit of bitter enmity against the noble who had

become a mere parasite upon the labouring population, retaining, as

Arthur Young said, privileges for himself, and leaving poverty to the

lower classes. The peasant had not read Rousseau; he had read nothing.

But when his discontent began to affect the educated classes, men who

had read Rousseau found in his works the dialect most fitted to express

the growing indignation. Rousseau's genius had devised the appropriate

formula; for Rousseau's sensibility had made him prescient of the rising

storm. What might be a mere commonplace for speculative students

suddenly became the warcry in a social upheaval. In England, as I have

tried to show, there was no such popular sentiment behind the political

theories: and reformers were content with measures which required no

appeal to absolute rights and general principles. Bentham was no

Rousseau; and the last of men to raise a warcry. Passion and

sentimentalism were to him a nuisance. His theories were neither

suggested nor modified by the revolution. He looked on with curious

calmness, as though the revolutionary disturbances were rather a

transitory interruption to the progress of reform than indicative of a

general convulsion. His own position was isolated. He had no strong

reforming party behind him. The Whigs, his main friends, were powerless,

discredited, and themselves really afraid to support any vigorous

policy. They had in the main to content themselves with criticising the

warlike policy which, for the time, represented the main current of

national sentiment. Bentham shared many of their sympathies. He hated

the abstract 'rights of man' theory as heartily as Burke. It was to him

a 'hodge-podge' of fallacies. On the other hand, he was absolutely

indifferent to the apotheosis of the British Constitution constructed by

Burke's imagination. He cared nothing for history in general, or

regarded it, from a Voltairean point of view, as a record of the follies

and crimes of mankind. He wished to deal with political, and especially

with legal, questions in a scientific spirit--but 'scientific' would

mean not pure mathematics but pure empiricism. He was quite as far from

Paine's abstract methods as from Burke's romantic methods. Both of

them, according to him, were sophists: though one might prefer logical

and the other sentimental sophistries. Dumont, when he published (1802)

his versions of Bentham, insisted upon this point. Nothing, he says, was

more opposed to the trenchant dogmatism of the abstract theorists about

'rights of man' and 'equality' than Bentham's thoroughly scientific

procedure (_Discours Preliminaire_). Bentham's intellectual position in

this respect will require further consideration hereafter. All his

prejudices and sympathies were those of the middle class from which he

sprang. He was no democrat: he had no particular objection to the

nobility, though he preferred Shelburne to the king's friends or to the

Whig aristocracy. The reforms which he advocated were such as might be

adopted by any enlightened legislator, not only by Shelburne but even by

Blackstone. He had only, he thought, to convert a few members of

parliament to gain the acceptance for a rational criminal code. It had

hardly even occurred to him that there was anything wrong in the general

political order, though he was beginning to find out that it was not so

modifiable as he could have wished by the new ideas which he propounded.

Bentham's activity during the first revolutionary war corresponded to

this position. The revolution, whatever else it might do, obviously gave

a chance to amateur legislators. There was any amount of work to be done

in the way of codifying and reforming legislative systems. The deviser

of Utopias had such an opening as had never occurred in the world's

history. Lord Lansdowne, on the 3rd January 1789, expresses his pleasure

at hearing that Bentham intends to 'take up the cause of the people in

France.'[260] Bentham, as we have seen, was already known to some of the

French leaders, and he was now taking time by the forelock. He sent to

the abbe Morellet a part of his treatise on Political Tactics, hoping to

have it finished by the time of the meeting of the States General.[261]

This treatise, civilly accepted by Morellet, and approved with some

qualifications by Bentham's counsellors, Romilly, Wilson, and Trail, was

an elaborate account of the organisation and procedure of a legislative

assembly, founded chiefly on the practice of the House of Commons. It

was published in 1816 by Dumont in company with _Anarchic Fallacies_, a

vigorous exposure of the _Declaration of Rights_, which Bentham had

judiciously kept on his shelf. Had the French known of it, he remarks

afterwards, they would have been little disposed to welcome him.[262] An

elaborate scheme for the organisation of the French judiciary was

suggested by a report to the National Assembly, and published in March

1790. In 1791, Bentham offered to go to France himself in order to

establish a prison on his new scheme (to be mentioned directly), and

become 'gratuitously the gaoler thereof.'[263] The Assembly acknowledged

his 'ardent love of humanity,' and ordered an extract from his scheme to

be printed for their instruction. The tactics actually adopted by the

French revolutionists for managing assemblies and their methods of

executing justice form a queer commentary on the philosopher who, like

Voltaire's Mamres in the _White Bull_, continued to 'meditate

profoundly' in placid disregard of facts. He was in fact proposing that

the lava boiling up in a volcanic eruption should arrange itself

entirely according to his architectural designs. But his proposal to

become a gaoler during the revolution reaches the pathetic by its

amiable innocence. On 26th August 1792, Bentham was one of the men upon

whom the expiring Assembly, anxious to show its desire of universal

fraternity, conferred the title of citizen. With Bentham were joined

Priestley, Paine, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Washington, and others. The

September massacres followed. On 18th October the honour was

communicated to Bentham. He replied in a polite letter, pointing out

that he was a royalist in London for the same reason which would make

him a republican in France. He ended by a calm argument against the

proscription of refugees.[264] The Convention, if it read the letter,

and had any sense of humour, must have been amused. The war and the

Reign of Terror followed. Bentham turned the occasion to account by

writing a pamphlet (not then published) exhorting the French to

'emancipate their colonies.' Colonies were an aimless burthen, and to

get rid of them would do more than conquest to relieve their finances.

British fleets and the insurrection of St. Domingo were emancipating by

very different methods.

Bentham was, of course, disgusted by the divergence of his clients from

the lines chalked out by proper respect for law and order. On 31st

October 1793 he writes to a friend, expressing his wish that Jacobinism

could be extirpated; no price could be too heavy to pay for such a

result: but he doubts whether war or peace would be the best means to

the end, and protests against the policy of appropriating useless and

expensive colonies instead of 'driving at the heart of the

monster.'[265] Never was an adviser more at cross-purposes with the

advised. It would be impossible to draw a more striking portrait of the

abstract reasoner, whose calculations as to human motives omit all

reference to passion, and who fancied that all prejudice can be

dispelled by a few bits of logic.

Meanwhile a variety of suggestions more or less important and connected

with passing events were seething in his fertile brain. He wrote one of

his most stinging pamphlets, '_Truth versus Ashhurst_' in December 1792,

directed against a judge who, in the panic suggested by the September

massacres, had eulogised the English laws. Bentham's aversion to Jacobin

measures by no means softened his antipathy to English superstitions;

and his attack was so sharp that Romilly advised and obtained its

suppression for the time. Projects as to war-taxes suggested a couple of

interesting pamphlets written in 1793, and published in 1795. In

connection with this, schemes suggested themselves to him for improved

systems of patents, for limited liability companies and other

plans.[266] His great work still occupied him at intervals. In 1793 he

offers to Dundas to employ himself in drafting Statutes, and remarks

incidentally that he could legislate for Hindostan, should legislation

be wanted there, as easily as for his own parish.[267] In 1794, Dumont

is begging him to 'conquer his repugnance' to bestowing a few hints upon

his interpreter.[268] In 1796, Bentham writes long letters suggesting

that he should be sent to France with Wilberforce, in order to

re-establish friendly relations.[269] In 1798 he is corresponding at

great length with Patrick Colquhoun upon plans for improving the

Metropolitan police.[270] In 1801 he says[271] that for two years and a

half 'he has thought of scarce anything else' than a plan for

interest-bearing notes, which he carefully elaborated and discussed with

Nicholas Vansittart and Dr. Beeke. In September 1800, however, he had

found time to occupy himself with a proposed _frigidarium_ or ice-house

for the preservation of fish, fruits, and vegetables; and invited Dr.

Roget, a nephew of Romilly, to come to his house and carry out the

necessary experiments.[272] In January 1802 he writes to Dumont[273]

proposing to send him a trifling specimen of the Panopticon, a set of

hollow fire-irons invented by his brother, which may attract the

attention of Buonaparte and Talleyrand. He proceeds to expound the

merits of Samuel's invention for making wheels by machinery. Dumont

replies, that fire-irons are 'superfluities'--(fire-arms might have been

more to Buonaparte's taste)--and that the Panopticon itself was coldly

received.

This Panopticon was to be Bentham's masterpiece. It occupied his chief

attention from his return to England until the peace of Amiens. His

brother had returned from Russia in 1791. Their father died 28th March

1792, dividing his property equally between his sons. Jeremy's share

consisted of the estate at Queen's Square Place, Westminster, and of

landed property producing L500 or L600 a year. The father, spite of the

distance between them, had treated his son with substantial kindness,

and had learned to take a pride in achievements very unlike those which

he had at first desired.[274] Bentham's position, however, was improved

by the father's death. The Westminster estate included the house in

which he lived for the rest of his life. There was a garden in which he

took great delight, though London smoke gradually destroyed the plants:

and in the garden was the small house where Milton had once lived.[275]

Here, with the co-operation of his brother and his increased income, he

had all the means necessary for launching his grand scheme.

The Panopticon, as defined by its inventor to Brissot, was a 'mill for

grinding rogues honest, and idle men industrious.'[276] It was suggested

by a plan designed by his brother in Russia for a large house to be

occupied by workmen, and to be so arranged that they could be under

constant inspection. Bentham was working on the old lines of

philanthropic reform. He had long been interested in the schemes of

prison reform, to which Howard's labours had given the impetus.

Blackstone, with the help of William Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland, had

prepared the 'Hard Labour Bill,' which Bentham had carefully criticised

in 1778. The measure was passed in 1779, and provided for the management

of convicts, who were becoming troublesome, as transportation to America

had ceased to be possible. Howard, whose relation to Bentham I have

already noticed, was appointed as one of the commissioners to carry out

the provisions of the Act. The commissioners disagreed; Howard resigned;

and though at last an architect (William Blackburn) was appointed who

possessed Howard's confidence, and who constructed various prisons in

the country, the scheme was allowed to drop. Bentham now hoped to solve

the problem with his Panopticon. He printed an account of it in 1791. He

wrote to his old antagonist, George III., describing it, together with

another invention of Samuel's for enabling armies to cross rivers, which

might be more to his Majesty's taste.[277] In March 1792 he made a

proposal to the government offering to undertake the charge of a

thousand convicts upon the Panopticon system.[278] After delays

suspicious in the eyes of Bentham, but hardly surprising at such a

period, an act of parliament was obtained in 1794 to adopt his schemes.

Bentham had already been making preparations. He says[279] (14th

September 1794) that he has already spent L6000, and is spending at the

rate of L2000 a year, while his income was under L600 a year. He

obtained, however, L2000 from the government. He had made models and

architectural plans, in which he was helped by Reveley, already known to

him at Constantinople. This sum, it appears, was required in order to

keep together the men whom he employed. The nature of their employment

is remarkable.[280] Samuel, a man of singular mechanical skill, which

was of great use to the navy during the war, had devised machinery for

work in wood and metal. Bentham had joined his brother, and they were

looking out for a steam-engine. It had now occurred to them to employ

convicts instead of steam, and thus to combine philanthropy with

business. Difficulties of the usual kind arose as to the procurement of

a suitable site. The site secured under the provisions of the 'Hard

Labour Bill' was for some reason rejected; and Bentham was almost in

despair. It was not until 1799 that he at last acquired for L12,000 an

estate at Millbank, which seemed to be suitable. Meanwhile Bentham had

found another application for his principle. The growth of pauperism was

alarming statesmen. Whitbread proposed in February 1796 to fix a minimum

rate of wages. The wisest thing that government could do, he said, was

to 'offer a liberal premium for the encouragement of large families.'

Pitt proceeded to prepare the abortive Poor-law Bill,[281] upon which

Bentham (in February 1797) sent in some very shrewd criticisms. They

were not published, but are said to have 'powerfully contributed to the

abandonment of the measure.'[282] They show Bentham's power of incisive

criticism, though they scarcely deal with the general principle. In the

following autumn Bentham contributed to Arthur Young's _Annals of

Agriculture_ upon the same topic. It had struck him that an application

of his Panopticon would give the required panacea. He worked out details

with his usual zeal, and the scheme attracted notice among the

philanthropists of the time. It was to be a 'succedaneum' to Pitt's

proposal. Meanwhile the finance committee, appointed in 1797, heard

evidence from Bentham's friend, Patrick Colquhoun, upon the Panopticon,

and a report recommending it was proposed by R. Pole Carew, a friend of

Samuel Bentham. Although this report was suppressed, the scheme

apparently received an impetus. The Millbank estate was bought in

consequence of these proceedings, and a sum of only L1000 was wanted to

buy out the tenant of one piece of land. Bentham was constantly in

attendance at a public office, expecting a final warrant for the money.

It never came, and, as Bentham believed, the delay was due to the malice

of George III. Had any other king been on the throne, Panopticon in both

'the prisoner branch and the pauper branch' would have been set at

work.[283] Such are the consequences of newspaper controversies with

monarchs! After this, in any case, the poor Panopticon, as the old

lawyers said, 'languishing did live,' and at last 'languishing did die.'

Poor Bentham seems to have struggled vainly for a time. He appealed to

Pitt's friend, Wilberforce; he appealed to his step-brother Abbot; he

wrote to members of parliament, but all was in vain.

Romilly induced him in 1802 to suppress a statement of his grievances

which could only have rendered ministers implacable.[284] But he found

out what would hardly have been a discovery to most people, that

officials can be dilatory and evasive; and certain discoveries about the

treatment of convicts in New South Wales convinced him that they could

even defy the laws and the Constitution when they were beyond

inspection. He published (1803) a _Plea for the Constitution_, showing

the enormities committed in the colony, 'in breach of Magna Charta, the

Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act, and the Bill of Rights.'

Romilly in vain told him that the attorney-general could not recommend

the author of such an effusion to be keeper of a Panopticon.[285] The

actual end did not come till 1811. A committee then reported against the

scheme. They noticed one essential and very characteristic weakness. The

whole system turned upon the profit to be made from the criminals'

labour by Bentham and his brother. The committee observed that, however

unimpeachable might be the characters of the founders, the scheme might

lead to abuses in the hands of their successors. The adoption of this

principle of 'farming' had in fact led to gross abuses both in gaols and

in workhouses; but it was, as I have said, in harmony with the whole

'individualist' theory. The committee recommended a different plan; and

the result was the foundation of Millbank penitentiary, opened in

1816.[286] Bentham ultimately received L23,000 by way of compensation in

1813.[287] The objections of the committee would now be a commonplace,

but Bentham saw in them another proof of the desire to increase

government patronage. He was well out of the plan. There were probably

few men in England less capable of managing a thousand convicts, in

spite of his theories about 'springs of action.' If anything else had

been required to ensure failure, it would have been association with a

sanguine inventor of brilliant abilities.

Bentham's agitation had not been altogether fruitless. His plan had been

partly adopted at Edinburgh by one of the Adams,[288] and his work

formed an important stage in the development of the penal system.

Bentham, though he could not see that his failure was a blessing in

disguise, had learned one lesson worth learning. He was ill-treated,

according to impartial observers. 'Never,' says Wilberforce,[289] 'was

any one worse used. I have seen the tears run down the cheeks of that

strong-minded man through vexation at the pressing importunity of his

creditors, and the indolence of official underlings when day after day

he was begging at the Treasury for what was indeed a mere matter of

right.' Wilberforce adds that Bentham was 'quite soured,' and attributes

his later opinions to this cause. When the _Quarterly Review_ long

afterwards taunted him as a disappointed man, Bentham declared himself

to be in 'a state of perpetual and unruffled gaiety,' and the

'mainspring' of the gaiety of his own circle.[290] No one, indeed, could

be less 'soured' so far as his habitual temper was concerned. But

Wilberforce's remark contained a serious truth. Bentham had made a

discovery. He had vowed war in his youth against the 'demon of chicane.'

He had now learned that the name of the demon was 'Legion.' To cast him

out, it would be necessary to cast out the demon of officialism; and we

shall see what this bit of knowledge presently implied.

NOTES:

[260] _Works_, x. 195.

[261] _Ibid._ x. 198-99.

[262] _Ibid._ x. 317.

[263] _Ibid._ x. 270.

[264] _Works_, x. 282.

[265] _Works_, x. 296.

[266] _Ibid._ x. 304.

[267] _Ibid._ x. 292.

[268] _Ibid._ x. 300.

[269] _Works_, x. 315.

[270] _Ibid._ x. 329.

[271] _Ibid._ x. 366.

[272] _Ibid._ x. 346.

[273] _Ibid._ x. 381.

[274] See his letter to Lansdowne, sending a portrait to

Jeremy.--_Works_, x. 224.

[275] _Works_, xi. 81.

[276] _Ibid._ x. 226.

[277] _Works_, x. 260. It is doubtful whether the letter was sent.

[278] The Panopticon story is confusedly told in Bowring's life. The

_Panopticon Correspondence_, in the eleventh volume, gives fragments

from a 'history of the war between Jeremy Bentham and George III.,'

written by Bentham in 1830-31, and selections from a voluminous

correspondence.

[279] _Works_, x. 301.

[280] _Ibid._ xi. 167.

[281] The plan, according to Bentham (_Works_, xi. 102), was suggested

by Ruggles, author of the work upon the poor-laws, first printed in

Young's _Annals_.

[282] _Works_, viii. 440.

[283] _Works_, xi. 102-3.

[284] _Ibid._ x. 400.

[285] _Works_, xi. 144.

[286] For its later history see _Memorials of Millbank_, by Arthur

Griffiths. 2 vols., 1875.

[287] _Works_, xi. 106.

[288] _Ibid._ x. 294.

[289] Wilberforce's _Life_, ii. 71.

[290] _Works_, x. 541.

IV. THE UTILITARIAN PROPAGANDA

Bentham in 1802 had reached the respectable age of fifty-four. He had

published his first work twenty-six years, and his most elaborate

treatise thirteen years, previously. He had been brought into contact

with many of the eminent politicians and philanthropists of the day.

Lansdowne had been a friendly patron: his advice had been treated with

respect by Pitt, Dundas, and even by Blackstone; he was on friendly

terms with Colquhoun, Sir F. Eden, Arthur Young, Wilberforce, and others

interested in philanthropic movements, and his name at least was known

to some French politicians. But his reputation was still obscure; and

his connections did not develop into intimacies. He lived as a recluse

and avoided society. His introduction to great people at Bowood had

apparently rather increased than softened his shyness. The little circle

of intimates, Romilly and Wilson and his own brother, must have

satisfied his needs for social intercourse. It required an elaborate

negotiation to bring about a meeting between him and Dr. Parr, the great

Whig prophet, although they had been previously acquainted, and Parr

was, as Romilly said by way of introduction, a profound admirer and

universal panegyrist.[291] He refused to be introduced by Parr to Fox,

because he had 'nothing particular to say' to the statesman, and

considered that to be 'always a sufficient reason for declining

acquaintance.'[292]

But, at last, Bentham's fame was to take a start. Bentham, I said, had

long before found himself. Dumont had now found Bentham. After long and

tedious labours and multiplied communications between the master and the

disciple, Dumont in the spring of 1802 brought out his _Traites de

Legislation de M. Jeremie Bentham_. The book was partly a translation

from Bentham's published and unpublished works,[293] and partly a

statement of the pith of the new doctrine in Dumont's own language. It

had the great merit of putting Bentham's meaning vigorously and

compactly, and free from many of the digressions, minute discussions of

minor points and arguments requiring a special knowledge of English law,

which had impeded the popularity of Bentham's previous works.

The Jacobin controversies were passing into the background: and Bentham

began to attain a hearing as a reformer upon different lines. In 1803

Dumont visited St. Petersburg, and sent home glowing reports of

Bentham's rising fame. As many copies of the _Traites_ had been sold

there as in London. Codes were wanted; laws were being digested; and

Bentham's work would supply the principles and the classification. A

magnificent translation was ordered, and Russian officials wrote glowing

letters in which Bentham was placed in a line with Bacon, Newton, and

Adam Smith--each the founder of a new science.[294] At home the new book

was one of the objects of what Dumont calls the 'scandalous irreverence'

of the _Edinburgh Review_.[295] This refers to a review of the _Traites_

in the _Edinburgh Review_ of April 1804. Although patronising in tone,

and ridiculing some of Bentham's doctrines as commonplace and condemning

others as criminal, it paid some high compliments to his ability. The

irreverence meant at least that Bentham had become one of the persons

worth talking about, and that he was henceforth to influence the rising

generation. In January 1807 the _Edinburgh_ itself (probably Jeffrey)

suggested that Bentham should be employed in a proposed reform of the

Scottish judicial system. His old friend, Lansdowne, died on 7th May

1805, and in one of his last letters expresses a hope that Bentham's

principles are at last beginning to spread.[296] The hope was

fulfilled.

During the eighteenth century Benthamism had gone through its period of

incubation. It was now to become an active agency, to gather proselytes,

and to have a marked influence not only upon legislative but upon

political movements. The immediate effect upon Bentham of the decline of

the Panopticon, and his consequent emancipation from immediately

practical work, was apparently his return to his more legitimate

employment of speculative labour. He sent to Dumont at St.

Petersburg[297] part of the treatise upon Political Economy, which had

been naturally suggested by his later work: and he applied himself to

the Scottish judiciary question, to which many of his speculations had a

close application. He published a work upon this subject in 1808. To the

period between 1802 and 1812 belongs also the book, or rather the

collection of papers, afterwards transformed into the book, upon

Evidence, which is one of his most valuable performances.

A letter, dated 1st November 1810, gives a characteristic account of his

position. He refers to hopes of the acceptance of some of his principles

in South America. In Spain Spaniards are prepared to receive his laws

'as oracles.' 'Now at length, when I am just ready to drop into the

grave' (he had still twenty years of energetic work before him), 'my

fame has spread itself all over the civilised world.' Dumont's

publication of 1802 is considered to have superseded all previous

writings on legislation. In Germany and France codes have been prepared

by authorised lawyers, who have 'sought to do themselves credit by

references to that work.'[298] It has been translated into Russian. Even

in England he is often mentioned in books and in parliament. 'Meantime I

am here scribbling on in my hermitage, never seeing anybody but for some

special reason, always bearing relation to the service of mankind.'[299]

Making all due allowance for the deceptive views of the outer world

which haunt every 'hermitage,' it remains true that Bentham's fame was

emerging from obscurity.

The end of this period, moreover, was bringing him into closer contact

with English political life. Bentham, as we have seen, rejected the

whole Jacobin doctrine of abstract rights. So long as English politics

meant either the acceptance of a theory which, for whatever reason,

gathered round it no solid body of support, or, on the other hand, the

acceptance of an obstructive and purely conservative principle, to which

all reform was radically opposed, Bentham was necessarily in an isolated

position. He had 'nothing particular to say' to Fox. He was neither a

Tory nor a Jacobin, and cared little for the paralysed Whigs. He allied

himself therefore, so far as he was allied with any one, with the

philanthropic agitators who stood, like him, outside the lines of party.

The improvement of prisons was not a party question. A marked

change--not always, I think, sufficiently emphasised by historians--had

followed the second war. The party-divisions began to take the form

which was to become more marked as time went on. The old issues between

Jacobin and Anti-Jacobin no longer existed. Napoleon had become the heir

of the revolution. The great struggle was beginning in which England

commanded the ocean, while the Continent was at the feet of the empire.

For a time the question was whether England, too, should be invaded.

After Trafalgar invasion became hopeless. The Napoleonic victories

threatened to exclude English trade from the Continent: while England

retorted by declaring that the Continent should trade with nobody else.

Upon one side the war was now appealing to higher feelings. It was no

longer a crusade against theories, but a struggle for national existence

and for the existence of other nations threatened by a gigantic

despotism. Men like Wordsworth and Coleridge, who could not be

Anti-Jacobins, had been first shocked by the Jacobin treatment of

Switzerland, and now threw themselves enthusiastically into the cause

which meant the rescue of Spain and Germany from foreign oppression. The

generous feeling which had resented the attempt to forbid Frenchmen to

break their own bonds, now resented the attempts of Frenchmen to impose

bonds upon others. The patriotism which prompted to a crusade had seemed

unworthy, but the patriotism which was now allied with the patriotism of

Spain and Germany involved no sacrifice of other sentiment. Many men had

sympathised with the early revolution, not so much from any strong

sentiment of evils at home as from a belief that the French movement was

but a fuller development of the very principles which were partially

embodied in the British Constitution. They had no longer to choose

between sympathising with the enemies of England and sympathising with

the suppressors of the old English liberties.

But, on the other hand, an opposite change took place. The

disappearance of the Jacobin movement allowed the Radicalism of home

growth to display itself more fully. English Whigs of all shades had

opposed the war with certain misgivings. They had been nervously anxious

not to identify themselves with the sentiments of the Jacobins. They

desired peace with the French, but had to protest that it was not for

love of French principles. That difficulty was removed. There was no

longer a vision--such as Gillray had embodied in his caricatures--of a

guillotine in St. James's Street: or of a Committee of Public Safety

formed by Fox, Paine, and Horne Tooke. Meanwhile Whig prophecies of the

failure of the war were not disproved by its results. Though the English

navy had been victorious, English interference on the Continent had been

futile. Millions of money had been wasted: and millions were flowing

freely. Even now we stand astonished at the reckless profusion of the

financiers of the time. And what was there to show for it? The French

empire, so far from being destroyed, had been consolidated. If we

escaped for the time, could we permanently resist the whole power of

Europe? When the Peninsular War began we had been fighting, except for

the short truce of Amiens, for sixteen years; and there seemed no reason

to believe that the expedition to Portugal in 1808 would succeed better

than previous efforts. The Walcheren expedition of 1809 was a fresh

proof of our capacity for blundering. Pauperism was still increasing

rapidly, and forebodings of a war with America beginning to trouble men

interested in commerce. The English Opposition had ample texts for

discourses; and a demand for change began to spring up which was no

longer a reflection of foreign sympathies. An article in the _Edinburgh_

of January 1808, which professed to demonstrate the hopelessness of the

Peninsular War, roused the wrath of the Tories. The _Quarterly Review_

was started by Canning and Scott, and the _Edinburgh_, in return, took a

more decidedly Whig colour. The Radicals now showed themselves behind

the Whigs. Cobbett, who had been the most vigorous of John Bull

Anti-Jacobins, was driven by his hatred of the tax-gatherer and the

misery of the agricultural labourers into the opposite camp, and his

_Register_ became the most effective organ of Radicalism. Demands for

reform began again to make themselves heard in parliament. Sir Francis

Burdett, who had sat at the feet of Horne Tooke, and whose return with

Cochrane for Westminster in 1807 was the first parliamentary triumph of

the reformers, proposed a motion on 15th June 1809, which was, of

course, rejected, but which was the first of a series, and marked the

revival of a serious agitation not to cease till the triumph of 1832.

Meanwhile Bentham, meditating profoundly upon the Panopticon, had at

last found out that he had begun at the wrong end. His reasoning had

been thrown away upon the huge dead weight of official indifference, or

worse than indifference. Why did they not accept the means for producing

the greatest happiness of the greatest number? Because statesmen did not

desire the end. And why not? To answer that question, and to show how a

government could be constructed which should desire it, became a main

occupation of Bentham's life. Henceforward, therefore, instead of merely

treating of penal codes and other special reforms, his attention is

directed to the previous question of political organisation; while at

times he diverges to illustrate incidentally the abuses of what he

ironically calls the 'matchless constitution.' Bentham's principal

occupation, in a word, was to provide political philosophy for radical

reformers.[300]

Bentham remained as much a recluse as ever. He seldom left Queen's

Square Place except for certain summer outings. In 1807 he took a house

at Barrow Green, near Oxted, in Surrey, lying in a picturesque hollow at

the foot of the chalk hills.[301] It was an old-fashioned house,

standing in what had been a park, with a lake and a comfortable kitchen

garden. Bentham pottered about in the grounds and under the old

chestnut-trees, codifying, gardening, and talking to occasional

disciples. He returned thither in following years; but in 1814, probably

in consequence of his compensation for the Panopticon, took a larger

place, Ford Abbey, near Chard in Somersetshire. It was a superb

residence,[302] with chapel, cloisters, and corridors, a hall eighty

feet long by thirty high, and a great dining parlour. Parts of the

building dated from the twelfth century or the time of the Commonwealth,

or had undergone alterations attributed to Inigo Jones. No Squire

Western could have cared less for antiquarian associations, but Bentham

made a very fair monk. The place, for which he paid L315 a year, was

congenial. He rode his favourite hobby of gardening, and took his

regular 'ante-jentacular' and 'post-prandial' walks, and played

battledore and shuttlecock in the intervals of codification. He liked it

so well that he would have taken it for life, but for the loss of L8000

or L10,000 in a Devonshire marble-quarry.[303] In 1818 he gave it up,

and thenceforward rarely quitted Queen's Square Place. His life was

varied by few incidents, although his influence upon public affairs was

for the first time becoming important. The busier journalists and

platform orators did not trouble themselves much about philosophy. But

they were in communication with men of a higher stamp, Romilly, James

Mill, and others, who formed Bentham's innermost council. Thus the

movements in the outside world set up an agitation in Bentham's study;

and the recluse was prompted to set himself to work upon elaborating his

own theories in various directions, in order to supply the necessary

substratum of philosophical doctrine. If he had not the power of gaining

the public ear, his oracles were transmitted through the disciples who

also converted some of his raw materials into coherent books.

The most important of Bentham's disciples for many years was James Mill,

and I shall have to say what more is necessary in regard to the active

agitation when I speak of Mill himself. For the present, it is enough to

say that Mill first became Bentham's proselyte about 1808. Mill stayed

with Bentham at Barrow Green and at Ford Abbey. Though some differences

caused superficial disturbances of their harmony, no prophet could have

had a more zealous, uncompromising, and vigorous disciple. Mill's force

of character qualified him to become the leader of the school; but his

doctrine was always essentially the doctrine of Bentham, and for the

present he was content to be the transmitter of his master's message to

mankind. He was at this period a contributor to the _Edinburgh Review_;

and in October 1809 he inserted some praises of Bentham in a review of a

book upon legislation by S. Scipion Bexon. The article was cruelly

mangled by Jeffrey, according to his custom, and Jeffrey's most powerful

vassal, Brougham, thought that the praises which remained were

excessive.[304]

Obviously the orthodox Whigs were not prepared to swear allegiance to

Bentham. He was drawing into closer connection with the Radicals. In

1809 Cobbett was denouncing the duke of York in consequence of the Mrs.

Clarke scandal. Bentham wrote to him, but anonymously and cautiously, to

obtain documents in regard to a previous libel case,[305] and proceeded

to write a pamphlet on the _Elements of the Art of Packing (as applied

to Special Juries)_, so sharp that his faithful adviser, Romilly,

procured its suppression for the time.[306] Copies, however, were

printed and privately given to a few who could be trusted. Bentham next

wrote (1809) a 'Catechism of Parliamentary Reform,' which he

communicated to Cobbett (16th November 1810), with a request for its

publication in the _Register_.[307] Cobbett was at this time in prison

for his attack upon flogging militia men; and, though still more hostile

to government, was bound to be more cautious in his line of assault. The

plan was not published, whether because too daring or too dull; but it

was apparently printed. Bentham's opinion of Cobbett was anything but

flattering. Cobbett, he thought in 1812, was a 'vile rascal,' and was

afterwards pronounced to be 'filled with the _odium humani generis_--his

malevolence and lying beyond everything.'[308] Cobbett's radicalism, in

fact, was of the type most hostile to the Utilitarians. John Hunt, in

the _Examiner_, was 'trumpeting' Bentham and Romilly in 1812, and was

praised accordingly.[309] Bentham formed an alliance with another

leading Radical. He had made acquaintance by 1811 with Sir F. Burdett,

to whom he then appealed for help in an attack upon the delays of

Chancery.[310] Burdett, indeed, appeared to him to be far inferior to

Romilly and Brougham, but he thought that so powerful a 'hero of the

mob' ought to be turned to account in the good cause.[311] Burdett seems

to have courted the old philosopher; and a few years later a closer

alliance was brought about. The peace of 1815 was succeeded by a period

of distress, the more acutely felt from the disappointment of natural

hopes of prosperity; and a period of agitation, met by harsh repression,

followed. Applications were made, to Bentham for permission to use his

'Catechism,' which was ultimately published (1818) in a cheap form by

Wooler, well known as the editor of the democratic _Black Dwarf_.[312]

Burdett applied for a plan of parliamentary reform. Henry Bickersteth

(1783-1851), afterwards Lord Langdale and Master of the Rolls, at this

time a rising barrister of high character, wrote an appeal to Bentham

and Burdett to combine in setting forth a scheme which, with such

authority, must command general acceptance. The result was a series of

resolutions moved by Burdett in the House of Commons on 2nd June

1818,[313] demanding universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by

ballot. Bentham had thus accepted the conclusions reached in a different

way by the believers in that 'hodge-podge' of absurdities, the

declaration of the rights of man. Curiously enough, his assault upon

that document appeared in Dumont's French version in the year 1816, at

the very time when he was accepting its practical conclusions.

The schemes in which Mill was interested at this time drew Bentham's

attention in other directions. In 1813 the Quaker, William Allen, who

had been a close ally of Mill, induced Bentham to invest money in the

New Lanark establishment. Owen, whose benevolent schemes had been

hampered by his partners, bought them out, the new capital being partly

provided by Allen, Bentham, and others. Bentham afterwards spoke

contemptuously of Owen, who, as he said, 'began in vapour and ended in

smoke,'[314] and whose disciples came in after years into sharp conflict

with the Utilitarians. Bentham, however, took pleasure, it seems, in

Owen's benevolent schemes for infant education, and made money by his

investment, for once combining business with philanthropy

successfully.[315] Probably he regarded New Lanark as a kind of

Panopticon. Owen had not as yet become a prophet of Socialism.

Another set of controversies in which Mill and his friends took an

active part, started Bentham in a whole series of speculations. A plan

(which I shall have to mention in connection with Mill), was devised in

1815 for a 'Chrestomathic school,' which was to give a sound education

of proper Utilitarian tendencies to the upper and middle classes.

Brougham, Mackintosh, Ricardo, William Allen, and Place were all

interested in this undertaking.[316] Bentham offered a site at Queen's

Square Place, and though the scheme never came to the birth, it set him

actively at work. He wrote a series of papers during his first year at

Ford Abbey[317] upon the theory of education, published in 1816 as

_Chrestomathia_; and to this was apparently due a further excursion

beyond the limits of jurisprudence. Educational controversy in that

ignorant day was complicated by religious animosity; the National

Society and the 'British and Foreign' Society were fighting under the

banners of Bell and Lancaster, and the war roused excessive bitterness.

Bentham finding the church in his way, had little difficulty in

discovering that the whole ecclesiastical system was part of the general

complex of abuse against which he was warring. He fell foul of the

Catechism; he exposed the abuses of non-residence and episcopal wealth;

he discovered that the Thirty-nine Articles contained gross fallacies;

he went on to make an onslaught upon the Apostle St Paul, whose evidence

as to his conversion was exposed to a severe cross-examination; and,

finally, he wrote, or supplied the materials for, a remarkable _Analysis

of Natural Religion_, which was ultimately published by Grote under the

pseudonym 'Philip Beauchamp,' in 1822. This procedure from the

particular case of the Catechism in schools up to the general problem of

the utility of religion in general, is curiously characteristic of

Bentham.

Bentham's mind was attracted to various other schemes by the disciples

who came to sit at his feet, and professed, with more or less sincerity,

to regard him as a Solon. Foreigners had been resorting to him from all

parts of the world, and gave him hopes of new fields for codifying. As

early as 1808 he had been visited at Barrow Green by the strange

adventurer, politician, lawyer, and filibuster, Aaron Burr, famous for

the duel in which he killed Alexander Hamilton, and now framing wild

schemes for an empire in Mexico. Unscrupulous, restlessly active and

cynical, he was a singular contrast to the placid philosopher, upon whom

his confidences seem to have made an impression of not unpleasing

horror. Burr's conversation suggested to Bentham a singular scheme for

emigrating to Mexico. He applied seriously for introductions to Lord

Holland, who had passed some time in Spain, and to Holland's friend,

Jovellanos (1749-1812), a member of the Spanish Junta, who had written

treatises upon legislation (1785), of which Bentham approved.[318] The

dream of Mexico was succeeded by a dream of Venezuela. General Miranda

spent some years in England, and had become well known to James Mill. He

was now about to start upon an unfortunate expedition to Venezuela, his

native country. He took with him a draft of a law for the freedom of the

press, which Bentham drew up, and he proposed that when his new state

was founded, Bentham should be its legislator.[319] Miranda was betrayed

to the Spanish government in 1812, and died (1816) in the hands of the

Inquisition. Bolivar, who was also in London in 1810 and took some

notice of Joseph Lancaster, applied in flattering terms to Bentham. Long

afterwards, when dictator of Columbia, he forbade the use of Bentham's

works in the schools, to which, however, the privilege of reading him

was restored, and, let us hope, duly valued, in 1835.[320] Santander,

another South American hero, was also a disciple, and encouraged the

study of Bentham. Bentham says in 1830 that forty thousand copies of

Dumont's _Traites_ had been sold in Paris for the South American

trade.[321] What share Bentham may have had in modifying South American

ideas is unknown to me. In the United States he had many disciples of a

more creditable kind than Burr. He appealed in 1811 to Madison, then

President, for permission to construct a 'Pannomion' or complete body of

law, for the use of the United States; and urged his claims both upon

Madison and the Governor of Pennsylvania in 1817, when peace had been

restored. He had many conversations upon this project with John Quincy

Adams, who was then American minister in England.[322] This, of course,

came to nothing, but an eminent American disciple, Edward Livingston

(1764-1836), between 1820 and 1830 prepared codes for the State of

Louisiana, and warmly acknowledged his obligations to Bentham.[323] In

1830 Bentham also acknowledges a notice of his labours, probably

resulting from this, which had been made in one of General Jackson's

presidential messages.[324] In his later years the United States became

his ideal, and he never tired of comparing its cheap and honest

enactment with the corruption and extravagance at home.

NOTES:

[291] _Works_, x. 403.

[292] _Ibid._ x. 62.

[293] Bentham had himself written some of his papers in French.

[294] _Works_, x. 407, 410, 413, 419.

[295] _Ibid._ x. 415.

[296] Lord E. Fitzmaurice's _Life of Shelburne_.

[297] _Works_, x. 413.

[298] This statement, I believe, refers to a complimentary reference to

Bentham in the preface to the French Code.

[299] _Works_, x. 458.

[300] Bentham says that he reached these conclusions some time before

1809: _Works_, iii. 435. Cf. _Ibid._ v. 278.

[301] _Works_, x. 425.

[302] See description in Bain's _James Mill_, 129-36.

[303] _Works_, x. 479, 573.

[304] _Works_, x. 452-54.; Bain's _James Mill_, 104.

[305] The case of the 'King _v._ Cobbett,' (1804), which led to the

proceedings against Mr. Justice Johnson in 1805.--Cobbett's _State

Trials_, xxix.

[306] _Works_, x. 448-49.

[307] _Ibid._ x. 458.

[308] _Works_, x. 471, 570.

[309] _Ibid._ x. 471.

[310] _Ibid._ x. 461.

[311] _Ibid._ x. 471.

[312] _Ibid._ x. 490.

[313] Printed in _Works_, x. 495-97.

[314] _Ibid._ x. 570.

[315] _Ibid._ x. 476.

[316] _Works_, x. 485.

[317] Bain's _James Mill_, 136. _Church of Englandism_ and _Not Paul but

Jesus_ were also written at Ford Abbey.

[318] _Works_, x. 433, 448.

[319] _Ibid._ x. 457-58; Bain's _James Mill_, 79.

[320] _Works_, 553-54, 565.

[321] _Ibid._ xi. 53.

[322] See _Memoirs of J. Q. Adams_ (1874), iii. 511, 520, 532, 535-39,

540, 544, 560, 562-63. and Bentham's letter to Adams in _Works_, x. 554.

[323] _Works_, xi. 23.

[324] _Ibid._ xi. 40.

V. CODIFICATION

The unsettled conditions which followed the peace in various European

countries found Bentham other employment. In 1809 Dumont did some

codifying for the Emperor of Russia, and in 1817 was engaged to do the

same service for Geneva. He was employed for some years, and is said to

have introduced a Benthamite Penal Code and Panopticon, and an

application of the Tactics.[325] In 1820 and 1821 Bentham was consulted

by the Constitutional party in Spain and Portugal, and wrote elaborate

tracts for their enlightenment. He made an impression upon at least one

Spaniard. Borrow, when travelling in Spain some ten years after

Bentham's death, was welcomed by an Alcalde on Cape Finisterre, who had

upon his shelves all the works of the 'grand Baintham,' and compared him

to Solon, Plato, and even Lope de Vega.[326] The last comparison

appeared to Borrow to be overstrained. Bentham even endeavoured in

1822-23 to administer some sound advice to the government of Tripoli,

but his suggestions for 'remedies against misrule' seem never to have

been communicated.[327] In 1823 and 1824 he was a member of the Greek

Committee; he corresponded with Mavrocordato and other leaders; and he

begged Parr to turn some of his admonitions into 'Parrian' Greek for the

benefit of the moderns.[328] Blaquiere and Stanhope, two ardent members

of the committee, were disciples; and Stanhope carried with him to

Greece Bentham's _Table of the Springs of Action_, with which he tried

to indoctrinate Byron. The poet, however, thought with some plausibility

that he was a better judge of human passions than the philosopher.

Parry, the engineer, who joined Byron at the same time, gives a queer

account of the old philosopher trotting about London in the service of

the Greeks.[329] The coarse and thoughtless might laugh, and perhaps

some neither coarse nor thoughtless might smile. But Bowring tells us

that these were days of boundless happiness for Bentham.[330] Tributes

of admiration were pouring in from all sides, and the true Gospel was

spreading across the Atlantic and along the shores of the Mediterranean.

At home the Utilitarian party was consolidating itself; and the struggle

which resulted in the Reform Bill was slowly beginning. The veteran

Cartwright, Bentham's senior by eight years, tried in 1821 to persuade

him to come out as one of a committee of 'Guardians of Constitutional

Reform,' elected at a public meeting.[331] Bentham wisely refused to be

drawn from his privacy. He left it to his friends to agitate, while he

returned to labour in his study. The demand for legislation which had

sprung up in so many parts of the world encouraged Bentham to undertake

the last of his great labours. The Portuguese Cortes voted in December

1821 that he should be invited to prepare an 'all-comprehensive code';

and in 1822 he put out a curious 'Codification proposal,' offering to do

the work for any nation in need of a legislator, and appending

testimonials to his competence for the work. He set to work upon a

'Constitutional Code,' which occupied him at intervals during the

remainder of his life, and embodied the final outcome of his

speculations. He diverged from this main purpose to write various

pamphlets upon topics of immediate interest; and was keenly interested

in the various activities of his disciples. The Utilitarians now thought

themselves entitled to enter the field of politics as a distinct body.

An organ to defend their cause was desirable, and Bentham supplied the

funds for the _Westminster Review_, of which the first number appeared

in April 1824.

The editorship fell chiefly into the hands of Bowring (1792-1872).

Bowring had travelled much upon the Continent for a commercial house,

and his knowledge of Spanish politics had brought him into connection

with Bentham, to whom Blaquiere recommended him in 1820.[332] A strong

attachment sprang up between the two. Bentham confided all his thoughts

and feelings to the young man, and Bowring looked up to his teacher with

affectionate reverence. In 1828 Bentham says that Bowring is 'the most

intimate friend he has.'[333] Bowring complains of calumnies, by which

he was assailed, though they failed to alienate Bentham. What they may

have been matters little; but it is clear that a certain jealousy arose

between this last disciple and his older rivals. James Mill's stern and

rigid character had evidently produced some irritation at intervals; and

to him it would naturally appear that Bowring was the object of a senile

favouritism. In any case it is to be regretted that Bentham thus became

partly alienated from his older friends[334]. Mill was too proud to

complain; and never wavered in his allegiance to the master's

principles. But one result, and to us the most important, was that the

new attachment led to the composition of one of the worst biographies in

the language, out of materials which might have served for a

masterpiece. Bowring was a great linguist, and an energetic man of

business. He wrote hymns, and one of them, 'In the cross of Christ I

glory,' is said to have 'universal fame.' A Benthamite capable of so

singular an eccentricity judiciously agreed to avoid discussions upon

religious topics with his master. To Bowring we also owe the

_Deontology_, which professes to represent Bentham's dictation. The

Mills repudiated this version, certainly a very poor one, of their

teacher's morality, and held that it represented less Bentham than such

an impression of Bentham as could be stamped upon a muddle-headed

disciple.[335]

The last years of his life brought Bentham into closer connection with

more remarkable men. The Radicals had despised the Whigs as trimmers and

half-hearted reformers, and James Mill expressed this feeling very

frankly in the first numbers of the _Westminster Review_. Reform,

however, was now becoming respectable, and the Whigs were gaining the

courage to take it up seriously. Foremost among the Edinburgh Reviewers

was the great Henry Brougham, whose fame was at this time almost as

great as his ambition could desire, and who considered himself to be the

natural leader of all reform. He had shown eagerness to distinguish

himself in lines fully approved by Bentham. His admirers regarded him

as a giant; and his opponents, if they saw in him a dash of the

charlatan, could not deny his amazing energy and his capacity as an

orator. The insatiable vanity which afterwards ruined his career already

made it doubtful whether he fought for the cause or the glory. But he

was at least an instrument worth having. He was a kind of half-disciple.

If in 1809 he had checked Mill's praise of Bentham, he was soon

afterwards in frequent communication with the master. In July 1812

Bentham announces that Brougham is at last to be admitted to a dinner,

for which he had been 'intriguing any time this six months,' and expects

that his proselyte will soon be the first man in the House of Commons,

and eclipse even Romilly.[336] In later years they had frequent

communications; and when in 1827 Brougham was known to be preparing an

utterance upon law reform, Bentham's hopes rose high. He offered to his

disciple 'some nice little sweet pap of my own making,' sound teaching

that is, upon evidence, judicial establishments and codification.

Brougham thanks his 'dear grandpapa,' and Bentham offers further

supplies to his 'dear, sweet little poppet.'[337] But when the orator

had spoken Bentham declares (9th February 1828) that the mountain has

been delivered of a mouse. Brougham was 'not the man to set up' simple

and rational principles. He was the sham adversary but the real

accomplice of Peel, pulling up lies by the root to plant others equally

noxious.[338] In 1830 Bentham had even to hold up 'Master Peel' as a

'model good boy' to the self-styled reformer. Brougham needs a dose of

jalap instead of pap, for he cannot even spell the 'greatest happiness

principle' properly.[339] Bentham went so far as to write what he fondly

took to be an epigram upon Brougham:

'So foolish and so wise, so great, so small,

Everything now, to-morrow nought at all.'[340]

In September 1831 Brougham as Chancellor announced a scheme for certain

changes in the constitution of the courts. The proposal called forth

Bentham's last pamphlet, _Lord Brougham displayed_.[341] Bentham laments

that his disciple has 'stretched out the right hand of fellowship to

jobbers of all sorts.'[342] In vain had Brougham in his speech called

Bentham 'one of the great sages of the law.' Bentham acknowledges his

amiability and his genius; but laments over the untrustworthy character

of a man who could only adopt principles so far as they were subservient

to his own vanity.

Another light of the _Edinburgh Review_, who at this time took Brougham

at his own valuation, did an incidental service to Bentham. Upon the

publication of the _Book of Fallacies_ in 1825, Sydney Smith reviewed or

rather condensed it in the _Edinburgh Review_, and gave the pith of the

whole in his famous _Noodle's Oration_. The noodle utters all the

commonplaces by which the stupid conservatives, with Eldon at their

head, met the demands of reformers. Nothing could be wittier than

Smith's brilliant summary. Whigs and Radicals for the time agreed in

ridiculing blind prejudice. The day was to come when the Whigs at least

would see that some principles might be worse than prejudice. All the

fools, said Lord Melbourne, 'were against Catholic Emancipation, and

the worst of it is, the fools were in the right.' Sydney Smith was glad

to be Bentham's mouthpiece for the moment: though, when Benthamism was

applied to church reform, Smith began to perceive that Noodle was not so

silly as he seemed.

One other ally of Bentham deserves notice. O'Connell had in 1828, in

speaking of legal abuses, called himself 'an humble disciple of the

immortal Bentham.'[343] Bentham wrote to acknowledge the compliment. He

invited O'Connell to become an inmate of his hermitage at Queen's Square

Place, and O'Connell responded warmly to the letters of his 'revered

master.' Bentham's aversion to Catholicism was as strong as his

objection to Catholic disqualifications, and he took some trouble to

smooth down the difficulties which threatened an alliance between ardent

believers and thoroughgoing sceptics. O'Connell had attacked some who

were politically upon his side. 'Dan, dear child,' says Bentham, 'whom

in imagination I am at this moment pressing to my fond bosom, put off,

if it be possible, your intolerance.'[344] Their friendship, however,

did not suffer from this discord, and their correspondence is in the

same tone till the end. In one of Bentham's letters he speaks of a

contemporary correspondence with another great man, whom he does not

appear to have met personally. He was writing long letters, entreating

the duke of Wellington to eclipse Cromwell by successfully attacking the

lawyers. The duke wrote 'immediate answers in his own hand,' and took

good-humouredly a remonstrance from Bentham upon the duel with Lord

Winchilsea in 1829.[345] Bentham was ready to the end to seek allies in

any quarter. When Lord Sidmouth took office in 1812, Bentham had an

interview with him, and had some hopes of being employed to prepare a

penal code.[346] Although experience had convinced him of the futility

of expectations from the Sidmouths and Eldons, he was always on the look

out for sympathy; and the venerable old man was naturally treated with

respect by people who had little enough of real interest in his

doctrines.

During the last ten years of his life, Bentham was cheered by symptoms

of the triumph of his creed. The approach of the millennium seemed to be

indicated by the gathering of the various forces which carried Roman

Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill. Bentham still received

testimonies of his fame abroad. In 1825 he visited Paris to consult some

physicians. He was received with the respect which the French can always

pay to intellectual eminence.[347] All the lawyers in a court of justice

rose to receive him, and he was placed at the president's right hand. On

the revolution of 1830, he addressed some good advice to the country of

which he had been made a citizen nearly forty years before. In 1832,

Talleyrand, to whom he had talked about the Panopticon in 1792, dined

with him alone in his hermitage.[348] When Bowring observed to the

prince that Bentham's works had been plundered, the polite diplomatist

replied, _et pille de tout le monde, il est toujours riche_. Bentham was

by this time failing. At eighty-two he was still, as he put it,

'codifying like any dragon.'[349] On 18th May 1832 he did his last bit

of his lifelong labour, upon the 'Constitutional Code.' The great

reform agitation was reaching the land of promise, but Bentham was to

die in the wilderness. He sank without a struggle on 6th June 1832, his

head resting on Bowring's bosom. He left the characteristic direction

that his body should be dissected for the benefit of science. An

incision was formally made; and the old gentleman, in his clothes as he

lived, his face covered by a wax mask, is still to be seen at University

College in Gower Street.

Bentham, as we are told, had a strong personal resemblance to Benjamin

Franklin. Sagacity, benevolence, and playfulness were expressed in both

physiognomies. Bentham, however, differed from the man whose intellect

presents many points of likeness, in that he was not a man of the

market-place or the office. Bentham was in many respects a child through

life:[350] a child in simplicity, good humour, and vivacity; his health

was unbroken; he knew no great sorrow; and after emerging from the

discouragement of his youth, he was placidly contemplating a continuous

growth of fame and influence. He is said to have expressed the wish that

he could awake once in a century to contemplate the prospect of a world

gradually adopting his principles and so making steady progress in

happiness and wisdom.

No man could lead a simpler life. His chief luxuries at table were

fruit, bread, and tea. He had a 'sacred teapot' called Dick, with

associations of its own, and carefully regulated its functions. He

refrained from wine during the greatest part of his life, and was never

guilty of a single act of intemperance. In later life he took a daily

half-glass of Madeira. He was scrupulously neat in person, and wore a

Quaker-like brown coat, brown cassimere breeches, white worsted

stockings and a straw hat. He walked or 'rather trotted' with his stick

Dapple, and took his 'ante-prandial' and other 'circumgyrations' with

absolute punctuality. He loved pets; he had a series of attached cats;

and cherished the memory of a 'beautiful pig' at Hendon, and of a donkey

at Ford Abbey. He encouraged mice to play in his study--a taste which

involved some trouble with his cats, and suggests problems as to the

greatest happiness of the greatest number. Kindness to animals was an

essential point of his moral creed. 'I love everything,' he said, 'that

has four legs.' He had a passion for flowers, and tried to introduce

useful plants. He loved music--especially Handel--and had an organ in

his house. He cared nothing for poetry: 'Prose,' he said,[351] 'is when

all the lines except the last go on to the margin. Poetry is when some

of them fall short of it.' He was courteous and attentive to his guests,

though occasionally irritable when his favourite crotchets were

transgressed, or especially if his fixed hours of work were deranged.

His regularity in literary work was absolute. He lived by a time-table,

working in the morning and turning out from ten to fifteen folio pages

daily. He read the newspapers regularly, but few books, and cared

nothing for criticisms on his own writings. His only substantial meal

was a dinner at six or half-past, to which he occasionally admitted a

few friends as a high privilege. He liked to discuss the topics of which

his mind was full, and made notes beforehand of particular points to be

introduced in conversation. He was invariably inaccessible to visitors,

even famous ones, likely to distract his thoughts. 'Tell Mr. Bentham

that Mr. Richard Lovell Edgeworth desires to see him.' 'Tell Mr. Richard

Lovell Edgeworth that Mr. Bentham does not desire to see him' was the

reply. When Mme. de Stael came to England, she said to Dumont: 'Tell

Bentham I shall see nobody till I have seen him.' 'I am sorry for it,'

said Bentham, 'for then she will never see anybody.' And he summed up

his opinion of the famous author of _Corinne_ by calling her 'a trumpery

magpie.'[352] There is a simplicity and vivacity about some of the

sayings reported by Bowring, which prove that Bentham could talk well,

and increase our regret for the absence of a more efficient Boswell. At

ten Bentham had his tea, at eleven his nightcap, and by twelve all his

guests were ignominiously expelled. He was left to sleep on a hard bed.

His sleep was light, and much disturbed by dreams.

Bentham was certainly amiable. The 'surest way to gain men,' he said,

'is to appear to love them, and the surest way to appear to love them is

to love them in reality.' The least pleasing part of his character,

however, is the apparent levity of his attachments. He was, as we have

seen, partly alienated from Dumont, though some friendly communications

are recorded in later years, and Dumont spoke warmly of Bentham only a

few days before his death in 1829.[353] He not only cooled towards James

Mill, but, if Bowring is to be trusted, spoke of him with great

harshness.[354] Bowring was not a judicious reporter, indeed, and

capable of taking hasty phrases too seriously. What Bentham's remarks

upon these and other friends suggest is not malice or resentment, but

the flippant utterance of a man whose feelings are wanting in depth

rather than kindliness. It is noticeable that, after his early visit at

Bowood, no woman seems to have counted for anything in Bentham's life.

He was not only never in love, but it looks as if he never even talked

to any woman except his cook or housemaid.

The one conclusion that I need draw concerns a question not, I think,

hard to be solved. It would be easy to make a paradox by calling Bentham

at once the most practical and most unpractical of men. This is to point

out the one-sided nature of Bentham's development. Bentham's habits

remind us in some ways of Kant; and the thought may be suggested that he

would have been more in his element as a German professor of

philosophies. In such a position he might have devoted himself to the

delight of classifying and co-ordinating theories, and have found

sufficient enjoyment in purely intellectual activity. After a fashion

that was the actual result. How far, indeed, Bentham could have achieved

much in the sphere of pure philosophy, and what kind of philosophy he

would have turned out, must be left to conjecture. The circumstances of

his time and country, and possibly his own temperament generally, turned

his thoughts to problems of legislation and politics, that is to say, of

direct practical interest. He was therefore always dealing with concrete

facts, and a great part of his writings may be considered as raw

material for acts of parliament. Bentham remained, however, unpractical,

in the sense that he had not that knowledge which we ascribe either to

the poet or to the man of the world. He had neither the passion nor the

sympathetic imagination. The springs of active conduct which Byron knew

from experience were to Bentham nothing more than names in a careful

classification. Any shrewd attorney or Bow Street runner would have been

a better judge of the management of convicts; and here were dozens of

party politicians, such as Rigby and Barre, who could have explained to

him beforehand those mysteries in the working of the political

machinery, which it took him half a lifetime to discover. In this sense

Bentham was unpractical in the highest degree, for at eighty he had not

found out of what men are really made. And yet by his extraordinary

intellectual activity and the concentration of all his faculties upon

certain problems, he succeeded in preserving an example, and though not

a unique yet an almost unsurpassable example, of the power which belongs

to the man of one idea.

NOTES:

[325] See correspondence upon his codification plans in Russia, America,

and Geneva in _Works_, iv. 451-594.

[326] Borrow's _Bible in Spain_, ch. xxx.

[327] _Works_, viii. 555-600.

[328] _Ibid._ x. 534. See Blaquiere's enthusiastic letter to

Bentham.--_Works_, x. 475.

[329] See, however, Bentham's reference to this story.--_Works_, xi. 66.

[330] _Works_, x. 539.

[331] _Ibid._ x. 522.

[332] _Works_, x. 516.

[333] _Ibid._ x. 591.

[334] A letter from Mill in the University College MSS. describes a

misunderstanding about borrowed books, a fertile, but hardly adequate,

cause of quarrel.

[335] Bowring's religious principles prevented him from admitting some

of Bentham's works to the collective edition.

[336] _Works_, x. 471-72.

[337] _Ibid._ x. 576.

[338] _Ibid._ x. 588.

[339] _Works_, xi. 37. Papers preserved at University College show that

during Peel's law reforms at this time Bentham frequently communicated

with him.

[340] _Ibid._ xi. 50.

[341] _Ibid._ v. 549.

[342] _Ibid._ v. 609.

[343] _Works_, x. 594.

[344] _Ibid._ xi. 26.

[345] _Ibid._ xi. 13, 28.

[346] _Works_, x. 468.

[347] _Ibid._ x. 551.

[348] _Ibid._ xi. 75.

[349] _Ibid._ xi. 33.

[350] Mill's _Dissertations_, i. 354 and 392 _n._

[351] _Works_, x. 442.

[352] _Works_, x. 467; xi. 79.

[353] _Ibid._ xi. 23-24.

[354] _Ibid._ x. 450.