17 



BENTHAM, JEREMY. 



RKNTHAM, JEREMY. 



Norwich In 4to, IMi, by Mr. William Stevenson ; who in 1817 pub- 

 lished a ' Supplement' to the first edition in the same siie. In 1769, 

 when the dean and chapter of Ely had determined upon the general 

 repair of their church, and the removal of the choir from the lantern 

 to the presbytery at the east end, Mr. Bentham was requebted to 

 superintend these operations as clerk of the works. He also contri- 

 buted to promote works of general utility in his neighbourhood, and 

 rendered great assistance in the plans suggested for the improvement 

 of the fens by draining, and the practicability of increasing the inter- 

 course with the neighbouring counties by means of turnpike-roads, a 

 measure till then unattempted. A letter on the discovery of the bones 

 of the original benefactors to the monastery of Kly, and some Roman 

 coins found near Littleport, printed in the Aroluoologia ' of the Society 

 of Antiquaries, voL ii. p. 864 ; with one or two pamphlets on local 

 improvements in Cambridgeshire, were Mr. Bentham's other publica- 

 tions. He died at his prebeodal house in the college at Ely, on 

 November 17th, 1794, aged eighty-six. 



BENTHAM, JEREMY, was born at the residence of his father, Mr. 

 Jeremiah Bentham, an eminent solicitor, adjacent to Aldgate church 

 in London, on the lith of February 1747-48. At eight years of age 

 he entered Westminster School, and at thirteen he was admitted a 

 member of Queen's College, Oxford, at both which places he is said 

 to have been distinguished. The sge at which he entered Oxford 

 belongs more to the practice of former times than that of later years. 

 At sixteen he took his degree of B.A. aud at twenty that of M.A. 

 When the time came for attaching his signature to the Thirty-nine 

 Articles of the Church of England, he did >o with considerable 

 nluctance, as by that time he felt great scruples of conscience. The 

 mental struggle he experienced, both before and after this event, has 

 been vividly described by himself. 



At Oxford, Bentham was one of the class who attended the lectures 

 of Blackstone on English law. His 'Fragment on Government ' 

 shows at bow early an sge he begun to feel dissatisfied with the 

 arguments of that writer, and particularly with those based on the 

 ' original contract' Bentbam, whose original opinions were strongly 

 in favour of monarchy, and even of passive obedience, as " stamped 

 with the seal of the Christian virtues of humility and self-denial," 

 felt compelled to inquire where and when this original contract had 

 been recorded. These doubts, he says, led him to the conclusion that 

 " utility was the test and measure of all virtue, of loyalty as much 

 as any. 



Bentham'* prospects of success at the bar were extremely good, his 

 father'* practice and influence as a solicitor being considerable, and 

 his own draughts of bills in equity being distinguished for their 

 superior execution. In one of bis ]*mphlets (' Indications respecting 

 Lord Eldon ') he states that, having entered the profession at the desire 

 of his father, be was so discontented with the practice, which he 

 thought amounted almost to a fraud, of taking out unnecessary orders 

 for hearing in order to multiply fees, that he determined to quit it, and 

 rather to endeavour to put an end to, than to profit by. the practice. 



In 1776 appeared his first publication, entitled 'A Fragment on 

 Government* This work, being anonymous, was ascribed to some of 

 the most distinguished men of the day. Dr. Johnson attribute i it to 

 Mr. Dunning. In 1780 bis ' Introduction to the Principles of Morals 

 and Legislation' was first printed ; but it was not published till 1789. 

 He visited Paris in 1786, for the third time, and thence proceeded to 

 Italy. From L-gborn he sailed for Smyrna, in a vessel, with the 

 matter of which he h*d formed an engagement before leaving England. 

 After a stay of about three weeks at Smyrna, he embarked on board 

 a Turkish vessel for Constantinople, where he remained five or six 

 week*. From Constantinople Mr. Bentbam made his way across Bul- 

 garia, WalUchia, Moldavia, and through a part of Poland, to KrichofT 

 ite Russia. At that place be stayed at his brother's, sftcrwards 

 Sir Samuel Bentham, at thst time lieutenant-colonel commandant of 

 a battalion in the emperor's service, till November 1787, when bis 

 brother, who was on an excursion to Kherson, being unexpectedly 

 detained for the defence of the country against the apprehended inva- 

 sion of the Capitan Pasha, be returned to England through Poland, 

 Oeraany, and the United Provinces, arriving at Harwich in February 



In 1791 was. published his ' Panopticon, or the Inspection House,' a 

 valuable work on prUon-diedplin., part of which consists of a series 

 of letters, written in 1787, from Kriohoff in White Russia, where also 

 he wrote his letters on the usury laws. In 1792 Mr. Bentham pre- 

 sented to Mr. Pitt a proposal on bis Panopticon plan of management 

 It was embraced with enthusiasm by Mr. Pitt ; Lord Dundaa, home 

 secretary ; Mr. Rose, secretary of the treasury ; and Mr., afterwards 

 *rles Loo*, who subsequently became Lord Farnborough. Not- 

 withstanding that enthusiasm, by a cause then unknown, it wa* made 

 to lincer till the close of UM session of 1794, when an act passed 

 enabling the treasury to enter into a contract for the purpose. Mr. Pitt 

 and his colleagues gave their authority in support of Mr. Bentbam's 

 plan, bat years were spent in a struggle between the ministry and 

 osne secret infiuooce, and the site of the present Penitentiary, pur- 

 chased at UM price of 12,000*. (for the half of which sum the more 

 appropriate Un.l at Battersea Rise might have been bad), was erected, 

 at a greater cot, and for a far less number of prisoners, than the one 

 proposed by Mr. BeuUuun. 



The history of such a life as Bentham's is the history of hi* opinions 

 and his writings, which gave him a higher celebrity abroad than he 

 enjoyed at home. Certain excellent treatises of hi* were admirably 

 edited in French by hi* friend and the friend (a remarkable concur- 

 rence) of Uirabeau and Komilly, M. Dumont From these Beutham 

 became well known on the continent; indeed better known than in 

 his native country, and more highly <nteemed, as appears from the 

 following incident that occurred during a visit he paid to France 

 in 1825 for the benefit of his health. Happening on one occasion 

 to visit one of the supreme courts, he was recognised on his 

 entrance. The whole body of the advocates rose and paid him the 

 highest marks of respect, and the court invited him to the seat of 

 honour. 



From about the year 1817 Mr. Bentham was a bencher of Lincoln's 

 Inn. He died in Queen Square Place, Westminster, where he had 

 resided nearly half a century, on the 6th of June 1832, being in the 

 eighty-fifth year of his age. Up to extreme old age he retained, with 

 much of the intellectual power of the prime of manhood, the Mm- 

 plicity and the freshness of early youth ; and even in the last moments 

 of his existence the serenity aud cheerfulness of his mind did not 

 desert him. 



The leading principle of Bentham's philosophy is, that the end of 

 all human actions aud morality is happiness. By happiness Bentham 

 means pleasure and exemption from pain; and the fundamental prin- 

 ciple from which he starts is, that the action* of sentient beings are 

 wholly governed by pleasure and pain. He held that happiness is 

 the 'summum bonum,' in fact, the only thing desirable in itself; that 

 all other thing* ore desirable solely as means to that end ; that there- 

 fore the production of the greatest possible amount of happiness i* 

 the only fit object of all human exertion; aud consequently of all 

 morals and legislation. In expounding his doctrines, Mr. Bentham 

 has laid them open to the cavils of many disingenuous minds, and 

 prejudiced against them many generous and honest mindg, chiefly, as 

 it appears to us, from not having himself sufficiently entered into the 

 metaphysical grounds of them. Hi* system has been branded with 

 the natue of ' cold-blooded,' ' calculating,' ' selfish.' It may be shown 

 however that what Beutham termed 'selfish,' would in ordinary 

 language frequently be termed, in the highest and purest degree, 

 disinterested aud benevolent. 



Dr. Southwood Smith, in hi* ' Lecture,' has pointed out some of 

 those peculiarities which probably narrowed the sphere of Bentham's 

 usefulness, certainly lowered the degree of his greatness. We allude 

 to the circumstance of his " surrounding himself only with persons 

 whose sympathies were like his own." Beutham secluded himself too 

 much. The greatest political and legislative philosophers in all ages 

 have mingled, at least occasionally, in the business of men, if not 

 testing, at least relieving their abstruser meditations, by the study of 

 man as engaged in action. Those too among them, who have exer- 

 cised most influence over the minds of mankind, have been content, 

 however far their thinking departed from theirs, in the general, at least 

 to ' speak with the vulgar.' But Bentham, from the time whrii be 

 embarked in original speculation, not only secluded himself from the 

 general converse of his contemporaries, but occupied himself very 

 little in studying the ideas of other?, who like himself had devoted 

 their lives to thinking. The effect of the first was to render hi* style 

 inaccessible to the mass of his countrymen ; of the other to produce 

 what has been aptly termed cne-sideduess of mind. His appears, 

 indeed, from all the evidence that we have collected concerning it, 

 to have been an understanding which, though singularly acute and 

 original, had no great facility in apprehending the thoughts of others. 

 Now, such an understanding, though vastly superior to that large 

 class of passive understandings which are able to store themselves 

 with the thoughts of other men, but there stop, is almost necessarily 

 excluded from the first order of great mindx, which possess an equal 

 power in mastering the ideas of others, and striking out new ones of 

 their own. Without this power, a man, however original, will waste 

 much of his energy in making discoveries that have been made long 

 before he was born. His theories, too, will be apt to be wanting iu 

 comprehensiveness. And this is a fault which 110 painstaking, which 

 uo acuteneas ever can remedy. 



Bentham appears, from the number of tables scattered through his 

 works, to have been particularly fond of tabularising ; and, like many 

 other makers of tables, as well as other things, he does not show, to 

 our apprehension, any extraordinary excellence in this favourite 

 puriuit. Us was fond of heaping division upon divisiou in almost 

 endless extent : and very frequently his classes are distinguishable by 

 no logical ' differentia ' that we have ever been able to discover ; but 

 form that specie* of division which has received the name of a dis- 

 tinction without a difference. 



From the general character of Bentham's tabularisation however, 

 we would except the division which seem* to have been conceived by 

 him of the field of law. Among some valuable tables which Pro- 

 fessor Austin drew up for the use of his class in the London University, 

 was one exhibiting the 'Corpus Juris' ('Corps compU-t de Droit ), 

 arranged in the order which seems to have been conceived by Mr. 

 Uentham, a* expounded in his ' Trails de Legislation,' more par- 

 ticularly in the ' Vue ge'ne'rale d'un dr|n complet de Droit.' It is 

 particularly worthy of remark that, in the table of which we subjoin 



